German Socialism

The Commandments of the National Socialist Party, translated:

1.The Leader is always right!
2. Never offend against discipline!
3. Never waste your time in idle gossip or in complacent criticism, but lend a hand and work!
4. Be proud, but not conceited!
5. Let the Party Program be your dogma; it demands your utmost commitment to the Movement!
6. You are a representative of the Party; let your behaviour and appearance by determined accordingly!
7. Let loyalty and selflessness be your highest precepts!
8. Be a loyal comrade; you are then a true Socialist!
9. Treat your fellow citizens as you would be treated!
10. In battle, be tough and silent!
11. Courage is not the same as brutality!
12. What is useful to the Movement, and thus to Germany, your country, is right!

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``Mass murder and other hideous crimes against individual rights do not reflect the "degeneration" or "misuse" of socialism, but rather its essence. As is the case with socialism of the Marxist-Leninist variety, the essential lesson of German National Socialism is that collectivism kills, and that the lawless state - in whatever form - is the real enemy.''
-R.J. Rummel

For a detailed treatment of establishment collaboration with the Nazis, read Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antony C. Sutton (1976)

For an account of Noam Chomsky's affiliation with the neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial movement, consider Werner Cohn's Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers, with this short intro. Both are from David Horowitz's Front Page Magazine

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2002-Mar-25, by Robert L. Bartley:

Christians, Jews and Wotan
What we still need to learn from Nazism.

Holy Week is by no means all sweetness and light. This Friday Christians mark the crucifixion, a terrible event redeemed by the resurrection three days later. The Jews gather on Thursday for Passover, celebrating the Exodus from slavery as the angel of death skipped Jewish homes during Egypt's tenth plague, the killing of the firstborn.

So perhaps it's not an inappropriate time to discuss another terrible topic, the Holocaust, and in particular the divisive issue of Christian culpability in the Nazi genocide of the Jews. It is not the purpose here to dismiss the long history of anti-Semitism in Christian lands. By now most Christians agree this was a sin, and its legacy surely played an important role in laying a groundwork for the Nazis and in muting opposition to the "final solution."

It is the purpose, however, to stress one point that seldom receives due emphasis. To wit, the Nazi leaders and ideologues were not Christians. They were pagan, some quite explicitly. For the rest, the ancient myths celebrated in Wagner became a pillar of their doctrine of Teutonic racial superiority.

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Nazism was itself a "political religion," Cardiff University historian Michael Burleigh stresses in his magisterial "The Third Reich: A New History." It sought to displace the traditional church and command spiritual authority as well as temporal. Its special animus toward Jews was not religious but racial, and it "had one foot in the dark irrationalist world of Teutonic myth, where heroic doom was regarded positively, and where the stakes were all or nothing--national and racial redemption or perdition."

The Nazi attack on Christianity was widely understood at the end of World War II. William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" recounts the Nazi plan for the Christian churches: It included an intention to "exterminate irrevocably . . . the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800." Current denominations would be replaced by the National Church. Its altars would have only a copy of "Mein Kampf," with a sword to the left. The Christian Cross would be removed, replaced "by the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika."

The Nazi's aggressive paganism is far less understood today. At one presidential prayer breakfast, Bill Clinton offered the opinion that "Adolf Hitler preached a perverted form of Christianity." I remember a night with my own rabbi on matters Jewish, Seth Lipsky, then editor of the Forward and now embarked on the audacious enterprise of launching a new daily newspaper in New York. When I read Shirer's description, he exclaimed, "You'd better get that scoop in the newspaper."

Too, the Nuremberg Project of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Opinion made some headlines by publishing a 1945 document prepared by William Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, "The Nazi Master Plan: the Persecution of the Christian Churches." (You can find it here.) Papers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times thought it news that the Nazis had sought to suppress Christianity.

Among scholars, by contrast, the pagan roots are not controversial. In 1998, the Vatican issued a seminal statement, "We Remember: Reflections on the Shoah." It asserted, "The Shoah was the work of a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime. Its anti-Semitism had its roots outside of Christianity and, in pursuing its aims, it did not hesitate to oppose the Church and persecute her members also." The World Jewish Congress response affirmed this assertion, "It is true that the National Socialist regime adopted a pagan ideology which rejected the Church."

In the WJC response this is a passing comment amid complaints that the Vatican had not adequately addressed its statement's next sentence: "But it may be asked whether the Nazi persecution of the Jews was not made easier by the anti-Jewish prejudices imbedded in some Christian minds and hearts. Did anti-Jewish sentiment among Christians make them less sensitive, or even indifferent, to the persecutions . . . ?"

Reading these two documents, I come away with the impression that the WJC complaints score points on the margin; the Vatican did not need to say that "many" Christians offered help to Jews, for example. But as a whole the Vatican statement is forthcoming, and surely the church is entitled to cite some of the sermons and statements responding to Nazism by condemning racism and affirming the church teaching of the unity of the human race.

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I came to an interest in this issue via a circuitous route. Dow Jones & Co. is controlled by a family we call the Bancrofts, and one of its most interesting members was Mary Bancroft, who recorded her wartime adventures in a book, "Autobiography of a Spy." She spent the war in Switzerland as assistant to and mistress of OSS chief Allen Dulles. ("We can let the work cover the romance—and the romance cover the work," he told her.) She was also a patient of psychoanalytic pioneer Carl Gustav Jung, who published a 1936 article on the Nazis entitled "Wotan."

Jung believed in a collective unconscious, citing the similar symbols and motifs in mythologies around the world and their appearance in dreams. This position was instrumental in his split with Sigmund Freud. In the Nazis Jung saw an upwelling of the German collective unconscious, the resurgence of pagan gods. He saw the advent of the Nazis as powerful evidence on his side of the dispute with Freud. Because of this, his biographer Frank McLynn held, "Jung sometimes wrote about the upsurge of Wotan from the unconscious in triumphalist terms." This, along with cranky right-wing aristocratic views, left him with the image of a Nazi sympathizer.

One does not have to accept Jung's psychological apparatus, let alone his political views, to recognize that the Nazis represented something inescapably primitive at work in the heart of Europe. The Cambodian killing fields and Rwandan genocide show that the beast is still at large elsewhere in the world, and on the fringes of Europe "ethnic cleansing" has reappeared. Unarguably the Jewish Holocaust remains uniquely horrible, but if we fail to understand its pagan roots, we may miss what it teaches about the nature of us all.

Mr. Bartley is [was (now retired) -AMPP Ed] editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

from National Review, 2002-Jul-29 (posted 2002-Jul-18), by David Pryce-Jones:

Their Kampf
Hitler's book in Arab hands.

Adolf Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf is as vile as any book ever published. Written in 1923 while he was in prison as a revolutionary agitator and at that point unlikely ever to be anything else, Hitler built on the connected emotions of hatred and self-pity. It is the work of a failure, what is more of a man who knows himself to be a failure. The failure is everyone's fault except his own. And all these people are against him because they belong to different races: That is the key. In the book he invents a "racial ladder" with Germans naturally at the top of it and Jews down at the bottom. If only they had been properly German, all those other people would have recognized his greatness. But by definition they couldn't be German, and they stood in his way, and so he had to kill them, stamp them out. On the one hand, thwarted ambition; on the other hand, a hatred of humanity. The combination still has the power to send a shiver down the spine.

Hitler's fate, and the mass-murder he inspired, did not put an end to the malignant appeal of his book. There are plenty of people who know themselves to be failures and blame everyone for it except themselves. They too fantasize that they have enemies who can never be anything else because they belong to another race, and the only solution is to massacre the lot. Almost 80 years after its first appearance, Mein Kampf remains an international hit. The Bavarian state owns the copyright but whether it collects royalties is unclear. The book is banned in Germany, but for some years Random House has been marketing an English translation, defending itself with the argument that it is a historic text which has to be studied.

Communism was perhaps the most spectacular political failure in history, killing tens of millions, and wasting the lives of hundreds of millions more. These victims mostly came from societies that were still traditional, usually agricultural. How were they to explain to themselves the calamity which Communism visited upon them? The arrival of democracy in Russia and its former satellites has brought into these countries fresh editions of Mein Kampf in half a dozen languages. In Poland the initial print-run was 20,000 copies (a significant quantity there). A minority evidently believes that Communism was all a Jewish plot, and Hitler had got things right. The authorities crack down half-heartedly.

Muslim and Arab society is today a failure much as Communism used to be. Muslims and Arabs live under absolute and despotic government which prevents them from enjoying anything like the freedom and prosperity that they see in the West and wish for themselves. On the whole they realize that they have long ago taken their history and destiny into their own hands, and so are responsible for themselves. But so dire are the injustices and the poverty, and so threatening is the tyranny over their heads, that many are lost in pity for themselves, and hatred of everyone else. A slew of racists, radicals, and Islamists share a frame of mind that the West is selfishly conspiring against them, with the Jews once again secretly in charge. Catering to such people since the early '60s, editions of Mein Kampf have been put out in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and it is reported to be a bestseller in the Palestinian Authority area. It is available in London stores selling Arabic books. As its Arabic translator Luis al-Haj expresses it in his preface, "National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star."

In traditional society in the Middle East, Arabs were the masters and Jews were second-class subjects, protected though under rather demeaning conditions. European-style anti-Semitism, usually spread by missionaries and diplomats, came in during the 19th century. Zionism, another import from Europe, redefined Jews according to nationality rather than religion, and the accompanying improvement in their lowly status abruptly challenged Arab assumptions of superiority. These second-class people could surely never have done it on their own; they could only be obtaining their new power from outside — it had to be a plot. Hitler says so too in his book. He believed Zionism was "nothing but a comedy," and he could see through "this sly trick of the Jews." He wrote in Mein Kampf:

They have no thought of building up a Jewish state in Palestine, so that they might inhabit it, but they only want a central organization of their international world cheating, endowed with prerogatives, withdrawn from the seizure of others: a refuge for convicted rascals and a high school for future rogues.

The Third Reich and the Arab East, by Lukasz Hirszowicz, a Polish-born scholar, was published almost 40 years ago but remains a definitive work. It examines in careful detail how Hitler's Germany sought to woo Arabs through anti-British and anti-Jewish policies. Nazi personalities like Josef Goebbels and Baldur von Schirach of the Hitler Youth carried out goodwill tours. Various German agents financed and armed clandestine Arab fascist groups. The first Arabic translation of Mein Kampf appeared in 1938, and Hitler himself tactfully proposed to omit from it his "racial ladder" theory.

Of all the Arabs convinced of Hitler's coming triumph, none was so eager as Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian Arabs in the Hitler years. Vincent Sheean, the Thomas L. Friedman of the day, thought that Haj Amin had "great gifts." Along the lines that "my enemy's enemy is my friend," Haj Amin converted the Palestinian cause into a local branch of Hitler's worldwide anti-Jewish persecution. Fleeing from the British, he spent the war in Berlin. A friend and admirer of Himmler's, he raised a division of Bosnian Muslims for the SS. Hitler made grandiose promises to him, but was cautious enough to add that they could be met only after victory.

Fanaticism had led Haj Amin into utter delusion. Hitler, the expected savior, had in reality the settled conviction that Arabs were Untermenschen and he had no intention of doing them any favors. On that racial ladder of his, Arabs occupied a servile place, held in much the same contempt as the Jews. All sorts of Arab leaders were to follow Haj Amin's example and fall into the racist trap Hitler set for them, including Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat, the Syrian and Iraqi Baathists, and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia.

It cannot be proved, but I suspect that many — probably most — Arabs accept Israel as a fact of life, created by the millions of individual choices which make up history, and over which nobody has any control. But the leadership, the intellectuals particularly, have internalized and perpetuated Hitler's fantasies about Jews and a Jewish state. In one Muslim country after another, leaders who may describe themselves either as Islamist or secular call for the State of Israel to disappear from the map, and its people to be annihilated. It does not seem in the least shocking to them to be proposing mass-murder.

On the contrary: It is only natural in an absolute ruler to seek to kill off his enemies. Ahmad Ragab, a columnist for the Egyptian government paper Al-Akhbar, is only one example among many opinion-makers to "give thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory," and regretting only that Hitler had not extracted revenge for Palestine by murdering every last Jew. Arab propagandists contradictorily go in for versions of Holocaust denial. The present mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, said quite typically before his recent meeting with Pope John Paul II that the numbers of Holocaust victims had been exaggerated. "The Jews are using this issue, in many ways, [including] to blackmail the Germans financially." That has become a standard notion and it chimes perfectly with Mein Kampf and its lies about "rogues" endowed with "prerogatives."

But if really Hitler and his henchmen are role models to be imitated, then it is confused and confusing that Arab media regularly publish articles and cartoons caricaturing Israelis as Nazis, twisting the Star of David into a swastika, and so on. In today's Muslim and Arab world, Hitler and the Holocaust are labels bandied about without regard to historical truth, in order to promote hatred on the one hand, and self-pity on the other — twin signals of intellectual and moral failure.

from the Wall Street Journal Europe, 2009-Oct-14, by Andrea Levin:

Anatomy of a Swedish Blood Libel
Allegations of Israeli organ theft are ugly, false, harmful—and they spread.

Allegations that Israel plunders and trafficks Palestinians' organs are ugly, false, and harmful to peace efforts. No less dangerous—such libels spread.

The Aug. 17 story by Donald Bostrom in Aftonbladet, Scandanavia's leading daily, has quickly metastasized to mainstream Muslim media, spawning cartoons of Jews stealing body parts and drinking Arab blood. These have been published in Syria, Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, to name a few.

In early September, Algeria's al-Khabar newspaper echoed Mr. Bostrom in a new fantasy claiming Jewish-directed gangs of Algerians and Moroccans round up Algerian children, spirit them into Morocco and thence to Israel to have their body parts harvested and sold. On Sept. 17, Iran's PressTV breathlessly declared "an international Jewish conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum."

Hate-filled Web sites have also taken up the theme. Almost invariably, wherever such permutations on the idea of Israeli organ theft appear, Aftonbladet is cited.

Of course, Mr. Bostrom has enjoyed newfound acclaim in some quarters for his article. As the fresh rumors of child-snatching and organ theft circulated in Algeria, the National Federation of Algerian Journalists welcomed him last month to bestow an award for excellence, and promised support for his work.

Meanwhile, editors at Aftonbladet have neither acknowledged nor corrected any of the factual errors that litter the article, and instead react with indignation to charges of misconduct. In a perversion of journalistic standards, Editor-in-chief Jan Helin admitted on his own blog on Aug. 19 that Aftonbladet had no evidence for the incendiary charges against Israel. Nevertheless, according to another Aftonbladet editor cited in Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper on Aug. 20, Mr. Helin's publication "stands behind the demand for an international inquiry" into Israeli actions.

In his original article, Mr. Bostrom wove a tenuous web of guilt by association among unconnected events, in the classic mode of conspiracy theorists. He linked a criminal New Jersey group—that included several Jews—engaged in organ-trafficking, to sweeping charges against Israel's supposedly unethical medical establishment. Into this he injected a lurid event from 17 years ago involving Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian Bilal Ahmed Ghanem, whose organs Mr. Bostrom says were later removed for trafficking.

His account also contains errors concerning Israel, its physicians, laws and military. Take the overarching claim that Israel's medical establishment is grossly "unethical." Mr. Bostrom asserts Israel "is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn't condemn the illegal organ trade." Yet, as of eighteen months ago, Israel has one of the most stringent laws in the world regarding human organs. It prohibits receiving compensation for organs, bans the sale of organs from the dead as well as the living and minutely defines "compensation" to prevent evasion of the law. Unlike laws in other countries, it prohibits the use of insurance for pre- and post-operative treatment for those Israelis who go abroad and receive purchased-organ transplants. But Mr. Bostrom omits any mention of this.

In seeking to underscore Israel's supposed pariah status in the medical realm, the reporter cites a Jerusalem Post story from 1992 which, he claims, reported Israel being ostracized by France for its "unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants." But the June 29, 1992 article only recounted that, like Italy, Israel was being dropped from a European organ-coordinating group because it had contributed too few organs in proportion to the number used for transplants. No hint is given of unethical activity in the Jerusalem Post story. That charge is invented by Mr. Bostrom.

Francis Delmonico, a Harvard surgeon and international transplant specialist who was quoted in the Aftonbladet article on the issue of organ theft in general, told me he found the Aftonbladet charges completely inconsistent with his extensive interaction with Israeli doctors. Dr. Delmonico said he considered their professional conduct exemplary, and described physicians in the Jewish state as "noble and caring." He added: "[Mr.] Bostrom has a responsibility to validate his assertions or withdraw them." Like many others, Dr. Delmonico noted that Mr. Bostrom's scenario in which Ghanem was supposedly shot before having his organs removed for trafficking was "not feasible from a surgical vantage."

This indifference to the facts is telling with regard to the article's depiction of Ghanem. Contrary to the reporter's version, Ghanem was not an innocent "stone-thrower." Rather—according to sources that include the Jerusalem Post, Agence France-Presse, and a United Nations casualty summary—he was wanted for kidnapping and assaulting other Palestinians at a time of rampant internecine Palestinian violence.

There are also inventions out of thin air, such as Mr. Bostrom's connection of an ordinary 1992 campaign in Israel aimed at enlisting future volunteer organ donors to alleged abductions and organ theft committed against Palestinians. The reporter declares: "While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open." Mr. Bostrom adds, "There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies." But evidence for this netherworld is, again, non-existent.

In one of the most seemingly damaging charges, Mr. Bostrom claims Ghanem's family itself accused Israel in 1992 of killing the man and removing his organs. However, according to recent in-person interviews with the family by the Jerusalem Post, Ghanem's mother, Sadeeka Ghanem, "denied that she had told any foreign journalist that her son's organs had been stolen." Another relative agreed, saying the family never told Mr. Bostrom Israel stole organs from the dead man's body.

Still, Aftonbladet's culture editor Asa Linderborg, in whose section the article appeared, wrote in a semi-hysterical Aug. 21 defense of the piece entitled "Examine Israel!": "In the black of night, [Mr. Bostrom] takes a unique photograph of the mangled body, cut open and stitched from the chin down to the groin, while the boy's frantic relatives are crying and screaming that the Israelis are plundering their son's organs." Fevered imaginations seem to be prevalent at the paper.

While visiting Algiers to pick up his award last month, Mr. Bostrom added embellishments to his original story, announcing that fully 1,000 Palestinians had endured the "harvesting" of body parts, and that all this began as early as 1960. The reporter has evidence for not even one case of organ theft, yet he's now charging 1,000 cases.

Rational and responsible editorial judgment would have discarded Mr. Bostrom's surreal story at the outset. Such judgment would also have considered the real world effects of inciting yet more enmity in a volatile conflict, stoking misconceptions and raising greater hurdles to reconciliation.

But Aftonbladet's view of the parties involved appears strikingly crude, perceiving a realm populated by evil stick-figure Israelis preying mercilessly on romanticized Palestinian "stone-throwers." One cannot in this context forget Aftonbladet's unsavory pro-Nazi sentiments during the Hitler regime. This past seems to have done little to inoculate the paper against related bigotries today.

In an age of diminishing communication barriers, when false images and ideas can mislead hundreds of millions of people in minutes, it is more important than ever to reinforce the tenets of honorable journalism, and to expose malfeasance for all to see.

Behold, Aftonbladet.

Ms. Levin is executive director and president of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

from the Times of London, 2009-Feb-18, by Simon de Bruxelles:

Adolf Hitler had 'shocking' table manners
The Fuhrer's behaviour shocked those who dined with him, an intelligence report marked “Destroy in 48 Hours” said

Adolf Hitler's uncouth behaviour and shocking table manners appalled his wartime dining companions, according to a secret intelligence report discovered during a house clearance.

The papers, marked “Must be destroyed within 48 hours of reading”, include a psychological profile of the Nazi dictator based on the interrogation of one of his closest aides.

The aide, an officer who kept the appointments diary at Wolf's Lair, Hitler's military headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia, described how the Führer bit his nails during meals, gorged on cakes and was often lost in his own thoughts, paying little attention to the conversation around him. He also spoke about the rages that kept Hitler's senior officers in a state of constant terror.

The papers are part of an intelligence summary prepared as the war neared its end and are believed to have been saved by a British officer. They were found at a house in the South West and are to be sold at auction next month.

The unnamed German officer, a lieutenant colonel referred to as PW — prisoner of war — was based at Wolf's Lair for several months in 1943. He dined with Hitler at least 30 times and observed his daily routine. He told the Allies that Hitler would eat only vegetables and stewed fruit and banned smoking in his presence. His meals would be accompanied by one or two glasses of beer.

“Hitler eats rapidly, mechanically, for him food is merely an indispensable means of subsistence,” PW said. Conversation at the dinner table relaxed Hitler and stimulated his thoughts. When he spoke it was “in mellow baritone, without that raucous, unpleasant stridency of his public speeches”.

But the informant added: “At the table and in his speech he shows many facets of rather uncouth behaviour. He abstractedly bites his fingernails, he runs his index finger back and forth under his nose, and his table manners are little short of shocking.”

Although Hitler forswore meat and drank herbal tea in preference to coffee, the report said that he ate “prodigious amounts of cake”, which contributed to his “digestive disorder”.

The officer also gave an insight into Hitler's private life, saying that the dictator told companions that he had never married because he could not allow care for a family to interfere with his duty to the German nation. He had female companions, including “a Miss Braun”, but it was generally believed that the relationships were platonic. The officer also dismissed as “rumours” speculation that Hitler had homosexual tendencies.

He told how Hitler threw “carpet-biting” tantrums. A major on night duty who failed to pass on a message confirming that the retreat from El Alamein had begun felt the full force of his wrath.

“When Hitler heard about this he threw one of his typical fits and greeted the major with the words, `If you say a word in your defence, I'll have you shot'. Then he raved on and finally demoted the major to private.

Hitler also had a profound belief in divine providence and his own destiny, encouraged when an assassin's bomb left him uninjured. The officer left Wolf's Lair convinced that the Führer was a madman.

Terry Charman, a senior historian at the Imperial War Museum, said: “It is a surprise to hear of Hitler drinking beer as it is generally believed he had given up alcohol in 1931. The description of the tantrum is typical.”

The auction will be on on March 5 and the papers are expected to fetch up to £1,000.

from Nature, 2005-Apr-7 (V434N7034), p.681:

Uncomfortable truths

A thorough investigation of German scientists' actions under the Nazi regime reveals a more complex and ambiguous story than that implanted in the public mind at the end of the Second World War.

The inhumanity of some of the research carried out in Germany during the Third Reich is well known, and universally abhorred. The work of Josef Mengele, the young doctor who conducted deadly genetics experiments on inmates of Auschwitz, is perhaps the most notorious example of these appalling crimes.

For decades after the Second World War, the prevailing view of how scientists interacted with the Nazi regime was fixated on such cases of dramatic criminality. According to this view, science during the Nazi era was contaminated by a few, very rotten apples. This version of history also held that these rotten apples were engaged in `pseudoscience' — low-quality research whose results were meaningless; that the Nazis held `real' science in low esteem, so that the main body of scientists simply trod water for the duration; and that most of those who did work to further the aims of the regime did so under duress.

This conventional wisdom was broadly framed at the Nuremberg trials, which condemned the heinous crimes of high-ranking Nazis, but did not enquire into the behaviour of less notorious individuals, including rank-and-file scientists.

This account suited both the winners and losers of the war. By eliminating the worst offenders, justice was seen to be done. Experienced scientists and research managers were left alone to rebuild the science infrastructure of the destroyed country. The victorious Allies needed what was then West Germany to function as a strong but peaceful country, as a bastion against the communist threat to the East. And science was an integral part of that.

Second take

More recently, science historians have begun to question the rotten-apple/pseudoscience view, in parallel with a broader historical reassessment of this calamitous period in German history. The ambiguity and complexity of individual behaviour and motivation during the war have been reflected not just in academia, but also in plays such as Copenhagen, and a flurry of films including Taking Sides, Sophie Scholl and Downfall (Der Untergang).

Germany's main scientific institutions have been moved to reassess their own twentieth-century histories. For example, the university grant-giving agency, the DFG, has investigated its funding of research that supported Nazi policies. But it is the Max Planck Society (MPS), which administers 80 research institutes in Germany, that has taken the lead in exposing its own past to unflinching scrutiny.

In 1999, Hubert Markl, then MPS president, launched a six-year, €4-million (US$5-million) programme, conducted by independent science historians, to systematically analyse the role of the society — then known as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society — and its scientists in supporting the Nazi regime's policies. The programme ended last month, and the results of its many projects confirm the superficiality of the accepted view.

The MPS has found that a large part of the most criminal research conducted was not `pseudoscience' — in fact, it followed conventional scientific methods and was at the cutting edge of research at the time. It has also demonstrated that the Nazis held basic research in high esteem, increasing funding for it during the war years without requiring scientists to join the Nazi Party. And it found that, far from being subjected to force, many scientists voluntarily oriented their work to fit the regime's policies — as a way of getting money and of exploiting the new resources that Nazi policies made available through, for example, the invasion of other countries. Most researchers, it turns out, seem to have regarded the regime not as a threat, but as an opportunity for their research ambitions.

Lessons for the future

It has taken more than 50 years for such a serious, dispassionate reanalysis to become possible,at least in Germany — for both psychological and practical reasons. First, a generation of academics is retiring, and their successors need a clear path, unburdened by the legacy of the Third Reich and the pressures to rebuild Germany after the war. Second, important Russian archives became available to Western historians only after the end of the cold war.

The programme's final conference, held last month in Berlin, made clear the productivity of the endeavour. A thick dossier of publications is also freely available on the website of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, which hosted the independent group in Berlin (www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/KWG/engl.htm). The dossier portrays individuals who clearly overstepped the ethical line, such as plant geneticist Hans Stubbe, who collaborated with the SS to get hold of valuable Russian plant collections after the invasion of Russia.

It reveals even more about a large ethical grey area. Researchers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Metal Research in Stuttgart,for example, voluntarily came up with many projects to improve the performance of existing weapons.And it bears out accusations made against Adolf Butenandt, the Nobel-prizewinning biochemist who was president of the MPS during 1960-72 (see Nature 393, 109-111; 1998). It seems that Butenandt must have known that Auschwitz blood samples were being handled at his Institute for Biochemistry in Berlin.

The exercise has also brought historians to the point where they can formulate new questions, moving on from the identification and condemnation of individuals to the more general issue of how the scientific community interacted with the regime, to better understand the history of that time and to learn from it.

In the 1930s and early 1940s, it seemed to those living under fascist flags that fascism was immortal. Until 1942, few Germans — or Italians, for that matter — imagined that the ruling regimes would be overthrown, or be replaced by a democratic system that would judge many of the actions they considered loyal, patriotic, or simply getting on with their job, as unacceptable support for a criminal regime.

The MPS is to be praised for its courage in opening itself up so completely to scrutiny, and for funding the investigation at a time when its own finances are being severely curtailed. The work has shed light on the behaviour of scientists as individuals and as groups. And it serves as a timely reminder of the need for strict ethical limits to be defined, and adhered to.

The action has been positive, and in its grim way liberating, for German scientists. “Those who are fixated only on the past will move blindly into the future,” Markl told the programme's final conference, “as will those who are concerned only with the present.”

from rightwingnews.com, 2002-Dec-30, by William Grim:

The Eternal Nazi: Watching Roman Polanski's The Pianist in Germany

There's an old joke that says inside every German there's a Nazi yearning to get out. While a gross overstatement, there is, I'm unhappy to report, more than a little truth to that old chestnut. But more about that later.

Last week, I had the opportunity in Munich to attend a screening of Roman Polanski's new film The Pianist, a film that will not premiere in the United States for another month. This film is based on the true story of the Polish Jewish piano virtuoso Wladyslaw Szpilman, who survived the entire Nazi occupation of Warsaw hiding in the Ghetto and at times being hidden right under the noses of the Nazis in safe houses maintained by the Polish Resistance. Simply put, Polanski's film is a masterpiece. It is considerably better than Schindler's List and is undoubtedly the greatest Holocaust movie of all time. The Pianist has already won the Palm d'Or at Cannes. It deserves to win the Oscar.

What is remarkable about the film is its brutal and unflinching honesty. It avoids the cheap sentimentality that marred the otherwise exemplary Schindler's List. The film also avoids stereotypes as much as possible. Not all of the Jews behave nobly, and one Nazi officer at the end of the film is shown to have at least one spark of humanity left in his otherwise accursed soul. Adrien Brody delivers a stunning performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman, an incredibly demanding role as he is in virtually every scene. The cinematography is brilliant, and even when we are not seeing the title character in action, the events occurring on film are from the point of view of the protagonist, as though we are watching along with him as he peeks out of his hiding places to see Germans murdering Jews just for the sheer sport of it, and later on, Germans getting a taste of their own medicine when the Warsaw Uprising begins.

In addition to exposing the full range of Germanic horrors that made up the Holocaust-I don't want to give too much of the movie away, but there is one scene in which the Germans summarily execute an entire family of Jews that is so shocking in its brutality that you'll want go home and break every piece of Dresden china in the cupboard and take a sledgehammer to every yuppie scum's Beamer in the parking lot. The Pianist is a testament to the indefatigable spirit of life that refuses "to go gentle into the night." In particular, the humanizing influence of art, of the will to create, is expertly juxtaposed by Polanski to the German will to destroy, indeed, to the Germanic tendency to embrace all of the negative energy of the universe. In the battle between artistic matter and Germanic anti-matter, it is art that ultimately triumphs.

The execrable German Marxist philosopher Theodor W. Adorno (who is best known today as the model for the character Wendall Kretzschmar, one of the manifestations of the Devil in Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus), once famously remarked that "after Auschwitz there can be no art." Although Adorno was no Nazi (indeed, he spent World War II in exile in Hollywood where he devoted his time to denouncing America and ridiculing American culture, especially "Negro jazz"), his willingness to deny art to those who had been brutalized by his fellow countrymen reveals an arrogance so profound that it is simply beyond the capacity to analyze. It also is a clear demonstration of how easily all Germans (whether of the left or the right) fall into the risible delusion that they somehow constitute a "master race." For what Adorno is really saying is that since German culture has been found wanting no one else may be permitted to seek meaning and solace from art.

There can be only one response to Adorno, and it is found in the final scene of The Pianist. The War is over and life has returned to Warsaw. Wladyslaw Szpilman is performing a concerto accompanied by a full orchestra. No words are spoken, and the scene continues as the credits are rolling. But the message is clear. It is the raised middle finger, proudly held aloft, and it points towards Germany, the remnants of the Nazi Party and Theodor W. Adorno.

Now, back to the Germans yearning to rediscover their inner Nazis. I have to admit that it is a strange experience to watch a Holocaust film in Germany. It's even stranger when you're the only American in the midst of about 200 Germans. But perhaps the strangest thing of all is to watch the reactions of the Germans as the events of the movie unfold. You hear a lot about how Germans are so ashamed today of the behavior of their countrymen during the Nazi period and about how much they've done to atone for their past sins. Don't buy that bill of goods. If the audience of the screening I attended is any indication of German attitudes in general, it doesn't augur well for the future. Remember, this wasn't an audience composed of skinheads from the neo-Nazi enclaves in Karlsruhe and the former DDR. This was a group of Germany's best and brightest: educated, middle class, sophisticated denizens of a major cosmopolitan city.

One scene in particular is seared into my consciousness. It happens about halfway into the film. The Jews of Warsaw have been herded into the Ghetto. A street used by the Germans bisects the Ghetto. While a group of Jews is waiting to cross to the other side of the street, several Nazi thugs force some elderly Jews to dance at an increasingly faster tempo. Weakened by malnutrition, hobbling on crutches, riddled with heart and lung infirmities, many of the Jews fall to the ground in sheer agony. It's a sickening scene. It's the kind of scene that makes you ashamed that your last name is Grim. Hell, it's the kind of scene that makes you ashamed that you listen to Beethoven. If an American soldier had done the same to a German or Jap POW he would have been thrown into the brig for life or cashiered out of the service on a Section 8. But there they were, today's educated, freedom-loving, let's-all-hold-hands-and-love-one-another Germans, laughing at torture.

If there is a more sickening spectacle than Germans finding humor in what their fathers and grandfathers did to the Jews, if there is a more perfect example of the utter lack if humanity at the core of the German nation, I am unaware of it. There is something terribly wrong with Germany and the German Volk. The German soul is a deep abyss, a fetid, stinking morass that befouls the community of nations. But wait, there's more.

Another scene from the movie that stands out is when an SS guard announces to a half-starving Jewish work detail that they will be receiving an additional portion of bread with their rations, one that they can sell to other Jews, because "everybody knows how clever the Jews are at selling things." This time the audience fairly rolled with laughter.

I was tempted to call in an airstrike on the theater, or at the very least to bitch slap a couple of hundred Germans, but I managed to hold my fire knowing that ultimately any World War II movie ends badly for the Germans. Normally I don't talk back to the screen at the movies, but I do have to admit that I did yell out "U S A" and pumped my fist in the air when the Szpilman family listened to the announcement on the radio that the United States had declared war on Germany. And I also do have to admit that it felt mighty fine to yell out "shoot those damn Nazis" when the film showed the Jews starting to fight back during the Warsaw Uprising.

It's funny how quiet the theater became when near the film's end a group of SS goons were shown in a holding camp awaiting transportation to a deserved harsh fate in the Russian gulag. And then it became clear as a bell. German shame for World War II does not result from a moral awareness of the innumerable crimes and atrocities committed by the Germans. No, the Germans are ashamed because they got their rear ends handed back to them by a bunch of Yanks, Russkies and Brits who they considered-and still consider-to be members of inferior races.

After the movie was over I strolled along Schellingstrasse in the Schwabing district of Munich. By chance I happened to pass the site of the original headquarters of the Nazi Party. It's an interior decorating company now. How appropriate. On the surface Germany may be a changed nation, far removed from the heyday of its Nazi period. But it's all a façla;ade. The wallpaper and carpeting may be new, the portraits of Hitler may have been replaced by African objets d'art, but the foundation of the structure is Nazi through and through.

And as the German economy plunges further into a recession that is largely of its own making, as even German economists begin to notice the disturbing parallels between the economies of 2002 and 1932, the question remains as to how long it will be before the Germans let their inner Nazis manifest themselves in public. The Eternal Nazi, I'm afraid, will be with us as long as there is a German nation. The Pianist is a great film and an even greater cautionary tale, because history has an unfortunate way of repeating itself.

If you liked this article by William Grim, you can see more of his work at ZCPortal.

from United Press International, 2004-Jul-20, by Thom J. Rose:

60 years on, Germany embraces resistance

Berlin, Germany -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder laid another wreath Tuesday, and made another bid for Germany's admission to the informal international federation of normal nations.

Standing before the stone wall against which several of the most prominent members of the anti-Nazi resistance movement were shot 60 years earlier, Schroeder expressed unreserved praise for the conspirators who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler and said their legacy lays the foundation for the modern German state.

"On the 20th of July, 1944, these men gave witness to another Germany," Schroeder said. The best representatives of the German resistance "acted in a tradition that was Christian and humanistic, marked by the spirit of the enlightenment and also Prussian," he added.

A massive, applauding crowd hinted at the deepening German consensus behind the chancellor's words. Indeed, a recent poll by German newsmagazine Der Spiegel indicated that 73 percent of Germans regard the July 20 plot to kill Hitler with respect and admiration.

The conspirators have not always been greeted with such admiration. More than half of the German respondents to a 1956 poll said German schools should not be named after the conspirators, who were long considered traitorous.

Later, East Germans were taught to view the 20th of July plotters as a rare strain of reactionary capitalism.

The West German student movement of 1968 focused on the resistors' faults -- few were democrats, and some were anti-Semites or war criminals. The student revolutionaries and many of their contemporaries largely ignored the magnitude of the risks German resistors took to oppose an unjust regime.

With time, however, the plotters of the 20th July have won wide acceptance within Germany.

The plot itself was technically a failure. Timing kept Count Claus von Stauffenberg from packing his full explosive charge into his satchel, and a heavy table saved Hitler from serious injury. The plotters, who were easily identified thanks to their detailed plans for replacing German leadership, were executed quickly or subjected to brief show trials before being sent to their deaths.

At the same time, the simple existence of an attempt to topple Nazism from within has since provided moral bedrock upon which Germany's postwar culture has built. If Nietzsche and Wagner are sometimes said to have led to the ravages of German genocide and aggressive war, the German people can also lay claim to a resistance against incomparable odds. The few Germans -- and Schroeder noted that is was only a very few -- who staked their lives to oppose Hitler can be held up as examples to prove Germany was and is more than a nation of willing executioners.

Schroeder's presence at the Normandy commemoration of the 60th anniversary of D-Day, where he also laid a wreath earlier this year, is one sign that other nations have become more willing to accept the interpretation that ordinary Germans were victims of Nazism as well as collaborators.

Schroeder stressed the international importance of the 20th of July assassination attempt in his Monday address, connecting the movement to the Warsaw uprising of Aug. 1, 1944.

"Today Europe has good reason to honor these two dates -- the 20th of July and the 1st of August 1944 -- and consider them bright signs on the way to a true European community of common values," Schroeder said.

Of course the degree to which ordinary Germans embraced the Nazis is in many senses more remarkable than the few who eventually came to resist them. Within the tiny resistance, furthermore, the number of resisters who opposed Hitler on account of the Holocaust is similarly small.

At the same time, a glance at the current German constitution or a day spent among the country's perpetually protesting populace reveals that the time of unblinking German obedience is long past. To many Germans, the transition from fascism to social democracy reinforces the importance of the 20th of July and other resistance efforts.

"The resistance built the bridge over which the Germans could finally come after the end of the war," Freya von Moltke, wife of the murdered resistance fighter Helmut James von Moltke, told a Monday gathering of resistance family members.

Moltke, who was also active in the resistance herself in the then-German-and-now-Polish city of Kreisau, added that many resistors against Poland's Communist government followed the example of German resistance fighters, many of whom are well known in Poland.

Von Moltke's speech, like Schroeder's, was delivered to a full house and met with sustained applause.

Around Germany, coverage of the 20th of July plot's 60th anniversary has received a similar response. German television has been filled with Jo Baier's "Stauffenberg," a reenactment of the plot, and Guido Knopp's three-part documentary on the German resistance -- both of which attracted massive viewership. Der Spiegel ran a picture of Stauffenberg on its cover and dedicated 16 pages to the plot. Interest has soared in tours of the fort where the assassination attempt occurred. The fort expects about 200,000 visitors this year.

Some critics have said the story of the German resistance offers a comfortable exception for Germans faced with the difficult task of comprehending their country's violent history.

Schroeder, however, presented an opposite interpretation, saying knowledge of German resistors' courage shows Germans and others that unjust leadership can be contradicted.

The resistors "showed us that trying to free one's own country -- or humanity in general -- from a barbaric dictatorship has nothing to do with treason," Schroeder said.

from The Telegraph, 2004-Sep-20, by Kate Connolly in Berlin:

Far Right surges as Schröder feels fury of the east

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's ruling Social Democrats were dealt a heavy blow yesterday by voters in two east German states where anger at high unemployment and economic reforms prompted a surge in support for the far Right and post-communists.

Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, television exit polls in the states of Saxony and Brandenburg reflected dissatisfaction at the lack of progress in raising living standards in the east to those of western Germany.

In Brandenburg, a huge state which encircles Berlin, the Social Democrats remained the strongest party but lost seven per cent from the 1999 result. In Saxony, to the south, the party secured a record low of 9.5 per cent, only half a percentage point ahead of the far-Right National Democratic Party (NPD).

Riding on the wave of disgruntlement, the NPD scored its best result in years in Saxony, where it easily cleared the five per cent barrier required to enter the state parliament. The result, a dramatic improvement on the 1.4 per cent it gained in 1999, gives it a seat for the first time in 35 years. In Brandenburg, the far-Right German People's Union received six per cent of the vote.

The former communists, the Democratic Socialists, an anti-establishment grouping that is increasingly seen to represent "misunderstood" east Germans, took 28.5 per cent of the vote in in Brandenburg. The party made slight gains in Saxony, with around 23 per cent.

Last night hundreds of demonstrators protested against the far Right outside the state assembly building in the Saxon city of Dresden.

Jewish groups said they were concerned at the rise in support for the far Right, which the government unsuccessfully tried to ban. Paul Spiegel, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said he was reminded of the period leading up to Hitler's rise to power amid high unemployment and popular discontent. "Memories of the end of the Weimar Republic are awakened," he said.

Local businessmen gave warning that the rise of the Right - in part put down to the low turnout of 59 per cent, not unusual in eastern Germany - was likely to dissuade foreign investors from coming to the region, which is in desperate need of jobs. Unemployment in both states is around 20 per cent - about twice the figure in the west.

The results amounted to yet another trouncing for the Social Democrats following a seemingly endless stream of electoral failures since they were re-elected to government in 2002.

The main focus of voters' wrath has been the economic reforms Mr Schroder has introduced, designed to cut unemployment and breathe new life into a chronically ailing economy. East Germans fear they will be hit hardest by cuts to benefits and increases in means testing.

Tens of thousands have taken to the streets in cities throughout the east in the past two months for so-called Monday Demonstrations to vent their frustration.

The Conservative opposition Christian Democrats failed to gain from the dissatisfaction towards the government, largely because they have supported the reform programme and repeatedly called for it to be made even tougher.

The party kept control of Saxony with around 44 per cent, although it lost its absolute majority. It secured 19.5 per cent in Brandenburg.

The uphill struggle Mr Schroder faces with east Germany was illustrated in a poll published today in Spiegel magazine, in which nearly a third of east Germans said they considered themselves to be underprivileged.

But at the same time frustration in west Germany towards what has been dubbed the "whining east" is growing, thanks to the huge amount of money that has been pumped into the region since 1990.

Yesterday the government disclosed it was higher than previously thought, at more than £1,000 billion.

Mr Schroder has stood fast in the face of protests, insisting that he will not be turned from his path of reform. On Friday, he called for Germans to stop expecting so much from the state, accusing many of milking it for support which they did not need.

from TPDL 2003-Sep-5, from the Washington Times, by Jonah Goldberg:

'Bush equals Hitler' adds up to holocaust denial

We may be living in the worst period of Holocaust denial since the Nuremberg trials. I'm not referring to the twisted morons who insist that the Holocaust never happened the way the Monty Python guys insisted the parrot wasn't dead. I'm referring to the legions of Holocaust deniers in the Democratic Party, on the Web, on college campuses, in the mainstream press and, most acutely, in my e-mail box every morning, who reduce to the Holocaust to a triviality.

In America today - never mind Europe and the Middle East - ostensibly sophisticated and enlightened people see nothing particularly controversial about comparing George Bush to Adolph Hitler and the United States of America to Nazi Germany.

The examples are everywhere. Vanity Fair magazine asks if Richard Perle and Joseph Goebbels were "separated at birth." Whole Web sites are dedicated to the most astoundingly stupid and superficial comparisons between George Bush and Hitler (they both liked dogs, for example).

At every event protesting war, Bush, America, this, that and the other thing, one can find pictures of various administration officials in SS garb or bearing Hitler mustaches. On the Web, leftwing forums like Democraticunderground.com overflow with insubstantial people bolstering their self-esteem by pretending to "speak truth to power" to the unfolding Nazification of America.

Putatively intellectual magazines, like the leftwing Nation and the New York Review of Books, feature articles that are more measured in tone and more nuanced in style than the hysteria one hears from C-Span callers or rabble-rousers at Howard Dean events, but the upshot is still the same.

James Traub, writing in The New York Times last June, detailed the trendiness of the Bush-Hitler comparison: "That's grotesque; and the fact that is has achieved such currency among what the French call the bien pensant is vivid proof that in much of the left, 9/11 and its aftermath have increased the visceral loathing not of terrorism or of Islamist fundamentalism but of President George Bush."

But no one seems willing to name this grotesquery plainly. It is, simply, Holocaust denial (not to mention slander against Bush and America).

If your son is murdered and I claim that it never happened, I am denying the existence of a crime. But if your son is murdered and I compare that tragedy to losing your car keys, that is a form of denial, too. And this is precisely what the "Bush equals Hitler" crowd is doing.

The Nazis murdered millions of men, women and children. Their victims weren't "collateral damage" in a war, and they were not executed after a long and fair trial. The Nazis sent their victims to gas chambers and ovens in boxcars. Nazi scientists injected dyes into the living eyes of small children to see if they could be made "Aryan." They made soap out of people.

What on earth has George Bush done that deserves such comparisons? What could he possibly do?

If you're going to call the man a Nazi, show me the children with tattoos on their arms. Show me the stockpiles of emaciated corpses. Show me files cabinets full of memos detailing how Bush and Cheney plan on disposing of millions of dead American citizens killed with poisonous gas.

If you can't show me any of these things - and you can't - then stop calling the man a Nazi. Because when you say he's no different from Hitler, you are also saying that Hitler is no different from George Bush. And that means that Hitler's crimes were no worse than George Bush's "crimes." And whatever you think of what George Bush has done or might do, if you think any of it is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, you are in effect saying the Holocaust really wasn't that bad.

This isn't a partisan point. I would make the same argument if Al Gore were president. I loathed Bill Clinton as president, but I always took pains to chastise conservatives who compared him to Stalin or Hitler. As bad as Clinton's behavior was, only a man in leave of his senses would compare it to the systematized and bureaucratized mass-murder of millions of people. The same goes for Bush.

To what should be their enduring shame, leftists have a particular problem understanding this point. In their do-gooder arrogance, many on the left assume that anyone who stands in their way must not be merely wrong on the facts, but evil in their hearts. And, worse, they have a very difficult time differentiating between evils.

My favorite example of this moral myopia comes from a few years ago. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said of the Contract With America: "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things." And his colleague, Rep. Major Owens declared of the new Republican leadership in the House, "These are people who are practicing genocide with a smile; they're worse than Hitler."

If you believe such nonsense, just get it over with and say the Holocaust never happened at all. Because at least that form of Holocaust denial admits that if it "had happened," it would have been a really bad thing. Saying the Holocaust is no worse than tax cuts or some such doesn't even give the victims of Nazism that dignity.

from FrontPageMagazine.com, 2001-Dec-20, by J.P. Zmirak:

Tolkien, Hitler, and Nordic Heroism

A SHADOWY, evil overlord hides himself amid an unmapped mountain range. There he wields absolute power over fanatics and slaves, scheming for domination over the free peoples of the world. He sends forth assassins into peaceful lands and cities, spreading terror among civilians.

A capsule history of the past six months? No, that's the plot of the movie I'm going to see tonight--The Lord of the Rings. Director Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures, 1994) could not have known how timely its release would prove--coming as it does as America hunts down a terror network built on a theology of evil, a perversion of Islam which promises eternal sensual reward for the reckless slaughter of civilians. The Lord of the Rings speaks to current events. It also touches on the most important themes of Western civilization--freedom, faith, and what it means to be a hero.

The Birth of Middle Earth

As a teenager, J.R.R. Tolkien neglected his Latin and Greek to study Norse. And Finnish. And Anglo-Saxon. Tolkien thrilled at studying medieval eddas and sagas, and mastering dusty grammars to decode half-forgotten tales. At Oxford, he made himself the university's expert in Nordic literature, and won a prestigious chair which he'd hold for the next four decades.

What attracted Tolkien to these tales was their unique, heroic ethos. Written down by recently Christianized barbarians, stories such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight intertwined the old, pagan values of individualism, courage and promise-keeping with Biblical themes of self-sacrifice, defense of the helpless, and piety towards the One God. Thus were the warriors of the North civilized, and urged to restrain their swords by the codes of Hebrew prophets and Christian theologians. The grandsons of the Viking raiders began to bind themselves to the Ten Commandments and Augustine's "just war" theory.

Tolkien saw in this literature a great, unsung moment in the birth of the West. Like the Baron de Montesquieu, Tolkien saw as specifically "Nordic" the individualism and hatred for tyranny that pervades these sagas, which set medieval and modern man apart from the obedient subjects of Rome and Byzantium. (See David Gress' From Plato to NATO for more on this fascinating connection.)

This freeman's spirit survived for centuries in the stubborn cantons of Switzerland, the "free cities" of the Holy Roman Empire, and the gentry of England; the privileges won by Anglo-Saxons from their kings formed the basis of English Common Law, and its great modern descendant--the U.S. Bill of Rights. (See Wilhelm Röpke's The Social Crisis of Our Time and Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order for documentation and analysis.)

The work of Tolkien's close friend C.S. Lewis also refers to "the North" as the source of individualism and resistance to unjust authority; in The Chronicles of Narnia, his heroes' battle cry is "for Narnia and the North." In Narnia, as in The Lord of the Rings, the heroes were based on medieval, Northern European knights, who fought for free societies based on tradition, custom, and courage--against slave armies recruited from southern climes, who carried scimitars, lived in the desert, and cringed before Oriental despots. (Of course, that brings us back to current events...)

The Modern Barbarians

It is ironic that even as Tolkien wrote to immortalize the great synthesis of Northern heroism with Biblical morality, modern barbarians labored to reverse it. The proto-Nazi "Völkisch" movement, born in the blood and humiliation of Napoleon's conquest of Germany, had for a century agitated against Judaeo-Christian "softness," in favor of pagan ruthlessness. (Peter Viereck's Metapolitics [Capricorn, 1961] traces this re-barbarization of German thought in the 19^th century.) Völkisch boosters of Nordic literature ignored its heroic individualism in favor of its residues of pagan tribalism, "deconstructing" the Judaeo-Christian elements as "inauthentic" overlays on the "pure" originals. The artistic pinnacle of this project appeared in Wagner's grand operas, based on "pure" pagan sources. Its political apogee came with the victory of a Völkish-socialist demagogue in Germany.

While Adolf Hitler was careful at first to conceal his neo-pagan agenda, his followers were not: Heinrich Himmler created the SS explicitly as a pagan parody of the Society of Jesus, conducted extensive research attempting to rehabilitate medieval witchcraft, and held torchlit liturgies to Odin and other Norse gods. Hitler's ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg, issued tracts denouncing the Gospels. Josef Goebbels aspired to wipe out "after the last Jew, the last priest." Hitler's ally, General Erich Ludendorff, called for the abolition of Christianity in Germany. By 1936, Hitler was suppressing Catholic trade unions, movements and schools, and forming amongst Protestants a militaristic "German Christian" church that would sanction the regime's savage anti-Semitism. Hitler opined to Albert Speer that he wished Germany had been converted to Islam instead of Christianity, the better to suit it to ruthless warfare.

Fighting for the True North

As a fervent Catholic, a veteran of the Somme, and a genuine scholar of Nordic cultures, Tolkien was not blind to these events. In 1938, Tolkien denounced the Nazis' "wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine." When German publishers Rütten and Loening wished to translate The Hobbit from English, they wrote him, inquiring whether his name was of "Aryan" origin. Tolkien's reply dripped scorn:

I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is, Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.

As he would write his son, Michael, in 1941 (then a cadet training for the British army):

...I have in this War a burning private grudge--which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler... Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble, northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor ever more early sanctified and Christianized.

We see in Tolkien's life, opinions, and work an enduring rebuff to the totalitarian evils of his century. The moral key to The Lord of the Rings is the refusal of ruthlessness and the immutability of the moral law. The Ring is a mighty weapon of war--but profoundly tinged with evil. The Ring may not be used, even against the Dark Lord himself, lest its user be corrupted and become what he hates. Some means are so evil that no end can justify them. Some laws are so sacred that we must willingly die rather than violate them. We may never target the innocent in order to weaken the guilty. These lessons, which Tolkien drew from the Christian, heroic sagas of the North, should linger in our minds and restrain our passions--especially in time of war.

---

Dr. Zmirak is author of Wilhelm Röpke: Swiss Localist, Global Economist. He writes frequently on economics, politics, popular culture and theology.

from the Jerusalem Post, 2005-Feb-6, by Hilary Leila Krieger:

CIA employed Eichmann's men

At least five Nazi associates of Adolf Eichmann worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency following World War II, according to CIA documents posted Friday by The National Security Archive.

The Web site postings detail the US government's relationship with Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, the German Army's intelligence chief for the eastern front during the war, who later developed a close relationship with America. He was able to maintain his intelligence network despite employing known war criminals, with at least 100 former SD or Gestapo officers within his organization, according to the records.

The archive is a non-profit group that seeks to bring government documents to light under the Freedom of Information Act. It has been pressuring the CIA to release further information relating to its contacts with Nazis under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, despite the embarrassing nature of that information.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who heads the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, welcomed the revelations, though he noted that the CIA's relationship with former Nazis has long been known.

"It's definitely high time that documents concerning this practice be revealed and researchers be granted access to them," Zuroff said, adding that this recent disclosure likely comes too late to bring any individuals to justice, since most of them have already died. "It's a shame these documents weren't released earlier."

He added, "It's a tragedy the US chose to use some of the worst of Hitler's henchmen in the aftermath of the war."

from BBC News, 2001-Apr-28:

CIA admits employing Nazis

Files released by the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States have confirmed that World War II Nazi war criminals were employed by Western intelligence agencies.

However, the files dispel the widespread view that one of Hitler's closest allies, Gestapo chief Henrich Muller, survived World War II and went on to work for the CIA.

``As a body, the real winners of the Cold War were Nazi criminals, many of whom were able to escape justice'' Eli Rosenbaum, Justice Department

They show that Muller died in 1945, but that other former Nazi officers were employed by the CIA, in particular for their knowledge of the Soviet Union.

A US Justice Department spokesman, Eli Rosenbaum, said the files demonstrated that the real winners of the Cold War were Nazi war criminals.

Other declassified documents give more background information on key Nazi figures, and a report which suggests that Adolf Hitler's own doctor thought the Fuhrer was insane.

Mr Rosenbaum said many Nazi war criminals "were able to escape justice because East and West became so rapidly focused after the war on challenging each other that they lost their will to pursue Nazi persecutors".

He deplored the CIA's use as intelligence sources of war criminals such as Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon".

Barbie was eventually convicted of crimes against humanity by a French court.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, a Jewish human rights organisation, said the publication of the CIA material was "long overdue".

One CIA document says that in 1937, Hitler's doctor thought he noticed growing signs of insanity in the Nazi leader before the start of World War II, and predicted he could become "the craziest criminal the world ever saw".

Later that year, the doctor said "the swing towards insanity" seemed to have taken place.

Waldheim 'not a CIA source'

The files also shed light on former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, finding that he was not among CIA sources, as had been suspected by some historians.

Mr Waldheim, a former president of Austria, was barred from entering the US in 1987 after an investigation of his wartime activities as a German army lieutenant in the Balkans.

The file on Mr Waldheim suggests that the CIA knew little about him and that neither the US State Department nor other government agencies that had an interest in his appointment to the UN asked for a background check on him when he was a candidate for the job.

from WorldNetDaily, by Gary Clark, from his letter to the editor:

A nation of good, little Nazis?

In the article, "Redefining the Political Spectrum," Joseph Farah has hit the nail on the head. Fascism and a Nazi-like mindset are sweeping over America.

Consider just one example of Nazism, the Nazi economic system. How many Americans do you know today who don't support most, if not all, of the following eight planks of the Nationalist (later National Socialist, or Nazi) Party of Germany, adopted in Munich on Feb. 24, 1920?

1. "We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living."
   
   
2. "The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power of the financial interests."
   
   
3. "We demand profit sharing in big business."
   
   
4. "We demand a broad extension of care for the aged."
   
   
5. "We demand ... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments."
   
   
6. "In order to make possible every capable and industrious (citizen) the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education. ... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents. ..."
   
   
7. "The government must undertake the improvement of public health -- by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor ... by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth."
   
   
8. "(We) combat the ... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before The Individual Good."

If you doubt whether the Nazi economic philosophy has been accepted by the American people, consider the following description of the Nazi economic system by Leonard Peikoff in his book, "The Ominous Parallels:"

Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary: what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property -- so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property.

What American objects to these principles of the Nazi economic system? Don't most Americans favor the planned economy, the regulated economy, the controlled economy? Don't most Americans favor the type of economic controls, and the right of government to institute such controls, that characterized the Nazi society: wage and price controls, high taxes, government-business partnerships, licensing, permits, and a myriad other economic regulations?

Why? Part of the answer lies in another feature that was central to the Nazi way of life: public schooling. As Sheldon Richman documents so well in his book, "Separating School and State," 20th-century Americans adopted the idea of a state schooling system in the latter part of the 19th century from none other than Prussia! And as Mr. Richman points out, public schooling has proven as successful in the United States as it did in Germany. Why? Because it has succeeded in its goal of producing a nation of "good little citizens" -- people who pay their taxes on time, follow the rules, obey orders, condemn and turn in the rule-breakers, and see themselves as essential cogs in the national wheel.

What a pity!

from the Washington Times, 1995-Jun-7, letter to the editor by Thomas Colton Ruthford of Arlington, VA, from http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7500/4threich.html:

During the past several months in the American press, the Democrats have frequently denounced the Republicans as Nazis due to their attempts to control runaway federal spending. How very ironic. I remember the Nazis. Let me share a little about them and recall some of their exploits.

First of all, "Nazi" was gutter slang for the verb "to nationalize". The Bider-Meinhoff gang gave themselves this moniker during their early struggles. The official title of the Nazi Party was "The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany". Hitler and the Brownshirts advocated the nationalization of education, health care, transportation, national resources, manufacturing, distribution and law enforcement.

Hitler came to power by turning the working class, unemployed, and academic elite against the conservative republic. After Der Fuhrer's election ceased being a political conspiracy and was transformed into a fashionable social phenomenon, party membership was especially popular with educators, bureaucrats, and the press. Being a Nazi was politically correct. They called themselves "The Children of the New Age of World Order" and looked down their noses at everyone else. As Hitler accrued more power, he referred to his critics as "The Dark Forces of Anarchy and Hatred". Anyone who questioned Nazi high-handedness in the German press was branded a "Conservative Reactionary". Joseph Goebbels, minister of communications, proclaimed a "New World Order".

The Nazi reign of terror began with false news reports on the Jews, Bohemians and Gypsies who were said to be arming themselves to overthrow the "New World Order" and Hitler demanded that all good people register their guns so that they wouldn't fall into the hands of "terrorists and madmen". Right wing fanatics of the "Old Order" who protested firearms registration were arrested by the S.S. and put in jail for "fomenting hatred against the Government of the German people".

Then the Reichstag (government building) was blown up and Hitler ram-rodded an "Emergency Anti-Terrorist Act" through Parliament that gave the Gestapo extraordinary powers. The leader then declared that for the well-being of the German people, all private firearms were to be confiscated by the Gestapo and the Wermotten (federal law enforcement and military). German citizens who refused to surrender their guns when the "jack-boots" (Gestapo) came calling, were murdered in their homes. By the way, the Gestapo were the federal marshals' service of the Third Reich. The S.W.A.T. team was invented and perfected by the Gestapo to break into the homes of the enemies of the German people.

When the Policia Bewakken, or local police, refused to take away guns from townsfolk, they themselves were disarmed and dragged out into the street and shot to death by the S.A. and the S.S. Those were Nazi versions of the B.A.T.F. and the F.B.I. When several local ministers spoke out against these atrocities, they were imprisoned and never seen again.

The Gestapo began to confiscate and seize the homes, businesses, bank accounts, and personal belongings of wealthy conservative citizes who had prospered in the old Republic. Pamphleteers who urged revolt against the Nazis were shot on sight by national law enforcement and the military. Gypsies and Jews were detained and sent to labor camps. Mountain roads throughout central Europe were closed to prevent the escape of fugitives into the wilderness, and to prevent the movement and concealment of partisan resistance fighters.

Public schools rewrote history and Hitler youth groups taught the children to report their parents to their teachers for anti-Nazi remarks. Such parents disappeared. Pagan animism became the state religion of the Third Reich and Christians were widely condemned as "right wing fanatics".

Millions of books were burned first and then people. Millions of them burned in huge ovens after they were first gassed to death. Unmarried women were paid large sums of money to have babies out of wedlock and then given medals for it. Evil was declared as being good, and good was condemned as being evil. World Order was coming and the German people were going to be the "peacekeepers".

Yes, indeed, I remember the Nazis and they weren't Republicans, or "right wing", or "patriots" or "militias". They were Socialist monsters.

These documents expose a web of Nazi collaborators:

• Introduction to the book "The Crimes and Punishment of I.G. Farben" - "[...] I.G. found itself in the role of an industrial Faust, unable and unwilling to extricate itself from the compact it had made with Hitler to help prepare the Nazis for war. The depth of the partnership was reached at Auschwitz, [...]"
  
  
• The Elkhorn Manifesto - "[...] A large volume of documentary evidence exists that reveals that many of the richest, most powerful men in the United States, and the giant corporations they controlled, were secretly allied with the Nazis, both before and during World War II, even after war was declared between Germany and America. [...]"
  
  
• Bayer predecessor financed torture in concentration camps - "[...] The 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the Nuremberg Trial on October 27th put the Bayer company in the public spotlight. Bayer played a decisive role in human experiments with deadly outcomes during the Third Reich. [...]" (Bayer was a component of I.G. Farben)
  
  
• an exposé of Zionist elite collaboration with the Nazis - "[...] When the war against Hitler began, almost all the Jewish organizations joined forces with the Allies and some of the most eminent leaders, such as Weizmann, declared themselves on the allied side; but the German Zionist group, though it was a small minority at the time, took the opposite side : from 1933 to 1941, it was committed to a policy of compromise and even of collaboration with Hitler. [...]"
  
  
• George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - "[...] President Bush's family had already played a central role in financing and arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of Germany; in financing and managing the buildup of Nazi war industries for the conquest of Europe and war against the U.S.A.; and in the development of Nazi genocide theories and racial propaganda, with their well-known results. [...]"

from TPDL 2001-Apr-12, from the New York Post, by Sidney Zion:

FDR'S Holocaust of Inaction

April 12, 2001 -- FDR died on April 12, 1945, 56 years ago today. I was 11 years old and heard the news on the radio in the bird store, where I was buying seed for my little canary.

I ran home to tell Grandma. She broke into tears. "What will happen to the Jews?" she said.

They were dead, the Six Million, but the war in Europe wasn't over and we didn't know. When the truth came out a few months later, the story was that "nobody knew."

It took about 20 years before we began to know that Roosevelt knew everything from Day One about Hitler's extermination of the Jews of Europe - and did nothing to stop it.

Now the documentation is at hand - not only did FDR know, he was a co-conspirator in the murder of the Jews. I believe it's the duty of both Jews and gentiles to bring Roosevelt's role in the Holocaust to the fore, to the knowledge of the world.

This is particularly necessary for Jews on Passover, when the story of Exodus must be repeated to our children. Because the Jews of America, during those horrific years of the extermination, turned their faces away from truth and delivered their votes and their love to FDR.

The Jewish establishment, led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, were in thrall to Roosevelt, who continually warned them that if they made a fuss over the murders of their people they would encourage anti-Semitism in America.

They thus picked up FDR's mantra - the only way to save the Jews was to win the war.

We won the war, and the Jews were dead. But this lie remains the line of the Roosevelt apologists, led by Arthur Schlesinger, the chief historian of FDR. Schlesinger and his acolytes dismiss the idea that Roosevelt could have saved Jews, they say that nothing could have been done.

The first answer is this: If you never tried, how do you know? Of course, it's worse than that. Not only did FDR refuse to try, he blocked every effort to rescue Europe's Jewry.

Roosevelt, in 1939, turned back the St. Louis from our shores, sending the Jews aboard the ship back to almost certain death in Germany. This cold-blooded rejection, on the eve of World War II, set the pattern for FDR's policy that eventually locked the Six Million into Hitler's ovens.

Once the Germans saw that America didn't give a damn, they understood that the Jews were the world's garbage.

Roosevelt knew in 1941 of the Final Solution. He kept this to himself. When Rabbi Wise was informed by the Jewish underground, Roosevelt told him to keep quiet.

In November 1942, the State Department "unleashed" Wise, allowed him to say that 2 million Jews had been killed in Europe. This story appeared in a few paragraphs in The New York Times on Page 10. Surrounded by ads for Thanksgiving turkeys.

Imagine if FDR had delivered this news in a press conference, or in one of his famous fireside chats? The world press would have made it Page One. Hitler would have known we were serious.

But the message then - and throughout the war - was that the Jews of Europe were expendable. Save them and where will they go? Better to let them die than let them come to America or, God forbid, Palestine. Where Arab oil meant more than those unwanted Jews.

Ben Hecht, the great Hollywood screenwriter, refused to buy this decision. He led a group called the Emergency Committee to Save the Jews of Europe. He ran ads in the newspapers, he called Roosevelt "the humanitarian who snubbed a massacre."

In 1944, Hecht and his committee got FDR to create the War Refugee Board. It saved 250,000 Jews. Roosevelt was running for a fourth term then. If he had done this earlier, millions of Jews could have lived.

On the anniversary of FDR's death, I think of those dead Jews and of my bubbe, who cried the day I told her that he was gone.

from the BBC World Service, 1999-Feb-18:

German Bayer company named in Nazi lawsuit

A survivor of the Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War has accused the German pharmaceutical conglomorate, Bayer AG of conspiring with the Nazis to conduct human medical experiments for profit.

The survivor, Eva Mozes Kor, is seeking damages for alleged experiments done on sets of twins supervised by Joseph Mengele at the prison camp at Auschwitz.

She alleged that the experiments were overseen by Mengele and a representative of the Bayer company.

Asked about the charges, the company said it was very surprised.

Bayer is among twelve German corporations which agreed this week to set up a fund to compensate Nazi prison camp victims.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

from the BBC World Service, 1999-Feb-5:

German bank linked to death camp

(Photo caption: "Some 1.5 million people were killed at Auschwitz")

The largest bank in Germany, Deutsche Bank, has admitted that it lent money to firms constructing the Auschwitz death camp during the Second World War.

In light of the revelations, Deutsche has been swift to set up talks with the World Jewish Congress (WJC) aimed at discussing claims against the bank by victims of the Holocaust.

The talks were announced after the release of a report, compiled in 1946 by the US military on Deutsche Bank's activities during the war.

It said that the bank had helped support Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and that many of its subsidiaries knowingly granted loans to the German companies that were using concentration camp victims as slaves.

Fears for merger

News of Deutsche Bank's Auschwitz connections cast a shadow over its $10.1bn plans to merge with the US financial institution Bankers Trust.

Correspondents said the revelation about links to Auschwitz and subsequent compensation claims could delay by a few months the approval of Deutsche Bank's acquisition of Bankers Trust.

The talks, which will take place on Monday, will include representatives of the German government, which is considering an umbrella plan to pay reparations to Holocaust victims on behalf of German industries and businesses, which could face a tide of class action suits filed in the US.

Some 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were killed at Auschwitz during the Second World War.

Loans sanctioned from on high

The head of Deutsche Bank's historical institute, Manfred Pohl, said newly-disclosed documents showed the bank had links with firms that built the camp.

It also had credit links to one company that made incineration units and funded another whose subsidiary made the Zyklon B gas used in the camp.

Asked if it was clear whether Deutsche Bank officials had known that the money was being used to fund the concentration camp, Mr Pohl said bank officials in Katowice had been aware of these facts.

"It is clear that this was known as high up at the main office in Katowice. It is not certain whether it was known in Berlin," Mr Pohl told a news conference, adding that the loan would have had to have approval from Berlin to go ahead.

The WJC's Executive Director, Elan Steinberg, said the group hoped to make enough progress at the meeting so as to be able to give a favourable recommendation to New York City's comptroller, Alan Havesi, on the merger between Deutsche and Bankers Trust.

'Merger should be delayed'

Mr Hevesi kept up pressure on Deutsche Bank, saying that the merger should be delayed until Holocaust claims were settled.

"I continue to believe that federal and state officials should take no action on the proposed merger between Deutsche Bank and Bankers Trust until these issues are fully resolved," he said.

Mr Hevesi himself does not have the power to approve or reject the merger, but he heads a network of state and local officials whose threat last year to boycott Swiss banks helped bring about a $1.25bn settlement with Holocaust victims and their descendants.

from Washington Jewish Week, 2001-Feb-15, by Debra Rubin:

IBM and the Holocaust
New book profiles firm, reexamines role in persecution

When Edwin Black walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993 and came face to face with a Hollerith punch card machine, he knew what his challenge would be.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Black determined to find out what role IBM -- the company that manufactured the machine, a precursor to computers -- and Dehomag, its German subsidiary, had in the systematic effort to annihilate the Jews.

In his new book IBM and the Holocaust, released Monday by Crown Publishers, the Rockville resident traces the machine's use, from the German census in 1933 that was used to determine who the Jews were and where they lived, to keeping the timetable for the trains to the concentration camps, to tracking who was arriving at the camps where and when. Almost every camp had a Hollerith, according to Black.

The book, excerpted on page 27, comes just as a lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., last week, contending that IBM knew its technology would be used to "facilitate persecution and genocide." It seeks restitution based on profits "made through its violations of international law."

Some are questioning the shroud of secrecy that surrounded the book's prepublication, wondering if it speaks to the book's scholarship. About 35 historians and experts on technology and the Holocaust, as well as select reviewers and media outlets, received advance manuscripts, all on condition of nondisclosure prior to this week. Washington Jewish Week was given a manuscript just three days prior to publication.

Black said the book was kept under wraps because he didn't want information about it coming out in fragments. A media blitz greeted its release on Monday.

When he first saw that Hollerith machine at the Holocaust museum, Black, 50, said in an interview, "I could not even begin to comprehend how the world leader in computers was 60 years ago involved somehow in Hitler's genocide."

The Hollerith, according to the author, could operate only with IBM-manufactured paper and cards and be repaired only with IBM-made machines and tools. The company, according to the book, "was the exclusive source for up to 1.5 billion punch cards the Reich required each year to run its machines."

Black has written his book as part history of the Nazis' war against the Jews, part history of a blue chip company that epitomizes American big business, part biography of the man who ran that company with a ruthlessness driven by profit and part lesson on how technology can be put to evil use.

Previous articles and books, such as Father, Son and & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond and Big Blue: IBM's Abuse of Power, had touched upon the connection. Other scholarly works have focused on abuse of technology during the Holocaust; one lengthy piece by Holocaust historians Sybil Milton and David Martin Luebke, "Locating the Victim: An Overview of Census-Taking, Tabulation Technology and Persecution in Nazi Germany," appeared in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing in 1994.

Despite the previous scholarship, Black said his book "connects the dots," delving into longtime president Thomas J. Watson's micromanagement of Dehomag, and his close ties with the Third Reich in the 1930s.

Some 100 researchers worked with the author to scour material at 50 archives in five European countries, Israel and the United States. Black, who prides himself on the book's 1,500 end notes, spent time in four of those countries.

IBM officials, said Black, would not talk to him, although in response to his inquiries sent archives on its German subsidiary to New York University's department of Hebraic and Judaic studies, where he was able to access them.

IBM spokesperson Ed Barbini said company officials spoke to Black "repeatedly," and that company archives from the war years were turned over to NYU and to Hohenheim University in Stuttgart. He said the company's objective "has been to make any of IBM's remaining archives from that time period available to reputable institutions."

As of Monday, IBM officials had not yet seen the book, but, said Barbini, "We recognize it's an important subject and IBM finds the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime abhorrent."

Watson, according to the book, was eager to have his company customize the Hollerith to meet the Third Reich's needs. Black juxtaposes material on Germany's treatment of Jews in the 1930s, as reported at the time, with accounts of Watson's trips to Germany to expand Dehomag.

Watson, writes Black, saw a lucrative future in Nazi Germany, ordering the merger of several small IBM subsidiaries into a company that retained the name Dehomag. At the time, Watson was making his deals, there were calls in America to boycott Germany.

"Nazi Germany," states the book, "offered Watson the opportunity to cater to government control, supervision, surveillance, and regimentation on a plane never before known in human history. The fact that Hitler planned to extend his Reich to other nations only magnified the prospective profits. In business terms, that was account growth. The technology was almost exclusively IBM's to purvey because the firm controlled about 90 percent of the world market in punch cards and sorters."

Black hopes his book will lead IBM to open all its archives.

"But, mainly, I hope the words 'never again' will not just be a slogan for survivors, but a mantra for all businessmen, that their companies cannot be used to persecute individuals," said Black, who has two earlier books to his credit: Format C: and The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine.

The information age, the author said, "was born not in Silicon Valley, but in Berlin."

In the book, Black describes Watson as an authoritarian leader who "demanded absolute loyalty and ceaseless devotion from everyone."

The IBM leader had close ties with the Reich, in 1937 receiving Hitler's Merit Cross of the German Eagle. By then the Nazi oppression of Jews was well known. By June 1940, when the Nazis entered Western Europe and it was becoming clearer that the United States would soon be joining the war, Watson returned the cross, damaging his relationship with the Reich.

Throughout the 1930s and war years, Watson also maintained close ties with the Roosevelt administration, and IBM technology was used both to implement the Social Security Act, and to assist when this country was rounding up Japanese for internment camps.

Once the United States entered the war, Dehomag was in receivership, with Watson no longer in control. But, IBM NY did maintain communication with facilities in other European countries, although the book contends that Watson set them up in such a way as to create the appearance of noncontrol. At war's end, Black writes, IBM reaped the profits of the subsidiaries and regained control of Dehomag, renaming it IBM Germany.

By tying IBM to the Holocaust, Black said he is by no means suggesting that without IBM equipment, the Holocaust would not have taken place.

What he's contending is that the Hollerith and IBM's work in devising punch card systems to meet the needs of the Nazis greatly enhanced Nazi efficiency.

The Luebke-Milton article made similar conclusions, saying, "It must be emphasized that neither the Jewish Shoah nor the Romani Porrajmos was in any sense caused by the availability of relatively sophisticated technologies, including punched-card technology," but adding that "Dehomag and the official statisticians of Nazi Germany contributed in no small way to the comprehensive enrollment that facilitated so vast and deadly a persecution."

Once the United States entered the war, IBM became important to the Allies, with the Economic Warfare Section regularly turning to IBM, "to learn the many intricacies of German and Italian Hollerith use -- not for the purposes of criminal prosecution or documenting culpability, for the purposes of military intelligence and sustaining Allied victory."

Robert Wolfe, a retired archivist for the National Archives who served as a consultant on the book, believes IBM's actions during World War II "foreshadow what international corporations do today. They put their own interests ahead of anything else."

Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism said the book should be a warning bell to businesses.

"If this technology made this kind of rounding up as facile as it did for the Nazis, imagine what technology today could do."

Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, though, is skeptical about the book. Although she had not yet read it when asked to comment, she said, "I find it very strange and outside the bounds of normal historical practice that this book has been embargoed prior to publication."

"This is particularly disturbing," added the Emory University professor, since Black's previous book on the Holocaust was a "sham."

That book, The Transfer Agreement, Lipstadt explained, "made the argument that there was a secret agreement between Hitler and the Zionists to transfer Jews' funds to Palestine. There was an agreement, but it hardly was a secret."

Given that in publicizing that book, Black claimed to have "discovered" a secret, "I am skeptical," Lipstadt said, adding that doesn't mean she won't find validity in his argument. "Right now, I have lots of questions about his findings."

from the Associated Press via USA Today, 2004-Jun-22, by Jonathan Fowler:

Swiss court allows Gypsies to sue IBM over alleged Holocaust link

GENEVA -- A Swiss court has cleared the way for Gypsies to sue IBM over allegations that the computer company's expertise helped the Nazis commit mass murder more efficiently, the plaintiffs' lawyer said Tuesday.

The Geneva appeals court disagreed with a lower court that refused to hear the case last year on grounds it lacked jurisdiction, said the Gypsies' lawyer, Henri-Philippe Sambuc.

A Gypsy group filed the lawsuit in Geneva because IBM's wartime European headquarters were in the city. They claim the office was IBM's hub for trade with the Nazis.

"IBM's complicity through material or intellectual assistance to the criminal acts of the Nazis during World War II via its Geneva office cannot be ruled out," said the appeals court ruling. It cited "a significant body of evidence indicating that the Geneva office could have been aware that it was assisting these acts."

In its June 2003 ruling, the lower court said IBM only had an "antenna" in the Swiss city. City archives, however, show that in 1936 IBM opened an office under the name "International Business Machines Corporation New York, European Headquarters."

There was no immediate reaction to the ruling from IBM's Geneva lawyers, who have previously referred requests for comment to the company's U.S. headquarters. The ruling came before business hours at the IBM's New York base.

The company has said its German subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen -- or Dehomag -- was taken over by the Nazis before World War II, and it had no control over operations there or how Nazis used IBM machines.

Sambuc maintains that the company's Geneva office continued to coordinate Europe-wide trade with the Nazis, acting on clear instructions from world headquarters in New York.

The group represented by Sambuc -- Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action -- sued IBM for "moral reparation" and $20,000 each in damages on behalf of four Gypsies from Germany and France and one Polish-born Swedish Gypsy. All five plaintiffs were orphaned in the Holocaust.

The campaigners began planning the lawsuit after U.S. author Edwin Black claimed in a book published in February 2001 that IBM punch-card machines enabled the Nazis to make their killing operations more efficient.

Black said the punch-card machines were used to codify information about people sent to concentration camps. The number 12 represented a Gypsy inmate, while Jews were recorded with the number 8. The code D4 meant a prisoner had been killed.

The Nazis are believed to have killed around 600,000 Gypsies, although Gypsy groups say the number could have been as high as 1.5 million.

"It does not appear inconsistent to conclude that the respondent (IBM) facilitated the task of the Nazis in their committing of crimes against humanity -- acts which were counted and codified by IBM machines," the ruling said.

IBM's German division has paid into Germany's government-industry initiative to compensate people forced to work for the Nazis during the war.

In April 2001, a class action lawsuit against IBM in New York was dropped after lawyers said they feared it would slow down payments from the German Holocaust fund. German companies had sought freedom from legal actions before committing to the fund.

The Geneva case is the first Holocaust-related action against IBM in Europe, Sambuc said. A city court will likely hear the lawsuit in the fall, unless IBM lodges an appeal at the Federal Tribunal, Switzerland's supreme court.

from Reform Judaism Magazine, 1999-August, by Edwin Black, from http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/Black.html :

Could We Have Stopped Hitler?

In the enormous shadow of guilt that seized American Jewry after the Holocaust, the answer all too often has been, "We didn't do enough." We are quick to shoulder the onus of self-blame for having been timid citizens, afraid to stir the waters in uncertain prewar times. But this version of history is untrue. Immediately after Hitler's rise to power, American Jews mounted a formidable economic war to topple the Nazi regime.

Just weeks after Hitler assumed power on January 30, 1933, a patchwork of competing Jewish forces, led by American Jewish Congress president Rabbi Stephen Wise, civil rights crusader Louis Untermeyer, and the combative Jewish War Veterans, initiated a highly effective boycott of German goods and services. Each advanced the boycott in its own way, but sought to build a united anti-Nazi coalition that could deliver an economic deathblow to the Nazi party, which had based its political ascent almost entirely on promises to rebuild the strapped German economy.

The boycotters were encouraged by the early successes of their loud, boisterous campaign, complete with nationwide protest meetings, picket signs, and open threats to destroy Germany's economy if the Reich's anti-Jewish actions persisted. Skilled organizing from unions, political groups, and commercial trade associations carried the boycott's message to every facet of American society and abroad. Depression-wracked nations around the world quickly began to shift their buying habits from the entrenched German market to less expensive, alternative goods.

*         *         *

The anti-Hitler protest movement culminated in a gigantic rally at Madison Square Garden on March 27, 1933, organized by Rabbi Wise and the American Jewish Congress. More than 55,000 protesters crammed into the Garden and surrounding streets. Simultaneous rallies were held in 70 other metropolitan areas in the U.S. and in Europe. Radio hookups broadcast the New York event to hundreds of cities throughout the world.

The boycott unnerved the Nazis, who believed that Jews wielded supernatural international economic power. They knew that in the past Jews had used boycotts effectively against Russian Czar Nicholas II to combat his persecution of Jews, and automaker Henry Ford to halt his anti-Semitic campaign. Whether or not this new boycott actually possessed the punishing power to crush the Reich economy was irrelevant; what mattered was that Germany perceived the Jewish-led boycott as the greatest threat to its survival--and reacted accordingly.

Relentless in exploiting the Nazis' vulnerability, Rabbi Wise and the other boycott leaders were determined to form one cohesive international movement under the banner "Starve Germany into submission this winter." But Hitler succeeded in averting this scenario by exploiting divisions within world Jewry.

The Nazi counteroffensive was launched at a secret meeting in Berlin, just six months after the Nazis took power and at the height of the anti-German boycott.

*         *         *

On August 7, 1933, an official delegation of four German and Palestinian Zionists and one independent Palestinian Jewish businessman were ushered into a conference room at the Economics Ministry in Berlin. The Jewish negotiators were greeted courteously by Hans Hartenstein, director of the German Foreign Currency Control Office. They talked for some time about investment, emigration, and public opinion, but the underlying theme was the boycott. The Nazis wanted to know how far the Zionists were willing to go in subverting the boycott. The Zionists wanted to know how far the Reich was willing to go in allowing them to rescue German Jews.

Hartenstein was about to call the inconclusive meeting to a close when a messenger arrived with a telegram from German Consul Heinrich Wolff in Tel Aviv, who advised Hartenstein that concluding a deal with the Zionist delegation was the best way to break the crippling boycott. Hartenstein complied, and the Transfer Agreement was born.

*         *         *

Three days later, the Reich Economics Ministry issued the pact as Decree 54/33.

The Transfer Agreement permitted Jews to leave Germany and take some of their assets in the form of new German goods, which the Zionist movement would then sell in Palestine and eventually throughout much of the world. The German goods were purchased with frozen Jewish assets held in Germany. When the merchandise was sold, the sale proceeds were given to the emigrants, minus a commission for administration and a portion reserved for Zionist state-building projects, such as industrial infrastructure and land purchase.

Two Zionists transfer clearinghouses were established: one under the supervision of the German Zionist Federation in Berlin and the other under the authority of the Anglo-Palestine Trust Company in Tel Aviv. The Berlin-based office exchanged blocked Jewish cash for German wares.

The Tel Aviv office, called Haavara Trust and Transfer Office Ltd. (Haavara Ltd.), sold the swapped German merchandise on the open market, collected the proceeds, and matched them up to the German Jewish emigrants whose money had been used. Organized under the Palestinian commercial code, Haavara Ltd. was operated by conventional business managers. Its stock was wholly owned by the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the official Zionist financial institution that later changed its name to Bank Leumi.

The Transfer Agreement enabled both Germany and the Jewish community in Palestine to achieve key objectives. Transfer helped Germany defeat the boycott, create jobs at home, and convert Jewish assets into Reich economic recovery. It helped the Zionists overcome a major obstacle to continued Jewish immigration and expansion in Palestine. Under British regulations then in force in Palestine, Jews could not enter without a so-called Capitalist Certificate, proving they possessed the equivalent of $5,000. To be in possession of such a sum qualified the immigrant as a "capitalist" or investor. Transfer made capitalist immigration possible because destitute Germans received the required $5,000 (actually the immigrant's own seized funds) once the assigned German goods were sold.

The Transfer Agreement also allowed "potential emigrants" to protect their assets in special blocked bank accounts, which could not be accessed without purchasing and reselling German goods. Between the active and potential emigration accounts, the Transfer apparatus, through official and unofficial transactions, generated an estimated 100 million Reichmarks. The more German goods Zionists sold, the more Jews could get out of Germany and into Palestine, and the more money would be available to build the Jewish State. The price of this commerce-linked exodus was the abandonment of the economic war against Nazi Germany.

*         *         *

The Transfer Agreement tore the Jewish world apart, turning leader against leader, threatening rebellion and even assassination.

In the painful choice between relief vs. rescue, most of the Jewish world opted for relief; that is, defending the right of Jews to remain where they were as free and equal citizens. But the Zionist leadership favored rescue, which was completely in keeping with their solution to anti-Semitism--a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

A half-century earlier, the Zionists visionary Theodor Herzl had foreseen that a "Jewish Company" would be created to manage the businesses and assets of Jews who immigrated to the future Jewish State. Their assets would be sold off at a substantial discount to cooperating "honest anti-Semites," who would then step into the former occupations of the departing Jews.

Zionists saw Haavara as Herzl's envisioned "Jewish Company" and Transfer as an opportunity to contract for a more secure Jewish future. Forty years of struggle to create a Jewish State had come to a sudden and spectacular turning point. The Zionist leadership's awesome and difficult task was to enter into cold, anguished negotiations with Jew-haters, not in an atmosphere of emotion and frenzy, but with diplomacy and statecraft.

*         *         *

By the end of April 1933, total Reich exports were down 10 percent as a result of the boycott. But the economic war against Germany still lacked cohesiveness. Stephen Wise, who possessed the organization, the universal recognition, and the will to unify and direct an efficient campaign, knew that only a central group could target specific German industries and avoid duplication of effort. Wise also envisioned an enforcement apparatus insuring that any entity that traded with Germany would itself become a boycott target. This strategy set the Zionists and the boycott movement on a collision course. If the Zionists were to finalize a merchandise-based pact with Nazi Germany, then Jewish Palestine would be in violation of the boycott and its products and fundraising declared untouchable. Wise and other boycotters felt certain that this threat would derail any exploratory commercial talks between the Zionists and Hitler's  regime.

In fact, secret preliminary and partial negotiations and even interim "transfer" agreements had begun in April 1933. When news of these early negotiations leaked out, the Zionists split along Revisionist and Mapai (Labor) lines. Transfer became a convenient battleground in an already tense atmosphere in which Zionist factions fought over economics, settlement policy, and other issues. The Transfer deal was widely seen by Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky as an unholy pact with the Nazis that would mainly benefit Labor-dominated Zionist institutions. Protest meetings, screaming headlines, public debates, and rancorous shouting matches broke out in Zionist circles throughout Europe and Palestine. David Ben-Gurion and other Laborites retaliated, calling Jabotinsky "the Jewish Hitler" and his black-shirted Revisionist followers "Fascists." Revisionists became the most ardent anti-Nazi boycott organizers, attacking any Jew or Zionist who would do business with Hitler. It was all complicated by the fact that the Jewish Palestinian economy was inextricably linked to German commerce. Indeed, Germany was the number-one customer for Palestine's number-one export product--oranges.

At the center of the maelstrom was Chaim Arlosoroff, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive Committee. This quiet academician and visionary designed the Transfer plan and supervised all negotiations with the Reich. So tense was the public hysteria over what Transfer was--and was not--that in May 1933 Arlosoroff granted a lengthy interview to a Zionist newspaper disclosing the entire plan, which only 24 hours earlier had been marked "Top Secret."

*         *         *

On June 16, 1933, the Revisionist newspaper Hazit Haam published what many considered a death threat: "There will be no forgiveness for those who for greed have sold out the honor of their people to madmen and anti-Semites.... The Jewish people have always known how to size up betrayers...and it will know how to react to this crime." That evening, Chaim Arlosoroff and his wife Sima took a Shabbat walk along the beach in north Tel Aviv at a point now occupied by the Tel Aviv Hilton. Two men dressed as Arabs approached the couple and asked for the time. Sima was worried, but Arlosoroff assured her, "Don't worry, they are Jews." A few moments later, the men returned, one with a Browning automatic. A bullet flashed into Arlosoroff's chest, mortally wounding him. Two Revisionists were charged with the murder and sentenced to death, but they were released later on technical grounds.

The boycott question also divided the American Jewish community. Leaders of B'nai Brith and the American Jewish Committee, organizations largely comprised of German Jews who had for decades preached staunch Jewish defense, feared that the boycott would subject their brethren in Germany to retaliation. The Jewish War Veterans, who well remembered their German enemy from the Great War, were not swayed by such reservations. Though it lacked the resources of the larger Jewish organizations, the JWV pressed for a total commercial war against Germany. Joining them was feisty Louis Untermeyer, founder of his own anti-Nazi organization, the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights.

In Germany, the besieged Jewish community opposed the boycott. They fervently appealed to friends and relatives in American Jewish organizations to halt any talk of protest or boycott, fearing the reprisals promised by Reich authorities and Nazi hooligans for any encouragement of anti-Nazi actions. As a result, B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish Committee did their best to blunt the boycott's impact.

*         *         *

The Eighteenth Zionist Congress opened on August 18 in Prague, only 11 days after the Transfer Agreement was sealed in Berlin. Advocates of the pact planned to outmaneuver, outtalk, outscheme, and outlast boycott proponents. The August 7 pact would be adopted, either overtly before the assembled delegates or covertly in closed-door rules committees. Either way, Transfer would go forward.

At the Congress, Wise fought the Transfer Agreement privately and publicly. He lost. After midnight motions and surprise votes, the Transfer Agreement was adopted on August 24 as official policy. Zionist discipline was imposed upon all boycotters, including Stephen Wise. Despite his allegiance to Zionism, Wise vowed to press ahead with his plan to form a unified global boycott within the framework of a so-called "Central Jewish Committee," which was to be declared two weeks later in Geneva at the Second World Jewish Congress.

But as the days progressed, the plight of German Jewry became more and more desperate. Nazism's stranglehold on Germany appeared all the more irreversible. European anti-Semites everywhere were following suit. Jewry seemed finished in Europe. A Jewish homeland in Palestine seemed the only answer.

*         *         *

September 8 now became the crucial date: the Central Jewish Committee would be established at the much-publicized Second World Jewish Congress in Geneva to deal the economic deathblow to Germany. In the end, however, Wise bowed to Zionist pressure and simply backed down. The boycott was abandoned.

A dejected Wise left for Paris. On the train, he met a 14-year-old German Jewish girl, a refugee, who had heard about the Geneva meeting. Wise asked her whether she thought the decisions there had helped or done damage. Looking at him, the young girl answered, "Es muss sein, es muss sein." "What must be, must be."

In the weeks that followed, Wise dodged reporters' questions about the decision. Haunted by the girl's remarks, Wise simply said, "What must be, must be." Decisions had been made that only God could judge, only history could vindicate.

*         *         *

After war erupted on September 29, 1939, the dispossession of the Jews turned to annihilation. The Transfer Agreement served as a lifeline to the Jews who still could be saved. All debate about Haavara among Jewish groups ceased. The less said the better, lest the Nazis cancel the deal. Ultimately, the war did force an end to Transfer, but not before some 55,000 Jews were able to find a haven in Palestine.

Those who would condemn the Zionist decision to enter into a pact with Hitler have the luxury of hindsight. In 1933, the Zionists could not have foreseen the death trains, gas chambers, and crematoria. But they did understand that the end was now at hand for Jews in Europe. Nazism was unstoppable. The emphasis now became saving Jewish lives and establishing a Jewish State.

From the Zionist point of view, the boycott did succeed. Without it, there would never have been a Transfer Agreement, which contributed immeasurably to a strengthened Jewish community in Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel. And Transfer would never have happened had American Jews not mobilized as quickly as they did, only days after Hitler rose to power.

No one can say what combination of factors might or not might have stopped Hitler. What is clear, however, is that American Jewry did not react to the Nazi threat with indifference, cowardice, or indecisiveness. We were determined, courageous, and resourceful--but, ultimately, divided.

---

Source: Reform Judaism Magazine, (August 1999). Edwin Black is the author of the recently released novel Format C: (Dialog Press). This article is based on the newly updated The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine (Dialog Press). More information is available at www.featuregroup.com/transfer

from the BBC World Service, 1999-Feb-3:

US banks gave Jewish money to Nazis

A French government commission, investigating the seizure of Jewish bank accounts during the Second World War, says five American banks Chase Manhattan, J.P Morgan, Guaranty Trust Co. of New York, Bank of the City of New York and American Express had taken part.

It says their Paris branches handed over to the Nazi occupiers about one-hundred such accounts.

A commission member Claire Andrieu said that at the time, the United States was not at war with Germany, and the American banks could have behaved differently.

The government commission is looking into ways of compensating Holocaust survivors or their relatives.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

from the Associated Press, 2000-Feb-23:

Chase National Bank aided Nazi Germany

A predecessor bank of Chase Manhattan Corp. helped the German government before and during the beginning of World War II by exchanging German marks that may have come from the forced sale of assets by Jewish refugees.

The company's disclosure Tuesday comes as several large banks in the United States and Europe are combing their archives to determine what role, if any, they may have played in aiding Germany or in harboring assets seized from Jews during the Holocaust.

"We are sad to learn and deeply troubled about the involvement of one of our predecessor banks in a program that benefited Germany during that period," Chase chairman and chief executive William B. Harrison said in a statement. "We have a responsibility to make this information public and wish to express our sincere apologies to the Jewish community and to the American public."

From August 1936 through June 1941, the Chase National Bank participated in a German government program that enabled Germany to exchange marks for U.S. dollars at a time when other nations weren't accepting German currency in exchange for goods and services, the statement said.

In response, Germany created "blocked" German marks for use in Germany but not for international trade. The program allowed German-Americans who may have been interested in returning to Germany to exchange dollars for marks at favorable rates, which in turn provided the German government with dollars.

"Historical records suggest that some of the 'blocked' German marks used in the program may have come from the forced sale of assets by Jewish refugees leaving Germany," the statement said.

Chase National Bank was one of several banks that provided U.S. banking services for the program, the statement said. In total, the German government raised $25 million to $35 million from the program, and Chase earned commissions of about $280,000. The program ended in June 1941, when the U.S. government froze all German assets in the United States.

A New York grand jury scrutinized the program following a 1940s FBI investigation and the program and Chase National Bank's involvement in it were discussed in detail at U.S. Senate hearings in 1944. No indictments were issued and no action was ever taken by the U.S. government against Chase National.

Chase's findings came out of an investigation into its predecessor banks activities during WWII. The investigation, begun in 1998, involved the review of thousands of publicly available documents in the United States and Europe.

from the Associated Press via Nando Media, 1998-Dec-24, by Tom Hays, from http://www.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,1737-2967-23297-0,00.html:

Suit claims Chase and J.P. Morgan joined in Nazi plunder

NEW YORK (December 24, 1998 12:05 a.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Chase Manhattan Bank and J.P. Morgan & Co. joined the Nazis in the plunder of millions of dollars in Jewish assets during World War II, according to a class-action lawsuit.

The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn against those banks and seven French banks, accuses them of seizing accounts and safe deposit boxes from Jewish customers, then keeping the assets after the war.

Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan became the first U.S. institutions to be named in the dozen lawsuits still pending on behalf of Holocaust victims who were exploited or who lost assets during the Nazi era.

Chase Manhattan "collaborated with the German authorities and displayed an excessive zeal in its enforcement of anti-Jewish laws," the suit alleged. A similar attitude by J.P. Morgan earned it the reputation of an "international Aryan organization," it adds.

The suit does not seek specific damages. But it accuses all the banks of being involved in "the systematic plunder" of "countless millions of dollars."

A plaintiff attorney, Kenneth McCallion, said he hoped the banks would open their books, verify the losses and settle the claims out of court. Last week, Barclays agreed to settle its part of the same class-action suit by paying $3.6 million to Jews whose assets were frozen.

In a statement, Chase called the suit unnecessary. It said the bank is already working with Jewish leaders to investigate records and reimburse, with interest, any customers - or their heirs - who lost money. Fewer than 100 accounts are at issue, it added.

A J.P. Morgan statement said bank officials "understand the seriousness of this issue, and we'll certainly look into these allegations with care."

The suit relies heavily on an April 1945 report from the U.S. Treasury Department about U.S. banking activities during the war.

According to the report, the "record of the (Chase) Paris branch is one of uncalled-for responsiveness to the desires of the Germans and an apparent desire to enhance its influence with them."

Other American banks closed their offices in Nazi-occupied Paris, and Chase's home office initially ordered its Paris branch to do the same. But in February 1941, Chase replaced its American representative, S.P. Bailey, with a Swiss national, Carlos Niedermann, and the plan to liquidate the bank's French branch instead "gave way in the better part of 1942 to a rapid expansion of deposits," the U.S. Treasury report said. Those deposits included accounts from the German government.

Likewise, the report found that the manager of J.P. Morgan's Paris office worked closely with the Vichy-French government of the Germans. The suit says the manager openly bragged of "the anti-Jewish record and policies of J.P. Morgan."

Similar claims against Swiss banks were settled last summer when the Swiss agreed to pay $1.25 billion in restitution to Holocaust victims who had been unable to recover assets lost in Swiss institutions.

from Haaretz, 2005-Jan-19, by Amiram Barkat:

Israeli banks hold NIS 1b. of Holocaust victims

A Knesset committee slammed Israeli banks yesterday for "severe negligence" in handling the accounts of thousands of Jews who perished in the Holocaust totaling some NIS 1 billion [1 billlion New Israeli Sheckels is USD 230 million -AMPP Ed.]. Holocaust victims deposited the money in some 9,000 accounts in Israeli banks, according to the Knesset Inquiry Committee for the Location and Restitution of Assets of Holocaust Victims, which presented its report to the Knesset yesterday.

"There wasn't a deliberate system of concealing funds, but there was without a doubt negligence in keeping the documents, foot dragging, obtuseness and ignoring the heirs," said committee chairman MK Colette Avital (Labor).

The committee, which has been inquiring into Holocaust victims' bank accounts in Israel for the past five years, said the banks were negligent in handling the accounts and keeping the owners' records and trying to locate the heirs. There may have been considerable additional funds that were not discovered, the committee said, because the banks destroyed documents and failed to keep records of the latent accounts.

The committee ruled that the banks will have to return about a third of the money - some NIS 322 million - to the heirs of the Holocaust victims, if they are traced. The state will have to return the remaining two thirds - NIS 586 million - because the banks transferred most of the funds to the British Mandate and state in the 1940s and `50s.

If all the heirs are found, the five major banks will have to return some NIS 322 million, NIS 307 million of which must be returned by Bank Leumi. Mizrahi Bank must return NIS 12.9 million, Bank Hapoalim NIS 1.7 million, and Israel Discount Bank must return NIS 535,000.

However, the committee said it was highly probably that only a small percent of the heirs will be located, so these sums are theoretical. The committee recommended setting up a public body to handle heirs' claims quickly.

"If we don't reach an agreement with the banks and the treasury, we will have to use legislation," Avital said.

The Banks' Association and Bank Leumi said that it was proved that the banks in Israel do not hold assets today of Holocaust survivors. They said that their financial liability derives only from the interest and linkage differences on funds that the banks had transferred to the Custodian General.

However, head auditor Yehuda Barlev said Bank Leumi holds to this day 180 accounts that probably belonged to Holocaust victims. The bank denies this.

Committee members also lambasted the banks for their conduct during and after the investigation.

"We had bitter arguments with the banks, which caused very many delays in the committee's work," Avital said.

MK Ehud Ratzabi said "the banks' lawyers came to the Knesset and hurled accusations at the MKs, as though they were on trial for rape."

The committee estimated the total funds in the 9,000 accounts at NIS 947 million. However, due to heavy pressure on the banks' part, the committee used another way to calculate the value of the funds for which no heirs will be found, which minimizes the sums by 80 to 90 percent.

The reason that the state must return most of the funds is that most of the money was transferred to the British Mandate authorities during the Second World War. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, the funds were transferred to the Custodian General.

The committee found that Bank Leumi has been holding a large sum of money belonging to Holocaust victims since 1949, which belongs to the state. The sum was initially IL 1,793,000, which is worth some half a billion shekels today.

The report shows that the committee succeeded in locating only a small part of the survivors' money. Only some 3,500 of the 9,000 accounts had any money at all, mainly due to the banks' negligence and faulty documentation, in violation of their own rules and regulations.

The report lashes out at Mercantile Discount Bank, formerly Barclays. The auditors located some 3,000 latent accounts from the World War II era - more than in Bank Leumi - but could not verify the identity of some 2,000 accounts holders due to the disappearance of vital details. The committee accused the bank of refusing to cooperate with it. "All the senior officials denied having documents or relating to the subject and era being investigated," the report said.

In addition, the auditors said that contrary to bank regulations, the bank failed to keep in its archives documents preceding 1963, and its branches did not keep information of latent accounts that were written off.

Bank Hapoalim destroyed a very large quantity of material relevant to the investigation long after the committee had started its inquiries.

"Our efforts to obtain the full bank reports of the closed accounts were thwarted, we found nothing, in the head office, computer department, branches or archives," read the report.

The auditors found that Bank Mizrahi did not pay interest rates on the latent accounts that had money in them, but made sure to charge them with commissions all these decades. Consequently, numerous accounts were overdrawn. Numerous accounts had been closed and documents destroyed in violation of the regulations to preserve old documents.

"In many cases old documents were destroyed, probably to make room in the store room for newer ones," the auditors wrote. They commended Bank Discount for its cooperation, but said many accounts from the Holocaust period could not be located because the bank failed to keep records from before the 1960s.

Noah Flug, chairman of the umbrella organization for Israeli Holocaust survivors' associations, said he hopes "the banks that sabotaged the committee's work learn their lesson and display public and moral responsibility and respect the committee's conclusions and implement them."

The Justice Ministry spokesman said the ministry and Custodian General support returning the property to the heirs and will do everything they can to ensure it.

Finance Ministry sources said yesterday that "the funding sources and the extent of the funds have not been determined yet. The cabinet will talk to the Finance Ministry sources said yesterday that "the funding sources and the extent of the funds have not been determined yet. The cabinet will talk to the Knesset and formulate a joint position on the subject."

from http://www.centralbanking.co.uk/cbv8n11.html:

Nazi Gold: The Role of the Central Banks - Where Does the Blame Lie?

William Clarke

From Central Banking, Volume VIII Number 1, Summer 1997

---

William Clarke is chairman of Central Banking Publications and author of The Lost Fortune of the Tsars (Orion, London)

---

Moralising with hindsight is an easy temptation. The growing avalanche of official evidence concerning the acceptance of Nazi gold and what may be called Holocaust deposits during and after World War II has produced a similar avalanche of emotions: fierce accusations, condemnations, pity and guilt. The actions of individuals, governments, firms, commercial banks and central banks are all now coming under a pitiless microscope, thanks to the efforts of two men: Edgar Bronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress and Senator Alfonse d'Amato, chairman of the US Senate Banking Committee.

High on the list of those now needing to explain their war-time and post-war actions are the Swiss commercial banks (represented by the Swiss Bankers Association), the Swiss National Bank and, as it is increasingly perceived, even the Swiss nation. To their credit there are signs that Swiss nationals are beginning to respond in a humane manner. It is a pity that it has taken political pressure of a truly remarkable kind to get an appropriate response from the Swiss commercial banks. The stain will take years to assuage.

Basic accusations

The basic banking accusations can be summed up as follows:

1. Swiss banks accepted both money and gold deposits from refugees from Nazi Germany before and during the war and subsequently placed obstacles in the path of descendants of those killed in the Holocaust wishing to claim such deposits.
2. The Swiss National Bank accepted gold bars from the Reichsbank, some smelted down from gold stolen from other central banks and some no doubt extracted from Jewish victims in Nazi extermination camps.
3. Neutral central banks, such as those from Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and Argentina all accepted Nazi gold, in one form or another, some of it looted, either during or immediately after the war.
4. The Swiss National Bank, as well as the Bank for International Settlements, based in Switzerland, openly carried out gold transactions between neutral central banks and the Reichsbank during the war, thus facilitating the Nazi war effort.

Others accused too

The accusations have not, however, been confined to the Swiss alone. German firms who built the Nazi extermination camps and supplied the gas for gas chambers; German mints who turned the gold teeth fillings of exterminated Jews into 'respectable' gold bars; 'neutral' intermediaries who, like the Swiss, were instrumental in channelling gold bars, former gold fillings, out of Nazi Germany; Allied governments who took too lenient a view of Swiss actions immediately after the war; and central banks (and the Bank for International Settlements in Basle) who accepted former Nazi gold, some without too many qualms, in settlement of war-time and other official debts: all have stood in the dock of world opinion over past twelve months. Few have escaped censure.

Apportioning blame

There are two difficulties in trying to assess where the 'blame' should lie and where belated action is still urgently needed. One is the sheer volume of recent revelations.. Even now the flood has hardly subsided and several official inquiries have still to report. The other difficulty is how to pick one's way through this tragic mixture of cold-hearted calculation and unthinking reactions in a war-torn world, half a century later. All I have attempted in this article is to clarify a particularly narrow, though significant, area - what role neutral central banks (including the Swiss National Bank), the Swiss commercial banks and the Bank for International Settlements played, and what, if any, lessons they should now be contemplating.

What brought matters to a head and to a dramatic change in Swiss attitudes were the continued efforts of the World Jewish Congress, particularly in its evidence to the US Senate Banking Committee. Coupled with the belated emergence from German archives of Reichsbank gold dealings with Switzerland and the Bank for International Settlements and, finally, two official Foreign Office reports in London, these Senate hearings soon had the Swiss banking community on the defensive.

The first Foreign Office report, containing as it did a simple currency slip, led within days to world headlines accusing the Swiss, rightly or wrongly, of still holding up to $6 billion of Nazi gold, including that from the dental fillings of Holocaust victims. If unclaimed monetary deposits of Holocaust victims in Swiss banks were included, it was alleged without precise evidence, then the total owed by the banks could be nearer $20 billion. Law suits for that precise sum, known as 'class actions', swiftly followed against the three top Swiss banks by leading law firms in New York and Washington.

Swiss façade crumbles

It was not long before the first real crack came in the Swiss facade - the chairman of Crédit Suisse proposed the setting up of a well-endowed compensation fund for Holocaust victims. Combined with growing threats to freeze Swiss assets and to revoke Swiss banking licences in the US, and the threat of further revelations, the Swiss Government finally acted. It endorsed the proposal to set up a humanitarian fund for the Holocaust victims by proposing the revaluation of Switzerland's gold reserves, sufficient to provide a fund of $5 billion, from which $250 million would be produced annually to compensate victims of all human catastrophes including the Holocaust.

The US Senate Committee's inquiries had thus not only produced a remarkable Swiss reaction, belated though it was. It had also spawned a flood of official reports and other inquiries: two reports, already mentioned, from the Foreign Office in London, one from the Bank of England, one from the Bank for International Settlements in Basle and finally, though hardly the last, a 200-page report from an Under Secretary of State in the US Department of Commerce, appointed personally by the President. Further inquiries continue: a five-year Swiss historical inquiry into the official Swiss archives; an investigation by Swiss historian Peter Hug in to Switzerland's post-war deal with communist Poland under which Jewish money was used to compensate Swiss citizens; and an inquiry, chaired by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, into unclaimed Jewish and other refugee deposits in Swiss bank accounts. Finally, an International Conference on Stolen Gold is promised by the US State Department and the British Foreign Office in London later this year.

$400m through Switzerland

What then has emerged from these investigations so far? First a few facts. It is calculated that Germany began the war with reserves in the Reichsbank of around $208m, of which some $97m represented gold already stolen from Austria, Czechoslovakia and Danzig. The total amount of gold looted by the Nazis during the war itself, not only from the defeated nations, such as Belgium, Holland and Hungary, but from Jewish and other victims of the Nazis is now estimated at $580m. Of this about $400m (worth $4 billion today), according to US Under Secretary Eizenstat, "went to Switzerland either to the Swiss National Bank's own account, or to the account of other countries at the Swiss National Bank". The Swiss accepted some $280m ($2.8 billion today) on their own account.

Exported with pre-war date stamp

German archives, including those of the Reichsbank, clearly indicate that the Nazis had consistently re-smelted and exported, with a pre-war date stamp, both former looted gold bars from other central banks and the gold channelled to it from the extermination camps. It was a simple attempt (that did not always succeed) to disguise the original source of some of the gold when it was transferred to such places as Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Spain and Turkey, in exchange for precious hard currency to finance the war. Triangular deals between the Reichsbank, the Bank of Switzerland and the Bank of Portugal, for example, were regularly monitored by the Allies during the war. And the same went for deals between the central banks of Spain, Sweden and Turkey, again in triangular deals with the Reichsbank and the Swiss National Bank.

Did central banks know it was tainted?

The question is how far the recipient central banks were aware of the true origins of the gold bars they accepted. Immediately after the war the Swiss National Bank denied taking any 'tainted gold'. But subsequent reports showed clearly that Nazi gold, originally owned by Belgium, had been re-smelted and shipped to Switzerland. Moreover a later interrogation report by Dr Puhl of the Reichsbank, who had dealt with the Swiss National Bank, "stated clearly that in his view Swiss bank officials had been aware that the gold in question had been looted". There is also apparently clear evidence of Holocaust victims' gold being passed, for example, through Switzerland to Sweden and Italy and US Under Secretary Eizenstat seems convinced such gold would have been received "by all of the neutral countries".

BIS accepted gold looted from Holland, Belgium and Italy

In addition, it is now clear that the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, in effect the central banks' bank, received Nazi gold during the war, thus facilitating the Nazi's war effort. As early as 1945 the US Military Government in Germany (OMGUS) concluded starkly that "the BIS accepted looted gold, aided the Reichsbank in salvaging assets threatened by blocking in neutral countries, was dominated by Axis interests, continued pay dividends to occupied countries in spite of the inevitable confiscation by the Nazis, and furnished financial intelligence to the Reichsbank". Little wonder that the BIS was fortunate to escape outright liquidation, strongly recommended by the US Treasury Secretary in November, 1945. It is now confirmed that the BIS actually acquired 13,452 kilograms of looted Nazi gold during World War II (worth more than $15m) and still had 3,893 kilograms at the end of the war (worth $4.4m). The BIS looted gold was later identified as originally belonging to Holland, Belgium and Italy.

Allocating the Nazi gold

Against these facts, it is instructive to record what Allies, BIS, the Swiss National Bank and other "neutral" central banks stated and did following the cessation of hostilities. First, and briefly, the Allies. The US, Britain and France set up a joint Tripartite Gold Commission to analyse and re-allocate the monetary gold captured by the Allies at the end of the war. The gold was held on behalf of the Commission at the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Foreign Exchange Depository in Frankfurt. Claims were matched against the gold recovered. Because of war-time losses, claimants were eventually granted 64% of their claims. Distribution stretched out from 1947 to 1982, with a final payment being made to Albania in October 1996. As a result some three and a half tons of gold remain at the Bank of England and two tons at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, worth in total about $70m. Claims remain outstanding from France, Austria, Holland and Italy, but it is proposed that a 'substantial' amount of the remaining gold should now be allocated to Holocaust survivors or victims.

The BIS, for its part, after initial reluctance, finally made a payment of some $4.2m to the Tripartite Gold Commission for redistribution among the deprived central banks and, thereby, assured its own survival. Meanwhile the Swiss initially protested that they had received no looted gold from Germany. After several years of reluctant discussion, however, they finally offered $58m to the Allies, compared with the $280m of looted gold now estimated to have been accepted by the Swiss National Bank. Beyond that, although the Swiss promised to provide the Allies with 50% of the liquidated German assets in Switzerland, all that was eventually passed over by the Swiss was $28m, compared to the Allied estimates of $250m to $500m.

'Heirless' deposits remain

So much for the Nazi gold question. There remains the worst element of the war: the so-called "heirless deposits" of gold and currency in Swiss banks belonging to the survivors and relatives of victims in Nazi camps and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The evidence given before the US Senate Banking Committee provided personal, heart-rending examples of the difficulties in establishing details of family accounts in Switzerland. The reaction of the Swiss bankers to Allied questions immediately after the war was particularly discouraging. At first they denied having any. Then, under pressure, the Swiss Bankers Association reported that a survey had discovered deposits of no more than the equivalent of $100,000. The next estimate by the Association in 1964 pushed up the total to $2.5m, though it was later claimed that only 26 of the 400 member banks had replied.

By 1997 the total announced by the Association was $40m. In July this year the Swiss Bankers Association eventually published the first list of pre-war dormant accounts in prominent newspapers, giving claimants six months to apply. This list contained 1,872 non-Swiss names, over half of which were from France and Germany. A further 20,000 names are promised in October. These lists will need careful scrutiny and the basis on which they have been compiled fully explained.

It is now up to Paul Volcker and his audit committee to establish the truth. A preliminary audit is due fairly soon and the final report next year.

It is too soon to come to final conclusions. Too many inquiries are still continuing. But it is not too soon to conclude that, above all else, the final response of the Swiss Bankers Association to the Volcker report, whatever its conclusions, will be crucial to the Swiss national image. As for the central banks plainly involved in the receipt of Nazi looted gold, basically those of Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey, they too must now review their war-time actions. As the US report put it "neutrality collided with morality [in World War II]; too often being neutral provided a pretext for avoiding moral considerations". The time has come to wipe the slate clean.

Sources

History Notes No.11. Nazi Gold: Information from the British Archives: Foreign Office, London, September 1996 (Revised January 1997)

History Notes No.12. Nazi Gold: Information from the British Archives, Part II: Foreign Office, London, May 1997

Nazi Gold: Background Note to Editors. Bank of England, London, May 1997

US and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold and other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II. Preliminary Study. US Department of Commerce, May 1997 (Plus summary of Press Briefing by Stuart E Eizenstat, US Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade).

Introductory Note on The Bank for International Settlements 1930-1945. BIS, Basle, May 1997

Note on Gold Operations involving Bank for International Settlements and the German Reichsbank, 1st September, 1939 - 8th May, 1945. BIS Basle, May 1997.

Tom Bower, Blood Money: The Swiss, the Nazis and the Looted Millions, Macmillan, London, 1997.

from http://www.washingtonpost.com:

Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration
Firms Deny Researchers' Claims On Aiding German War Effort

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 30, 1998; Page A01

Three years after Swiss banks became the target of a worldwide furor over their business dealings with Nazi Germany, major American car companies find themselves embroiled in a similar debate.

Like the Swiss banks, the American car companies have vigorously denied that they assisted the Nazi war machine or that they significantly profited from the use of forced labor at their German subsidiaries during World War II. But historians and lawyers researching class-action suits on behalf of former prisoners of war are busy amassing evidence of collaboration by the automakers with the Nazi regime.

The issues at stake for the American automobile corporations go far beyond the relatively modest sums involved in settling any lawsuit. During the war, the car companies established a reputation for themselves as "the arsenal of democracy" by transforming their production lines to make airplanes, tanks and trucks for the armies that defeated Adolf Hitler. They deny that their huge business interests in Nazi Germany led them, wittingly or unwittingly, to also become "the arsenal of fascism."

The Ford Motor Co. has mobilized dozens of historians, lawyers and researchers to fight a civil case brought by lawyers in Washington and New York who specialize in extracting large cash settlements from banks and insurance companies accused of defrauding Holocaust victims. Also, a book scheduled for publication next year will accuse General Motors Corp. of playing a key role in Hitler's invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union.

"General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland," said Bradford Snell, who has spent two decades researching a history of the world's largest automaker. "Switzerland was just a repository of looted funds. GM was an integral part of the German war effort. The Nazis could have invaded Poland and Russia without Switzerland. They could not have done so without GM."

Both General Motors and Ford insist that they bear little or no responsibility for the operations of their German subsidiaries, which controlled 70 percent of the German car market at the outbreak of war in 1939 and rapidly retooled themselves to become suppliers of war materiel to the German army.

But documents discovered in German and American archives show a much more complicated picture. In certain instances, American managers of both GM and Ford went along with the conversion of their German plants to military production at a time when U.S. government documents show they were still resisting calls by the Roosevelt administration to step up military production in their plants at home.

After three years of national soul-searching, Switzerland's largest banks agreed last August to make a $1.25 billion settlement to Holocaust survivors, a step they had initially resisted. Far from dying down, however, the controversy over business dealings with the Nazis has given new impetus to long-standing investigations into issues such as looted art, unpaid insurance benefits and the use of forced labor at German factories.

Although some of the allegations against GM and Ford surfaced during 1974 congressional hearings into monopolistic practices in the automobile industry, American corporations have largely succeeded in playing down their connections to Nazi Germany. As with Switzerland, however, their very success in projecting a wholesome, patriotic image of themselves is now being turned against them by their critics.

"When you think of Ford, you think of baseball and apple pie," said Miriam Kleinman, a researcher with the Washington law firm of Cohen, Millstein and Hausfeld, who spent weeks examining records at the National Archives in an attempt to build a slave labor case against the Dearborn-based company. "You don't think of Hitler having a portrait of Henry Ford on his office wall in Munich."

Both Ford and General Motors declined requests for access to their wartime archives. Ford spokesman John Spellich defended the company's decision to maintain business ties with Nazi Germany on the grounds that the U.S. government continued to have diplomatic relations with Berlin up until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. GM spokesman John F. Mueller said that General Motors lost day-to-day control over its German plants in September 1939 and "did not assist the Nazis in any way during World War II."

For GIs, an Unpleasant Surprise

When American GIs invaded Europe in June 1944, they did so in jeeps, trucks and tanks manufactured by the Big Three motor companies in one of the largest crash militarization programs ever undertaken. It came as an unpleasant surprise to discover that the enemy was also driving trucks manufactured by Ford and Opel -- a 100 percent GM-owned subsidiary -- and flying Opel-built warplanes. (Chrysler's role in the German rearmament effort was much less significant.)

When the U.S. Army liberated the Ford plants in Cologne and Berlin, they found destitute foreign workers confined behind barbed wire and company documents extolling the "genius of the Fuehrer," according to reports filed by soldiers at the scene. A U.S. Army report by investigator Henry Schneider dated Sept. 5, 1945, accused the German branch of Ford of serving as "an arsenal of Nazism, at least for military vehicles" with the "consent" of the parent company in Dearborn.

Ford spokesman Spellich described the Schneider report as "a mischaracterization" of the activities of the American parent company and noted that Dearborn managers had frequently been kept in the dark by their German subordinates over events in Cologne.

The relationship of Ford and GM to the Nazi regime goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, when the American car companies competed against each other for access to the lucrative German market. Hitler was an admirer of American mass production techniques and an avid reader of the antisemitic tracts penned by Henry Ford. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two years before becoming the German chancellor in 1933, explaining why he kept a life-size portrait of the American automaker next to his desk.

Although Ford later renounced his antisemitic writings, he remained an admirer of Nazi Germany and sought to keep America out of the coming war. In July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria, he accepted the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. The following month, a senior executive for General Motors, James Mooney, received a similar medal for his "distinguished service to the Reich."

The granting of such awards reflected the vital place that the U.S. automakers had in Germany's increasingly militarized economy. In 1935, GM agreed to build a new plant near Berlin to produce the aptly named "Blitz" truck, which would later be used by the German army for its blitzkreig attacks on Poland, France and the Soviet Union. German Ford was the second-largest producer of trucks for the German army after GM/Opel, according to U.S. Army reports.

The importance of the American automakers went beyond making trucks for the German army. The Schneider report, now available to researchers at the National Archives, states that American Ford agreed to a complicated barter deal that gave the Reich increased access to large quantities of strategic raw materials, notably rubber. Author Snell says that Nazi armaments chief Albert Speer told him in 1977 that Hitler "would never have considered invading Poland" without synthetic fuel technology provided by General Motors.

As war approached, it became increasingly difficult for U.S. corporations like GM and Ford to operate in Germany without cooperating closely with the Nazi rearmament effort. Under intense pressure from Berlin, both companies took pains to make their subsidiaries appear as "German" as possible. In April 1939, for example, German Ford made a personal present to Hitler of 35,000 Reichsmarks in honor of his 50th birthday, according to a captured Nazi document.

Documents show that the parent companies followed a conscious strategy of continuing to do business with the Nazi regime, rather than divest themselves of their German assets. Less than three weeks after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, GM Chairman Alfred P. Sloan defended this strategy as sound business practice, given the fact that the company's German operations were "highly profitable."

The internal politics of Nazi Germany "should not be considered the business of the management of General Motors," Sloan explained in a letter to a concerned shareholder dated April 6, 1939. "We must conduct ourselves [in Germany] as a German organization. . . . We have no right to shut down the plant."

U.S. Firms Became Crucial

After the outbreak of war in September 1939, General Motors and Ford became crucial to the German military, according to contemporaneous German documents and postwar investigations by the U.S. Army. James Mooney, the GM director in charge of overseas operations, had discussions with Hitler in Berlin two weeks after the German invasion of Poland.

Typewritten notes by Mooney show that he was involved in the partial conversion of the principal GM automobile plant at Russelsheim to production of engines and other parts for the Junker "Wunderbomber," a key weapon in the German air force, under a government-brokered contract between Opel and the Junker airplane company. Mooney's notes show that he returned to Germany the following February for further discussions with Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering and a personal inspection of the Russelsheim plant.

Mooney's involvement in the conversion of the Russelsheim plant undermines claims by General Motors that the American branch of the company had nothing to do with the Nazi rearmament effort. In congressional testimony in 1974, GM maintained that American personnel resigned from all management positions in Opel following the outbreak of war in 1939 "rather than participate in the production of war materials."

However, according to documents of the Reich Commissar for the Treatment of Enemy Property, the American parent company continued to have some say in the operations of Opel after September 1939. The documents show that the company issued a general power of attorney to an American manager, Pete Hoglund, in March 1940. Hoglund did not leave Germany until a year later. At that time, the power of attorney was transferred to a prominent Berlin lawyer named Heinrich Richter.

GM spokesman Mueller declined to answer questions from The Washington Post on the power of attorney granted to Hoglund and Richter or to provide access to the personnel files of Hoglund and other wartime managers. He also declined to comment on an assertion by Snell that Opel used French and Belgian prisoners at its Russelsheim plant in the summer of 1940, at a time when the American Hoglund was still looking after GM interests in Germany.

The Nazis had a clear interest in keeping Opel and German Ford under American ownership, despite growing hostility between Washington and Berlin. By the time of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the American stake in German Ford had declined to 52 percent, but Nazi officials argued against a complete takeover. A memorandum to plant managers dated November 25, 1941, acknowledged that such a step would deprive German Ford of "the excellent sales organization" of the parent company and make it more difficult to bring "the remaining European Ford companies under German influence."

Documents suggest that the principal motivation of both companies during this period was to protect their investments. An FBI report dated July 23, 1941 quoted Mooney as saying that he would refuse to take any action that might "make Hitler mad." In fall 1940, Mooney told the journalist Henry Paynter that he would not return his Nazi medal because such an action might jeopardize GM's $100 million investment in Germany. "Hitler has all the cards," Paynter quoted Mooney as saying.

"Mooney probably thought that the war would be over very quickly, so why should we give our wonderful company away," said German researcher Anita Kugler, who used Nazi archives to trace the company's dealings with Nazi Germany.

Even though GM officials were aware of the conversion of its Russelsheim plant to aircraft engine production, they resisted such conversion efforts in the United States, telling shareholders that their automobile assembly lines in Detroit were "not adaptable to the manufacture of other products" such as planes, according to a company document discovered by Snell.

In June 1940, after the fall of France, Henry Ford personally vetoed a U.S. government-approved plan to produce under license Rolls-Royce engines for British fighter planes, according to published accounts by his associates.

Declaration of War Alters Ties

America's declaration of war on Germany in December 1941 made it illegal for U.S. motor companies to have any contact with their subsidiaries on German-controlled territory.

At GM and Ford plants in Germany, reliance on forced labor increased. The story of Elsa Iwanowa, who brought a class-action suit against Ford last March, is typical. At the age of 16, she was abducted from her home in the southern Russian city of Rostov by German soldiers in October 1942 with hundreds of other young women to work at the Ford plant at Cologne.

"The conditions were terrible. They put us in barracks, on three-tier bunks," she recalled in a telephone interview from Belgium, where she now lives. "It was very cold; they did not pay us at all and scarcely fed us. The only reason that we survived was that we were young and fit."

In a court submission, American Ford acknowledges that Iwanowa and others were "forced to endure a sad and terrible experience" at its Cologne plant but maintains that redressing such "tragedies" should be "a government-to-government concern." Spellich, the Ford spokesman, insists the company did not have management control over its German subsidiary during the period in question.

Ford has backed away from its initial claim that it did not profit in any way from forced labor at its Cologne plant. Spellich said that company historians are still researching this issue but have found documents showing that, after the war, American Ford received dividends from its German subsidiary worth approximately $60,000 for the years 1940-43. He declined a request to interview the historians, saying they were "too busy."

The extent of contacts between American Ford and its German-controlled subsidiary after 1941 is likely to be contested at any trial. Simon Reich, an economic historian at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on the German car industry, says he has yet to see convincing evidence that American Ford had any control over its Cologne plant after December 1941. He adds, however, that both "Opel and Ford did absolutely everything they could to ingratiate themselves to the Nazi state."

While there was no direct contact between American Ford and its German subsidiary after December 1941, there appear to have been some indirect contacts. In June 1943, the Nazi custodian of the Cologne plant, Robert Schmidt, traveled to Portugal for talks with Ford managers there. In addition, the Treasury Department investigated Ford after Pearl Harbor for possible illegal contacts with its subsidiary in occupied France, which produced Germany army trucks. The investigation ended without charges being filed.

Even though American Ford now condemns what happened at its Cologne plant during the war, it continued to employ the managers in charge at the time. After the war, Schmidt was briefly arrested by Allied military authorities and barred from working for Ford. But he was reinstated as the company's technical director in 1950 after he wrote to Henry Ford II claiming that he had always "detested" the Nazis and had never been a member of the party. A letter signed by a leading Cologne Nazi in February 1942 describes Schmidt as a trusted party member. Ford maintains that Schmidt's name does not show up on Nazi membership lists.

Mel Weiss, an American attorney for Iwanowa, argues that American Ford received "indirect" profits from forced labor at its Cologne plant because of the overall increase in the value of German operations during the war. He notes that Ford was eager to demand compensation from the U.S. government after the war for "losses" due to bomb damage to its German plants and therefore should also be responsible for any benefits derived from forced labor.

Similar arguments apply to General Motors, which was paid $32 million by the U.S. government for damages sustained to its German plants. Washington attorney Michael Hausfeld, who is involved in the Ford lawsuit, confirms GM also is "on our list" as a possible target.

from United Press International, 2000-Sep-20:

CIA says Nazi general was intelligence source

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Sept. 20 (UPI) -- The Central Intelligence Agency has for the first time confirmed that a high-ranking Nazi general placed his anti-Soviet spy ring at the disposal of the United States during the early days of the Cold War.

The National Archives said in a release Wednesday that the CIA had filed an affidavit in U.S. District Court "acknowledging an intelligence relationship with German General Reinhard Gehlen that it has kept secret for 50 years."

"The CIA's announcement marks the first acknowledgement by that agency that it had any relationship with Gehlen and opens the way for declassification of records about the relationship," the National Archives said.

Gehlen was Hitler's senior intelligence officer on the Eastern Front during the war and transferred his expertise and contacts to the U.S. as World War II reached its climax. While Gehlen's relationship with U.S. intelligence during the 1940s and 1950s has been the topic of some five books over the years, the eventual release of CIA documents pertaining to the development of his European spy ring could shed new light on the origins of the Cold War and early U.S. espionage efforts against Moscow.

Gehlen's network of agents in Europe - including many with Nazi backgrounds who were bailed out of prisoner of war camps by U.S. intelligence officers - was known as the Gehlen Organization and received millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. until 1956.

The CIA's acknowledgement of its dealings with Gehlen came in a response to an appeal of a Freedom of Information Act request by researcher Carl Oglesby, the National Archives said. The agency pledged to release its records on the general in accordance with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.

The Act established the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), which for more than two years has been declassifying documents related to World War II war crimes and releasing them through the National Archives.

"This shows that the law is working," said former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the IWG. "We now must work closely with the Agency to follow through with the release of these records."

from The Nation of 2000-Jan-24, by Ken Silverstein, from http://www.thenation.com/issue/000124/0124silverstein.shtml:

Ford and the Führer
New Documents Reveal the Close Ties Between Dearborn and the Nazis

We have sworn to you once,
But now we make our allegiance permanent.
Like currents in a torrent lost,
We all flow into you.

Even when we cannot understand you,
We will go with you.
One day we may comprehend,
How you can see our future.
Hearts like bronze shields,
We have placed around you,
And it seems to us, that only
You can reveal God's world to us.

This poem ran in an in-house magazine published by Ford Motor Company's German subsidiary in April of 1940. Titled "Führer," the poem appeared at a time when Ford maintained complete control of the German company and two of its top executives sat on the subsidiary's board. It was also a time when the object of Ford's affection was in the process of overrunning Western Europe after already having swallowed up Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in the East.

I found "Führer" among thousands of pages of documents compiled by the Washington law firm of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, which sought damages from Ford on behalf of a Russian woman who toiled as a slave laborer at its German plant. This past September, a judge in New Jersey, Joseph Greenaway Jr., threw the case out on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired. Greenaway, who did not exonerate Ford, did accept the company's argument that "redressing the tragedies of that period has been--and should continue to be--a nation-to-nation, government-to-government concern."

Ford argues that company headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, lost control of its German plant after the United States entered the war in 1941. Hence, Ford is not responsible for any actions taken by its German subsidiary during World War II. "We did not do business in Germany during the war," says Lydia Cisaruk, a Ford spokeswoman. "The Nazis confiscated the plant there and we lost all contact." She added that Ford played a "pivotal role in the American war effort. After the United States entered the war, Ford threw its entire backing to the war effort."

That Ford and a number of other American firms--including General Motors and Chase Manhattan--worked with the Nazis has been previously disclosed. So, too, has Henry Ford's role as a leader of the America First Committee, which sought to keep the United States out of World War II. However, the new materials, most of which were found at the National Archives, are far more damning than earlier revelations. They show, among other things, that up until Pearl Harbor, Dearborn made huge revenues by producing war matériel for the Reich and that the man it selected to run its German subsidiary was an enthusiastic backer of Hitler. German Ford served as an "arsenal of Nazism" with the consent of headquarters in Dearborn, says a US Army report prepared in 1945.

Moreover, Ford's cooperation with the Nazis continued until at least August 1942--eight months after the United States entered the war--through its properties in Vichy France. Indeed, a secret wartime report prepared by the US Treasury Department concluded that the Ford family sought to further its business interests by encouraging Ford of France executives to work with German officials overseeing the occupation. "There would seem to be at least a tacit acceptance by [Henry Ford's son] Mr. Edsel Ford of the reliance...on the known neutrality of the Ford family as a basis of receipt of favors from the German Reich," it says.

* * *

The new information about Ford's World War II role comes at a time of growing attention to corporate collaboration with the Third Reich. In 1998 Swiss banks reached a settlement with Holocaust survivors and agreed to pay $1.25 billion. That set the stage for a host of new Holocaust-related revelations as well as legal claims stemming from such issues as looted art and unpaid insurance benefits. This past November NBC News reported that Chase Manhattan's French branch froze Jewish accounts at the request of German occupation authorities. Chase's Paris branch manager, Carlos Niedermann, worked closely with German officials and approved loans to finance war production for the Nazi Army. In Germany the government and about fifty firms that employed slave and forced labor during World War II--including Bayer, BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler-Chrysler--reached agreement in mid-December to establish a $5.1 billion fund to pay victims. Opel, General Motors' German subsidiary, announced it would contribute to the fund. (As reported last year in the Washington Post, an FBI report from 1941 quoted James Mooney, GM's director of overseas operations, as saying he would refuse to do anything that might "make Hitler mad.") Ford refused to participate in the settlement talks, though its collaboration with the Third Reich was egregious and extensive. Ford's director of global operations, Jim Vella, said in a statement, "Because Ford did not do business in Germany during the war--our Cologne plant was confiscated by the Nazi government--it would be inappropriate for Ford to participate in such a fund."

The generous treatment allotted Ford Motor by the Nazi regime is partially attributable to the violent anti-Semitism of the company's founder, Henry Ford. His pamphlet The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem brought him to the attention of a former German Army corporal named Adolf Hitler, who in 1923 became chairman of the fledgling Nazi Party. When Ford was considering a run for the presidency that year, Hitler told the Chicago Tribune, "I wish that I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help." (The story comes from Charles Higham's Trading With the Enemy, which details American business collaboration with the Nazis.) In Mein Kampf, written two years later, Hitler singled Ford out for praise. "It is Jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the American Union," he wrote. "Every year makes them more and more the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions; only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence." In 1938, long after the vicious character of Hitler's government had become clear, Ford accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Nazi regime's highest honor for foreigners.

* * *

Ford Motor set up shop in Germany in 1925, when it opened an office in Berlin. Six years later, it built a large plant in Cologne, which became its headquarters in the country. Ford of Germany prospered during the Nazi years, especially with the economic boom brought on by World War II. Sales increased by more than half between 1938 and 1943, and, according to a US government report found at the National Archives, the value of the German subsidiary more than doubled during the course of the war.

Ford eagerly collaborated with the Nazis, which greatly enhanced its business prospects and at the same time helped Hitler prepare for war (and after the 1939 invasion of Poland, conduct it). In the mid-thirties, Dearborn helped boost German Ford's profits by placing orders with the Cologne plant for direct delivery to Ford plants in Latin America and Japan. In 1936, as a means of preserving the Reich's foreign reserves, the Nazi government blocked the German subsidiary from buying needed raw materials. Ford headquarters in Dearborn responded--just as the Nazis hoped it would--by shipping rubber and other materials to Cologne in exchange for German-made parts. The Nazi government took a 25 percent cut out of the imported raw materials and gave them to other manufacturers, an arrangement approved by Dearborn.

According to the US Army report of 1945, prepared by Henry Schneider, German Ford began producing vehicles of a strictly military nature for the Reich even before the war began. The company also established a war plant ready for mobilization day in a "'safe' zone" near Berlin, a step taken, according to Schneider, "with the...approval of Dearborn." Following Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland, which set off World War II, German Ford became one of the largest suppliers of vehicles to the Wehrmacht (the German Army). Papers found at the National Archives show that the company was selling to the SS and the police as well. By 1941 Ford of Germany had stopped manufacturing passenger vehicles and was devoting its entire production capacity to military trucks. That May the leader of the Nazi Party in Cologne sent a letter to the plant thanking its leaders for helping "assure us victory in the present [war] struggle" and for demonstrating the willingness to "cooperate in the establishment of an exemplary social state."

Ford vehicles were crucial to the revolutionary Nazi military strategy of blitzkrieg. Of the 350,000 trucks used by the motorized German Army as of 1942, roughly one-third were Ford-made. The Schneider report states that when American troops reached the European theater, "Ford trucks prominently present in the supply lines of the Wehrmacht were understandably an unpleasant sight to men in our Army." Indeed, the Cologne plant proved to be so important to the Reich's war effort that the Allies bombed it on several occasions. A secret 1944 US Air Force "Target Information Sheet" on the factory said that for the previous five years it had been "geared for war production on a high level."

While Ford Motor enthusiastically worked for the Reich, the company initially resisted calls from President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill to increase war production for the Allies. The Nazi government was grateful for that stance, as acknowledged in a letter from Heinrich Albert to Charles Sorenson, a top executive in Dearborn. Albert had been a lawyer for German Ford since at least 1927, a director since 1930 and, according to the Treasury report, part of a German espionage ring operating in the United States during World War I. "The 'Dementi' of Mr. Henry Ford concerning war orders for Great Britain has greatly helped us," Albert wrote in July of 1940, shortly after the fall of France, when England appeared to be on the verge of collapse before the Führer's troops.

Ford's energetic cooperation with the Third Reich did not prevent the company's competitors from seeking to tarnish it by calling attention to its non-German ownership. Ford responded by appointing a majority-German board of directors for the Cologne plant, upon which it bestowed the politically correct Aryan name of Ford Werke. In March of 1941, Ford issued new stock in the Cologne plant and sold it exclusively to Germans, thereby reducing Dearborn's share to 52 percent.

At the time, the Nazi government's Ministry of Economy debated whether the opportunity afforded by the capital increase should be taken to demand a German majority at Ford Werke. The Ministry "gave up the idea"--this according to a 1942 statement prepared by a Ford Werke executive--in part because "there could be no doubt about the complete incorporation, as regards personnel, organization and production system, of Ford Werke into the German national economy, in particular, into the German armaments industry." Beyond that, Albert argued in a letter to the Reich Commission for Enemy Property, the abolition of the American majority would eliminate "the importance of the company for the obtaining of raw materials," as well as "insight into American production and sales methods."

* * *

As 1941 progressed, the board of Ford Werke fretted that the United States would enter the war in support of Britain and the government would confiscate the Cologne plant. To prevent such an outcome, the Cologne management wrote to the Reich Commission that year to say that it "question[ed] whether Ford must be treated as enemy property" even in the event of a US declaration of war on Germany. "Ford has become a purely German company and has taken over all obligations so successfully that the American majority shareholder, independent of the favorable political views of Henry Ford, in some periods actually contributed to the development of German industry," Cologne argued on June 18, 1941, only six months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

In May of 1942, the Superior Court of Cologne finally put Ford Werke in "trusteeship," ruling that it was "under authoritative enemy influence." However, the Nazis never nationalized Ford's German property--plant managers feared it would be turned over to Mercedes or the Hermann Goering Werke, a huge industrial network composed of properties seized by the Reich--and Dearborn maintained its 52 percent share through the duration of the war. Ford Werke even set aside dividend payments due to Dearborn, which were paid after the war. Ford claims that it received only $60,000 in dividend payments. It's not possible to independently verify that--or anything else regarding Dearborn's wartime economic relationship with Cologne--because Ford of America was privately held until 1956, and the company will not make available its balance sheets from the period.

Labor shortages caused by the war--millions of men were at the front and Nazi ideology was violently opposed to the idea of women working--led the Reich to deport millions of people from occupied lands to Germany to work in factories. German companies were encouraged to bid for forced laborers in order to meet production quotas and increase profits. By 1943 half of Ford Werke's work force comprised foreign captives, including French, Russians, Ukrainians and Belgians. In August of 1944 a squad of SS men brought fifteen prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp to Ford Werke. The German researcher Karola Fings, co-author of Working for the Enemy, a book on Nazi slave- and forced-labor programs, to be published this spring, says Ford's worker-inmates toiled for twelve hours a day with a fifteen-minute break. They were given 200 grams of bread and coffee for breakfast, no lunch and a dinner of spinach and three potatoes or soup made of turnip leaves.

* * *

An account by Robert Schmidt, the man appointed to run Ford Werke in 1939, states that the company used forced laborers even before the Nazis put the plant in trusteeship. His statement, sent to a Ford executive in England immediately after Germany's surrender, says that as of 1940 "many of our employees were called to the colours and had to be replaced by whatever was available.... The same applies to 1941. Some 200 French prisoners of war were employed." In a statement to the US Army in 1945, Schmidt said that the Gestapo began to play an important role at Ford Werke after the first foreign workers arrived. With the assistance of W.M. Buchwald, a Ford employee since the mid-thirties, the Gestapo carefully monitored plant activities. "Whenever there was the slightest indication of anti-Nazi feeling, be it amongst foreigners or Germans, the Gestapo tramped down as hard as possible," Schmidt told the Army.

Meanwhile, Ford Werke offered enthusiastic political support for Hitler as well. The fraternal ties between Ford and the Nazis is perhaps best symbolized by the company's birthday gift to the Führer of 35,000 Reichsmarks in April of 1939. Ford Werke's in-house publication couldn't have been more fanatically pro-Nazi if Josef Goebbels had edited it. "Führer," the poem printed at the top of this story, ran in the April 1940 issue, which celebrated Hitler's 51st birthday by running his picture on the cover. The issue carried an excerpt of a speech by Hitler in which he declared that "by natural law of the earth, we are the supreme race and thus destined to rule." In another section of the speech, the Führer declared that communism was "second in wretchedness only to Judaism." The issue from April of the following year--this at roughly the high point of the Third Reich's military victories--featured a photograph of a beaming Hitler visiting with German soldiers on the front lines. "The management of the Ford-Werke salutes our Führer with grateful heart, honesty, and allegiance, and--as before--pledges to cooperate in his life's work: achieving honor, liberty and happiness for Greater Germany and, indeed, for all peoples of Europe," reads the caption.

Robert Schmidt so successfully converted the plant to a war footing that the Nazi regime gave him the title of Wehrwirtschaftsführer, or Military Economic Leader. The Nazis also put Schmidt in charge of overseeing Ford plants in occupied Belgium, Holland and Vichy France. At one point, he and another Cologne executive bitterly argued over who would run Ford of England when Hitler's troops conquered Britain.

Schmidt's personal contributions to Ford Werke's in-house organ reflect his ardently pro-Nazi views. "At the beginning of this year we vowed to give our best and utmost for final victory, in unshakable faithfulness to our Führer," he wrote in December of 1941, the same month as Pearl Harbor. "Today we say with pride that we succeeded if not in reaching all our goals, nevertheless in contributing to a considerable extent in providing the necessary transportation for our troops at the front." The following March, Schmidt penned an article in which he declared, "It depends upon our work whether the front can be supplied with its necessities.... therefore, we too are soldiers of the Fuhrer."

* * *

The Ford family and company executives in Dearborn repeatedly congratulated the management of Ford Werke on the fine work they were doing under the Nazis. In October of 1940 Edsel Ford wrote to Heinrich Albert to say how pleased he was that the company's plants in occupied lands were continuing to operate. "It is fortunate that Mr. Schmidt is in such authority as to be able to bring out these arrangements," said Edsel, who died of cancer during the war. The same letter indicates that Ford was quite prepared to do business with the Nazis if Hitler won the war. Though it was difficult to foresee what would happen after the fighting ended, Edsel told Albert, "a general rearrangement of the ownership of our continental businesses may be required. You will no doubt keep as close to this subject as possible and we will have the benefit of your thoughts and suggestions at the proper time."

"To know that you appreciate our efforts in your and the company's interests is certainly a great encouragement," Albert replied the following month. He went on to praise Schmidt, who had been forced to shoulder immense responsibilities after war broke out. "In fulfilling his task his personality has grown in a way which is almost astonishing." Indeed, Schmidt grew to such a great degree that the Nazis kept him in charge of Ford Werke after they put the company in trusteeship. In February of 1942, when the question of who would run the Cologne plant was still up in the air, a local Nazi official wrote to Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin to put in a good word for Ford's man. The official said he saw "no reason to appoint a special custodian for the enterprise" since Schmidt was "a Party member [who] enjoys my confidence and...the confidence of the German Armed Forces."

* * *

Ford's behavior in France following the German occupation of June 1940 illustrates even more grotesquely its collaborationist posture. As soon as the smoke had cleared, Ford's local managers cut a deal with the occupation authorities that allowed the company to resume production swiftly--"solely for the benefit of Germany and the countries under its [rule]," according to a US Treasury Department document. The report, triggered by the government's concern that Ford was trading with the enemy, is sharply critical of Maurice Dollfus, a Ford director in France since 1929 and the company's manager during the Vichy period. "Mr. Dollfus was required by law to replace directors, and he selected the new directors exclusively from the ranks of prominent collaborationists," says the Treasury report. "Mr. Dollfus did this deliberately to curry favor with the authorities." The report refers to another Ford employee, a certain Amable Roger Messis, as "100% pro-German."

The Treasury Department found that Ford headquarters in Dearborn was in regular contact with its properties in Vichy France. In one letter, penned shortly after France's surrender, Dollfus assured Dearborn that "we will benefit from the main fact of being a member of the Ford family which entitles us to better treatment from our German colleagues who have shown clearly their wish to protect the Ford interest as much as they can." A Ford executive in Michigan wrote back, "We are pleased to learn from your letter...that our organization is going along, and the victors are so tolerant in their treatment. It looks as though we still might have a business that we can carry on in spite of all the difficulties."

The Ford family encouraged Dollfus to work closely with the German authorities. On this score, Dollfus needed little prodding. "In order to safeguard our interests--and I am here talking in a very broad way--I have been to Berlin and have seen General von Schell himself," he wrote in a typed note to Edsel in August of 1940. "My interview with him has been by all means satisfactory, and the attitude you have taken together with your father of strict neutrality has been an invaluable asset for the protection of your companies in Europe." (In a handwritten note in the margin, Dollfus bragged that he was "the first Frenchman to go to Berlin.") The following month Dollfus complained about a shortage of dollars in occupied France. This was a problem, however, that might be merely temporary. "As you know," he wrote Dearborn at the time, "our [monetary] standard has been replaced by another standard which--in my opinion--is a draft on the future, not only in France and Europe but, maybe, in the world." In another letter to Edsel, this one written in late November of 1940, Dollfus said he wanted to "outline the importance attached by high officials to respect the desires and maintain the good will of 'Ford'--and by 'Ford' I mean your father, yourself and the Ford Motor Company, Dearborn."

All this was to the immense satisfaction of the Ford family. In October of 1940, Edsel wrote to Dollfus to say he was "delighted to hear you are making progress.... Fully realize great handicap you are working under." Three months later he wrote again to say that Ford headquarters was "very proud of the record that you and your associates have made in building the company up to its first great position under such circumstances."

Dearborn maintained its communication with Ford of France well after the United States entered the war. In late January of 1942, Dollfus informed Dearborn that Ford's operations had the highest production level of all French manufacturers and, as summed up by the Treasury report, that he was "still relying on the French government to preserve the interests of American stockholders."

During the following months, Dollfus wrote to Edsel several times to report on damages suffered by the French plant during bombing runs by the Royal Air Force. In his reply, Edsel expressed relief that American newspapers that ran pictures of a burning Ford factory did not identify it as a company property. On July 17, 1942, Edsel wrote again to say that he had shown Dollfus's most recent letter to his father and to Dearborn executive Sorenson. "They both join me in sending best wishes for you and your staff, and the hope that you will continue to carry on the good work that you are doing," he said.

As in Germany, Ford's policy of sleeping with the Nazis proved to be a highly lucrative approach. Ford of France had never been very profitable in peacetime--it had paid out only one dividend in its history--but its service to the Third Reich soon pushed it comfortably into the black. Dollfus once wrote to Dearborn to boast about this happy turn of events, adding that the company's "prestige in France has increased considerably and is now greater than it was before the war."

* * *

Treasury Department officials were clearly aghast at Ford's activities. An employee named Randolph Paul sent the report to Secretary Henry Morgenthau with a note that stated, "The increased activity of the French Ford subsidiaries on behalf of the Germans received the commendation of the Ford family in America." Morgenthau soon replied, "If we can legally and ethically do it, I would like to turn over the information in connection with the Ford Motor Company to Senator [Harry] Truman."

Lydia Cisaruk, the Ford spokeswoman, says that Ford Werke's pre-Pearl Harbor support for the Third Reich was largely unknown to company headquarters. Neither of the two Dearborn executives on Ford Werke's board, Edsel Ford and Charles Sorenson, attended board meetings after 1938. "By 1940, Dearborn was becoming less and less involved in day-to-day operations," she says. "There was a gradual loss of control." Asked about Ford Werke's political support for the Nazis, as seen in its in-house newsletter, she replied: "Looking at the years leading up to the war, no one could foresee what was going to happen. A number of countries were negotiating with Germany and Germany was repeatedly saying that it was interested in peaceful solutions. The United States was talking to Germany until the two countries went to war." She concedes that some "foreign" labor was employed at the plant beginning in 1940, but says Dearborn had no knowledge of that at the time. Ford is currently conducting an exhaustive investigation into Ford Werke, she says. When the research is completed this year, the company will make available all of the documentary evidence it has accumulated, including financial records. While Ford did not take part in the German slave-labor talks, Cisaruk says it is in preliminary discussions with Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat to establish a humanitarian US-based fund for Holocaust survivors. "We do want to help people who suffered at the hands of the Nazis," she says.

* * *

Production at Ford Werke slowed at the end of the war, in part because of power shortages caused by Allied bombing runs, but activity never came to a halt. Soon after Germany's capitulation, Ford representatives from England and the United States traveled to Cologne to inspect the plant and plan for the future. In 1948 Henry Ford visited Cologne to celebrate the 10,000th truck to roll off the postwar assembly line there. Two years later, Ford of Germany rehired Schmidt--who had been arrested and briefly held by US troops at the war's end--after he wrote a letter to Dearborn in which he insisted that he had fervently hated the Nazis. He was one of six key executives from the Nazi era who moved back into important positions at Ford after 1945. "After the war, Ford did not just reassume control of a factory, but it also took over the factory's history," says historian Fings. "Apparently no one at Ford was interested in casting light upon this part of history, not even to explicitly proclaim a distance from the practices of Ford Werke during the Nazi era." Schmidt remained with Ford until his death in 1962.

The high point of Ford's cynicism was yet to come. Before its fall, the Nazi regime had given Ford Werke about $104,000 in compensation for damages caused by Allied bombings (Ford also got money for bombing damages from the Vichy government). Dearborn was not satisfied with that amount. In 1965 Ford went before the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the US to ask for an additional $7 million. (During the hearings, commission attorney Zvonko Rode pointed to the embarrassing fact--which Ford's attorney did not dispute--that most of the manufactured products destroyed during the bombings had been intended for the use of the Nazi armed forces.) In the end, the commission awarded the company $1.1 million--but only after determining that Ford had used a fraudulent exchange rate to jack up the size of the alleged damages. The commission also found that Dearborn had sought compensation for merchandise that had been destroyed by flooding.

Ford's eagerness to be compensated for damages incurred to Ford Werke during the Nazi era makes its current posture of denying any association with the wartime plant all the more hypocritical. These new revelations may force Ford to reconsider its responsibilities with regard to slave labor. In the meantime, new legal developments could also create problems for the company. Last year California passed a law that extends the statute of limitations on Holocaust-related claims. In November Senator Charles Schumer of New York introduced a bill in Congress that would do the same thing at the federal level.

from The Nation of 1998-Dec-28, from http://www.thenation.com/1998/issue/981228/1228fisch.htm:

Selected Editorial

Bertelsmann's Nazi Past

By Hersch Fischler and John Friedman

---

 

While much of corporate Germany is reluctantly confronting its past, some companies, like Bertelsmann AG, have been propagating myths. In its official history Bertelsmann insists that it was "closed by the Nazis" for refusing to "toe the party line." The facts are that Bertelsmann cooperated with the regime, publishing a wide range of Hitlerian propaganda.

As the third-largest global media empire and largest publisher of English-language trade books in the world, Bertelsmann has annual revenues of $14 billion and operates in more than fifty countries. The company owns book clubs, magazines, newspapers and music labels such as RCA; co-owns CLT-UFA, Europe's biggest TV and radio company; and has a major stake in America Online. In the United States its holdings include Random House and Bantam Doubleday Dell, and it is a partner with Barnes & Noble in a new Internet bookstore.

The Bertelsmann claim has appeared, among other places, in Brill's Content, which reported in its October issue that Bertelsmann had been shut down by the Nazis. However, our exhaustive inquiries in Germany have unearthed no documentation of that claim. Apparently as a result of those inquiries, Bertelsmann has removed from its Web pages all references to its history in the Nazi era.

The present Bertelsmann AG was incorporated in 1971, but the original firm was founded in 1835 in Gütersloh, Germany, as a publisher of prayer books and hymnals. Bertelsmann began to publish books during the early Hitler period that were used by Nazi propagandists. In 1934, for example, the firm issued a book seemingly intended for the Brownshirts titled Dr. Martin Luther's Little Catechism for the Man in Brown (Der kleine Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers für den braunen Mann), edited by Werner Betcke, which praised Hitler and the Nazi movement. In 1936 Bertelsmann brought out a popular edition of People Without Space (Volk ohne Raum) by Hans Grimm, an ardent Nazi supporter. The book was used to justify Hitler's expansionist attacks on Germany's neighbors. Throughout the thirties, Bertelsmann published bestsellers by authors favored by Göbbels's propaganda ministry, including P.C. Ettighoffer and Werner von Langsdorff. Such books glorified battles and death and primed the Germans for war.

There were also patently anti-Semitic works, like Hans Hoeschen's Between the Vistula and the Volga, which asserts that Jewish civilians massacred Ukrainian women and children and which contains pictures of forlorn men with beards above the caption: "Jews look at you." In the late thirties and during the war, the publishing house printed "blood and soil" action stories by the hundreds of thousands for soldiers and young men. Titles included With Bombs and Machine Guns Over Poland, German Tanks Enter Hell and We Broadcast for Franco, by Hellmut Führing, a propagandist for the air force legion that bombed Guernica.

Although difficult to locate today, well over a hundred different titles were published by Bertelsmann in the thirties and forties. (The firm published many kinds of books during this period, including theological literature--a small portion of which was critical of the Nazis--and German classics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.) Shortly before Christmas 1939, Bertelsmann brought out special editions that could easily be sent by military post to soldiers at the front. These lightweight editions were so successful that Göbbels appealed to other publishers for such materials. Issuing more than 20 million books, Bertelsmann was the largest supplier to the army and supplied the SS.

In 1943 Bertelsmann, like most other publishers of religious works, was forced to close its Der Rufer theological division. But it continued to publish other types of books. In 1943 it was investigated by an army court for illegally procuring paper and profiteering, according to archival documents, and several senior executives were arrested in 1944. Heinrich Mohn, a member of the founding family of the firm as well as principal owner and chief executive, was not arrested; the executives were released after some months; and Bertelsmann continued in business. (A Bertelsmann spokesperson says the firm was "rendered inoperable.")

When Bertelsmann applied after the war for a second publishing license, it was turned down by occupation authorities. Mohn had "forgotten" to mention that he had been a "passive" member of the SS, as well as a supporter of the Hitler Youth and a member of the prestigious National Socialist Flying Corps, according to de-Nazification files in the central state archive in Düsseldorf. In 1947 Bertelsmann wrote to the Allied authorities that because of illness and age, Mohn, then 62, was leaving as manager, to be replaced by his son Reinhard Mohn, who immediately and successfully applied for the license. Reinhard Mohn, who currently controls the majority voting power of Bertelsmann, was born in 1921. He served in the Luftwaffe, according to de-Nazification files. His vita on a Bertelsmann Web site states that he was in the Africa Corps; Der Spiegel reported he was in the elite Hermann Göring Division. He was taken prisoner by the Americans in 1943 and was released in early 1946.

Only recently has the true story of Bertelsmann's Nazi-era activities begun to emerge. Co-author of this editorial Hersch Fischler told the story in Die Weltwoche, a Swiss weekly magazine, which prompted 3Sat, a joint German-Swiss-Austrian TV venture, to broadcast a short program in early November. Bertelsmann told The Nation, "In light of recent questions...about our company's past we have begun a complete examination and evaluation of the vast amount of documents, publications and internal communications from that time." A team of scholars and historians will be engaged and will have "unrestricted access" to the company's files. It's up to younger officials like chief executive Thomas Middelhoff to insure an honest examination.

---

Hersch Fischler is a sociologist and investigative journalist who writes on current history and German media. John Friedman is a journalist who specializes in culture and politics.

For Further information, please visit the following:

	http://www.bertelsmann.de/bag/english - Bertelsmann Website. Background on the media conglomerate and its numerous companies. http://www.ita.doc.gov/media/assets1.htm - U.S. Government Report on Stolen Assets and Switzerland's Financial Collaboration with the Nazis. Coordinated by Stuart E. Eizenstat, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade. http://www.ushmm.org/assets/index.html - U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's International List of Current Activities Regarding Holocaust-Era Assets. Includes details of attempts to trace assets, archival research, and information for Holocaust survivors seeking reparations. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm - Washington Post article on American Business' Alleged Collaboration with the Nazis. "Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration," by Michael Dobbs.

Send your letter to the editor to letters@thenation.com.

The Nation Digital Edition http://www.thenation.com

Copyright (c) 1998, The Nation Company, L.P. All rights reserved. Electronic redistribution for nonprofit purposes is permitted, provided this notice is attached in its entirety. Unauthorized, for-profit redistribution is prohibited. For further information regarding reprinting and syndication, please call The Nation at (212) 209-5426, or send e-mail to Danielle Veith at dveith@thenation.com.

from http://www.tiac.net/users/ddiam/Q/CIA.html (the article this comes from is included in its entirety in the chapter titled War Drugs):

[...]

The corruption of the CIA is almost complete. From being a gathering of the best and brightest brought together as the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) to help the U.S. fight and win World War II, the CIA began its decline almost immediately after the war when it imported and absorbed into its leadership the remnants of Hitler's spy organization under Nazi spy master Reinhardt Gehlin. When protests were raised, Nelson Rockefeller, who had been the major force in urging the CIA to put the former Nazis on the CIA payroll, dismissed concerns, saying "They're on our side now." In the name of protecting the world from godless communism the CIA became another government, more powerful than most.

[...]

excerpts from The Rockefeller Syndicate, chapter 10 of Murder by Injection by Eustace Mullins:

[...]

In 1930, Standard Oil announced that it had purchased an alcohol monopoly in Germany, a deal which had been set up by I.G. Farben. After Hitler came to power, John D. Rockefeller assigned his personal press agent, Ivy Lee, to Hitler to serve as a fulltime advisor on the rearmament of Germany, a necessary step for setting up World War II. Standard Oil then built large refineries in Germany for the Nazis and continued to supply them with oil during World War II. In the 1930's, Standard Oil was receiving in payment from Germany large shipments of musical instruments and ships which had been built in German yards.

The dreaded Gestapo, the Nazi police force, was actually built from the worldwide intelligence network which I.G. Farben had maintained since its inception. Herman Schmitz, who had succeeded Carl Bosch as head of I.G., had been personal advisor to Chancellor Breuning; when Hitler took over, Schmitz then became his most trusted secret counselor.

So well concealed was the association that the press had orders never to photograph them together. Schmitz was named an honorary member of the Reichstag, while his assistant, Carl Krauch, became Goering's principal advisor in carrying out the Nazis' Four Year Plan. A business associate Richard Krebs, later testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, "The I.G. Farbinidustrie, I know from personal experience, was already, in 1934, completely in the hands of the Gestapo." This was a misstatement; the I.G. Farben had merely allied itself WITH the Gestapo.

In 1924, Krupp Industries was in serious financial difficulty; the firm was saved by a $10 million cash loan from Hallgarten & Company and Goldman Sachs, two of Wall Street's best known firms. The planned re-armament of Germany was able to proceed only after Dillon Read floated $100 million of German bonds on Wall Street for that purpose. It was hardly surprising that at the conclusion of the Second World War, General William Draper was appointed Economic Czar of Germany, being named head of the Economic Division of the Allied Military Government. He was a partner of Dillon Read.

In 1939, Frank Howard, a vice-president of Standard Oil, visited Germany. He later testified, "We did our best to work out complete plans for a modus vivendi which would operate throughout the term of the war, whether we came in or not." At this time, American I.G. had on its board of directors Charles Mitchell, president of the National City Bank, the Rockefeller Bank, Carl Bosch, Paul Warburg, Herman Schmitz and Schmitz' nephew, Max Iigner.

Although his name is hardly well known, Frank Howard was for many years a key figure in Standard Oil operations as director of its research and its international agreements. He was also chairman of the research committee at Sloan Kettering Institute during the 1930's; his appointee at Sloan Kettering, Dusty Rhoads, headed the experimentation in the development of chemotheraphy -- which killed more humans than most wars. During the Second World War, Rhoads headed the Chemical Warfare Service (talents should never be wasted), in Washington at U.S. Army Headquarters. It was Frank Howard who had persuaded Alfred Sloan and Charles Kettering of General Motors in 1939 to give their fortunes to the Cancer Center (and now you know why cancer won't ever be cured), which then took on their names.

[...]

During the Second World War, GAF was supposedly owned by a Swiss firm; it came under considerable suspicion as an "enemy" concern and was finally taken over by the United States government. John Foster Dulles had been director of GAF from 1927 to 1934; he was also a director of International Nickel, which was part of the network of I.G. Farben firms.

Dulles was related to the Rockefeller family through the Avery connection. He was attorney for the organization of a new investment firm, set up by Avery Rockefeller, in 1936 which was called Schroder-Rockefeller Company. It combined operations of the Schroder Bank, Hitler's personal bank, and the Rockefeller interest. Baron Kurt von Schroder was one of Hitler's closest confidants, and a leading officer of the SS. He was head of the Keppler Associates, which funneled money to the SS for leading German Corporations. Keppler was the official in charge of Industril Fats during Goering's Four Year Plan, which was launched in 1936.

American I.G. changed its name to General Aniline and Film (GAF) during the Second World War, but it was still wholly owned by I.G. Chemie of Switzerland, a subsidiary of I.G. Farben of Germany. It was headed by Gadow, brother-in-law of Herman Schmitz. I.G. Farben's international agreements directly affected the U.S. war effort, because they set limits on U.S. supplies of magnesium, synthetic rubber and crucial medical supplies. The director of I. G. Farben's dyestuffs division, Baron George von Schnitzler, was related to the powerful von Rath family, the J.H. Stein Bankhaus which held Hitler's bank account and the von Mallinckrodt family, the founders of the drug firm in the United States.

Like other I.G. officials, he had become an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime. I.G. Farben gave four and a half million riechmarks to the Nazi Party in 1933; by 1945, I.G. had given the Party 440 million riechmarks, a sum which equalled all contributions by I.G. to all other recipients during that period.

One scholar of the Nazi era, Antony Sutton, has focused heavily on German supporters of Hitler, while ignoring the crucial role played by the Bank of England and its Governor, Sir Montague Norman, in financing the Nazi regime. Sutton's position on this problem may have been influenced by the fact he is British. In view of the outspoken statements from Adolf Hitler about Jewish influence in Germany, it would be difficult to explain the role of I.G. Farben in the Nazi era. Peter Hayes' definitive study of I.G. Farben shows that in 1933, it had 10 Jews on its governing boards. It has been previously pointed out that I.G., from its inception, was a Rothschild concern, formulated by the House of Rothschild and implemented through its agents, Max Warburg in Germany and Standard Oil in the United States.

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands joined the SS during the early 1930's. He then joined the board of an I.G. subsidiary, Farben Bilder, from which he took the name of his postwar supersecret policy making group, the Bilderbergers. Farben executives played an important role in organizing the Circle of Friends for Heinrich Himmler, although it was initially known as Keppler's Circle of Friends, Keppler being the chairman of an I.G. subsidiary. His nephew, Fritz J. Dranefuss, was the personal assistant to Heinrich Himmler. Of the forty members of the Circle of Friends, which provided ample funds for Himmler, eight were executives of I.G. Farben or its subsidiaries.

Despite the incredible devastation of most German cities from World War II air bombings, the I.G. Farben building in Frankfurt, one of the largest buildings there, "miraculously" survived intact. A large Rockefeller mansion in Frankfurt also was left untouched by the war, despite the saturation bombing. Frankfurt was the birthplace of the Rothschild family.

It was hardly coincendental that the postwar government of Germany, Allied Military Government, should set up its offices in the magnificent I.G. Farben building. This government was headed by General Lucius Clay, who later became a partner of Lehman Brothers bankers in New York. The Political Division was headed by Robert Murphy, who would preside at the Nuremburg Trials where he was successful in glossing over the implication of I.G. Farben officials and Baron Kurt von Schroder. Schroder was held a short time in a detention camp and then set free to return to his banking business.

[...]

NutraSweet^tm, the NutraPoison by Alex Constantine explores the dark roots of aspartame:

[...]

Nazis and chemical warfare are recurring themes in the aspartame story. Currently, the chief patent holder of the sweetener is the Monsanto Co., based in St. Louis. In 1967, Monsanto entered into a joint venture with I.G. Farbenfabriken, the aforementioned financial core of the Hitler regime and the key supplier of poison gas to the Nazi racial extermination program. After the Holocaust, the German chemical firm joined with American counterparts in the development of chemical warfare agents and founded the "Chemagrow Corporation" in Kansas City, Missouri, a front that employed German and American specialists on behalf of the U.S. Army Chemical corps.

[...]

The Nazi connection to Monsanto crops up again on the board of directors with John Reed, a former crony of "Putzi" Hanfstangl, a Harvard-bred emigre to Germany who talked Hitler out of committing suicide in 1924 and contributed to the financing of Mein Kampf. Reed is also chairman of Citibank and long a confederate of the CIA.

[...]

from a FreeRepublic forum, from "M.Sally" to "Doug from Upland," 08/25/97 23:40:38 PDT:

I pulled the following off the BeachBum Scandal Page. I don't know the date that it appeared in paper: This letter appeared in today's Roanoke Times

"Two events, sixty years apart but eerily similiar, prey persistantly on my mind. In January 1933, in my native country, Adolph Hitler was appointed chancellor. The appointment was then confirmed by a 44% plurality for the National Socialists. In 1992, in my adopted country, Bill Clinton was elected by a 43% plurality. Significantly, both won weak mandates from minorities of the electorate, but by a cunning manipulation asserted far broader support. Many thoughtful Germans, recognizing Hitler's true character, foresaw chaos and destruction. They were harassed, persued, had "accidents" or disappeared. Hitler's party expanded national health care, thus enlarging each citizen's records; federalized public schools; set curricula and programs for young and old alike. Religion was actively discouraged. Obedience was demanded of each citizen. Thirteen years of National Socialism institutionalized fear by constant verbal terrorism, lies and fiendish distortion of truth. Government held the citizenry hostage through dread. A cowardly judiciary silently acquiesced. Government controlled an intimidated press. In 1945, the awful consequences of terror, silence and fear stood naked before the world. The cost in human lives and dignity was inexcusable. I saw, I lived there. We are not immune. The tragedy can repeat itself here! America today is confronted by the depreciated values of socialism advanced for thirtyfive years. Its self-discipline undermined, a disoriented society lost faith in itself and now denies the value of character. Clinton continues to disdain character. America has been seduced by dependancy on governmental solutions lacking integrity, thus avoiding personal responsibility. Expediency rules. The sickening spectacle of partial-birth abortions is an abomination [The editor of this compilation is _radically_ pro-choice]. Government corruption is rampant. Our society is sick with tragedy. It's imperative that increasing regulation by an overpowering government be halted and reversed.

Elinor Wright"

from TPDL 2000-Jul-21, from Capital Hill Blue:

Jewish Group Decries New documents

WASHINGTON (AP) - Documents unearthed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center indicate that the government of Hungary notified U.S. occupation forces in Germany in 1947 that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was in the U.S. zone, but U.S. authorities did not respond to the request for his extradition for four years.

Just a year earlier, Eichmann had escaped from a U.S. prison camp. With the help of ex-Nazi officials, he eventually got to Argentina in 1958. But the founder of the Wiesenthal Center believes that if the United States would have taken the Hungarian request seriously, Eichmann, who was in charge of the ``Final Solution'' to exterminate the Jews of Europe, might have been found far earlier.

``They made it easier for Adolf Eichmann to live in anonymity, and not to worry because no one was looking for him,'' said Rabbi Marvin Hier.

The letter, addressed to the military governor of the American zone of Germany, requested that Eichmann be delivered to Hungary to stand trial for participating ``with the instructions of Himler (sic) SS commander in the liquidation work of the Jews in Hungary.'' It was sent on April 23, 1947, by Stephan Ries, the minister of justice in Hungary.

A reply to the letter, dated May 15, 1951, was sent by the president of the U.S. extradition board, which was responsible for sending war criminals to other nations for trial.

The response stated that the request for extradition was denied, because a ``definite address'' was not provided, and more details of the alleged crimes were needed. ``The material submitted in this case does not meet the technical requirements required,'' the letter read.

Hier said the letter showed ``callous disinterest'' on the part of the U.S. government, and that it was because Hungary was a communist country.

``For the United States to sit on this information,'' he said, ``just because the country was communist, is outrageous.''

A Wiesenthal Center historian said that since the Nazi threat disappeared after the war, and the United States was more concerned about the Soviets, American officials ``wanted to get out of the war crimes business.''

``Had the U.S. issued the equivalent of an all-points bulletin, maybe more people would have been looking for him,'' said Aaron Breitbart, senior researcher at the center. ``The reason we still have the Nazi war criminal issue today is that the job was not properly done a half a century ago.''

Another historian disagreed with the center's assessment, saying the U.S. search concentrated on Austria, Eichmann's last known whereabouts, and that several nations, such as France and Greece, asked for Eichmann's extradition.

``The request from Hungary was not very high on the agenda,'' said Hans Safrian, a former fellow at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington and the author of a book on Eichmann.

Safrian also noted that Nazi war criminals were extradited to and later hanged in several communist nations, including Poland and Czechoslovakia.

``It was a common practice,'' Safrian said. ``The perpetrators didn't like that, because they knew they would get harsher treatment in the East.''

Still, Safrian concurred that the long delay of the U.S. response showed that the Americans were ``not very forthcoming.''

Israeli intelligence agents eventually found Eichmann near Buenos Aires in 1960. He was tried in Israel for his crimes against European Jews, and was hanged in 1962. Simon Wiesenthal, for whom the Los Angeles center is named, was involved in the search for Eichmann and several other suspected war criminals. Wiesenthal currently lives in Vienna, Austria.

``Eichmann deported more than 400,000 Jewish men, women and children just from Hungary to the death camps,'' Safrian said. ``That's the main thing.''

On the Net: Simon Wiesenthal Center: http://www.wiesenthal.com/

from http://www.ahriman.com/1zorn.htm:

Ahriman Series: Unwelcome Books on Fascism No. 6

Monika Zorn (ed.)

Hitler's Victims Killed Twice

The West German Final Solution of Antifascism on the territory of the GDR

With a foreword by Gilles Perrault

1994, 410 p., 148 Ill., 25 facsimile copies, 2 maps, German
DM 38.-/US$ 28.-
ISBN 3-89484-401-9

The "prescribed" antifascism of the GDR is on everybody's lips, and at the moment every effort is being made to put an end to it forever. Today's prescription is quite the contrary: Hitler's victims are to be no longer remembered, the memorial places on the grounds of the former concentration camps are to be no longer accessible to the public, memorials are being demolished, and the names of the resistance fighters erased from books and street signs. The few antifascists still living are being humiliated and taken to court, their pensions are being cancelled, their deeds denied. By means of numerous examples, this book documents the way in which Hitler's successor state is taking revenge on the GDR for its antifascism.

From the foreword by Gilles Perrault:
"In their venomous zeal the present victors are going well beyond the lines of what is bearable. By renaming the alleys, streets, schools, and high schools that were named after the fighters of the German Resistance killed in action, they are not only taking revenge on the national level: they are also committing an assault upon the collective memory that has been kept alive far beyond the borders of Germany. Whether right-wing or left-wing, whether their contacts were with London or Moscow: those who stood up against the Hitlerian barbarity are on our side forever."

In Prince Bernhard - personal background and his part in starting the Bilderberg Conferences (part of Tony Gosling's bilderberg.org material), you can learn the details behind the following:

• Bilderberg's founder of record is Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

• Prince Bernhard was once a member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS), the infamous elite stormtroopers of Hitler's regime. This has been explained as an arrangement of convenience, and it very well may have been just that, but his opportunism demonstrates dubious character (which Bernhard went on to demonstrate in more obvious ways many years later in his business dealings).

• Prince Bernhard was a hot shot employee of I.G. Farben, whose Degesch subsidiary was responsible for the Zyklon B poison gas used in concentration camps to murder (``euthanize'') millions of people.

I have collected some curious facts and figures about the Netherlands. It is the nation closest to the original National Socialist party mentality, particularly by its collectivism, ethnocentrism, institutionalized euthanasia, monopoly of force by those in and favored by the state, and animal rights positions.

• The government of the Netherlands donated a shipment of Mini-Ingram submachine guns to the Palestinian Authority Security Services (which the Israeli brokers refused to turn over, probably concluding rationally that the weapons would likely be eventually used to murder Jewish soldiers or civilians).

• The Netherlands has onerous firearms regulations, so onerous many Dutch citizens believe guns are completely banned there:

  A permit (issued by local police) is required for possession of a firearm, must be renewed once per year, and is effectively discretionary. The police must be satisfied that the applicant has a legitimate purpose (self-defense is not a recognized purpose), that the applicant is technically competent, and that the applicant has no history of mental instability. These sorts of provisions are routinely abused, wherever they exist, to capriciously grant or refuse applications. This is the type of gun control regime emplaced by the Nazis, where in fact they were a liberalization of draconian laws of the Weimar republic.

  An applicant for a permit must be a member of an authorized shooting club. If there is no such club nearby, or no such club will admit the applicant, or the applicant cannot afford the membership fees, the applicant will be rejected.

  Self-defense with a firearm is a crime, because ammunition and weapons must be stored separately, with the weapon locked up, at all times except while in actual use at a range. The weapon can only be transported to and from an authorized range or to be repaired or delivered for lawful sale.

  Dutch police carry handguns routinely for self-defense, and have the authority to examine the houses of gun licensees any time they want to, to verify ``safe storage'' of firearms (verify that they cannot be used for self-defense, and harass their owners).

  2% of Dutch household have guns, by far the lowest rate in Europe. Per capita murder in the Netherlands, 1.18 per 1000, is slightly higher than in Switzerland (1.17 per 1000), which has the highest proportion (32.6%) of gun-equipped households, most with select fire (fully automatic) assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns. (data from anti-gun Swiss criminologist Martin Killias, average murder rates for the years of 1983 - 1986).

• The Netherlands is unusually hostile to ethnic/racial outsiders - they are nationalists. In the recently instituted ``Koppelingswet'' campaign, state records are scanned for anyone residing in the Netherlands without proper state authorization to do so, and those identified are harassed by the state and businesses alike, and eventually interned in detention facilities and deported. In many cases, the affected people have been tax-paying residents in otherwise good standing for many years. The state spreads propaganda that these unauthorized residents are disproportionately prone to criminality in order to manufacture public consent to the deportation campaign.

• The state of the Netherlands is socialist. It has socialized education, like the United States, but it also has a socialized health care system, like most states of Europe. It also has a socialized housing system, wherein ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented.

• Animal rights is a burgeoning and official cause in the Netherlands:

  In a recent survey (published by AVRO television and Algemeen Dagblad, April 1999), only 49% of respondents held that man is superior to animals, with 35% saying simply ``No'', 4% saying it depends on the animal, and 5% ``Don't know''. Only 45% thought it was acceptable to kill a mouse, and only 48% thought it was acceptable to kill a rat. 88% of respondents thought it was acceptable to kill a (far more intelligent) pig to grace the dinner table, but only 40% thought it was acceptable to kill deer (which are less intelligent than pigs) for the dinner table. While 89% approved of killing cows in order to have a tasty dinner, only 24% approved of using cows in experiments (nearly all of which are intended to advance the prosperity of the human race in one way or another). Nonetheless, 71% of respondents were ``certainly'' or ``probably'' prepared to eat less meat.

  The Netherlands led the protest against European importation of sustainably trapped fur.

  Fox farms are banned in the Netherlands.

  KLM, the national airline, has permanently embargoed shipments of rodents, reptiles, and amphibians, seriously impacting the ability of researchers to obtain experimental animals, but continues to ship horses, one-day chicks, dogs and cats, ornamental fish, animals owned by zoos, and animals being returned to the wild. KLM imposed the ban under intense pressure from Dutch animal rights groups, in the wake of an outrageous blunder in which several hundred Chinese squirrels, whose shipping papers were out of order, were shredded alive with a wood chipper by KLM employees.

• Most remarkably, the Netherlands has a state-instituted system of human euthanasia, the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act (text 2000-Nov-20, from the Upper House of the States General of the Netherlands, made law on 2001-Apr-10). It is now legal for two concurring doctors to forcibly murder a Dutchman they declare to be mentally ill with no prospect for escape from misery. Murder of the elderly is similarly legal. Review of doctors' decisions is after the fact.

Read this compendium of articles on recent Dutch euthanasia.

from TPDL 1999-Jan-31, by Paul Craig Roberts of Creative Writers' Syndicate, from NewsMax January 27, 1999 (this article also appears in its entirety in the Laws Gone Mad chapter.):

Shuffling For Clinton

Before senators vote to acquit a president who has degraded our highest political office and the law of the land, they should sit down together with Christabel Bielenberg's story of life in National Socialist Germany.

In 1934, Christabel Burton, an Englishwoman, married Peter Bielenberg, a German lawyer. They settled in Hamburg and over the next years experienced the breakdown of German law and institutions. In 1969, Christabel Bielenberg told their story in her book, "The Past Is Myself," which was resurrected 20 years later on Masterpiece Theatre as "Christabel."

Adolph Hitler's National Socialists had a more difficult time reshaping Germany to suit themselves than Lenin's Communists experienced in Russia. The Czar's government in Russia, although highly bureaucratized, was a personal form of government. Its rationale and power flowed from the Czar. When the Czar and his family were murdered by the Communists, his government ceased to exist, thereby providing the Communists with a clean slate.

In contrast, German government institutions were independent of party and person. The National Socialists had to contend for a while with independent law and courts and accustomed practices that frustrated their aims.

Hitler's government responded by ignoring inconvenient court decisions, by putting in place a parallel court system, and by replacing traditional law with its own administrative orders. As time passed, fear mounted as new legal terms appeared that cloaked lawlessness with language such as "protective custody," "People's Court" and "offense against the natural healthy instinct of the people."

After building fear with arbitrary power, the National Socialists were able to force people step by step into compromise with their integrity and complicity with evil.

The Hitlerization of Germany was achieved by accustoming the population to a gradual degradation of law and morals until people shuffled for the National Socialists the way prisoners, deprived of shoelaces, shuffle in their shoes.

At this moment nothing but an uncertain Senate stands between us and the degradation of our civic life by the Clintons.

Clinton has already corrupted the media, which shuffles for him.

Clinton has corrupted the Democrats in the House of Representatives, who shuffle for him.

And now Bill Clinton and his government are betting that the U.S. Senate will shuffle for him. Fearful of its constitutional duty, the Senate is already shuffling toward an extra-constitutional compromise that will add to our degradation.

Just as many Germans did not comprehend where the shuffle was leading until it was too late, many Americans are not aware of the implications of excusing the country's chief executive from perjury and obstruction of justice.

If Clinton remains in office, the precedent will be established that the president is above some laws in some circumstances. Caesar will have crossed the Rubicon. The laws, above which the president sits, will increase in number with time, and other executive branch officials will gradually acquire by extension the distinction of being higher than law.

Indeed, the executive branch is already filled with little dictators. Wherever one looks, one sees administrative agencies behaving as if they are legislative bodies. Clinton's EPA is attempting to force the recall of federally certified Toyota/Lexus vehicles based on the issuance of a retroactive standard.

Clinton's Justice Department is using coerced consent degrees to establish illegal and unconstitutional racial quotas as the law of the land.

Clinton's Treasury, Justice, State and Interior Departments are using executive orders and abusing their regulatory authority in order to gradually criminalize gun ownership.

Clinton's appointees are exercising power without being confirmed in office by the Senate, and Clinton's executive branch departments are implementing treaties that have not been ratified by the Senate.

Federal prosecutors fabricate cases in order to meet conviction quotas for "white collar crimes," "environmental crimes" and drug crimes.

After a two-year investigation of prosecutorial misconduct, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette concluded: "Perjury has become the coin of the realm in federal law enforcement."

How is perjury to be rooted out of federal law enforcement when it cannot be rooted out of the White House?

If the president can obstruct justice in order to hide sexual misconduct, a prosecutor can obstruct justice in order to hide misconduct that would exonerate a defendant.

Fair trials will disappear, and our civil rights will shuffle off the stage.

Before Senators shuffle for Clinton, they should add up the stakes.

from The New American, 1995-May-29, by William Norman Grigg:

A Post-Oklahoma Kristallnacht

It is part of the genius of a great leader to make adversaries of different fields appear as always belonging to one category.... [A] number of different internal enemies must always be regarded as one in such a way that in the opinion of the mass ... the war is being waged against one enemy alone.

Thus wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, explaining the rhetorical strategy his party used to beguile the German public into supporting the National Socialist movement. Seeking political advantage in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton has displayed a similar gift for ideological reductionism, consolidating his political opponents on the right into "one enemy alone."

This campaign began during an April 24th speech in Milwaukee, in which Mr. Clinton denounced "purveyors of hatred and division, the promoters of paranoia.... They spread hate. They leave the impression ... by their very words, that violence is acceptable." By denouncing "some of the things that are regularly said over the airwaves in America today," Mr. Clinton artlessly sought to impugn conservative talk radio as an accomplice in the terrorist attack.

The President revisited this theme during an April 30th speech in New York City's Waldorf Astoria. Citing the Oklahoma City bombing as an attack by "the forces of organized evil," Mr. Clinton generously allowed that his conservative political opponents were not directly responsible for the carnage. However, he insisted, "they do practice and they do preach violence against those who are of a different color, a different background, or who worship a different God. They do feed on fear and uncertainty. They do promote paranoia. In the name of freedom of speech, they have abandoned the responsibility that democratic freedoms impose on all of us...."

Mr. Clinton's rhetorical net drew indiscriminately from every kind, gathering peaceful, principled critics of the federal government together with terrorists and child-killers:

"Many of these people attack our government and the citizens who work for it who actually guarantee the freedoms they abuse. In the name of building for a better future they would relive the most destructive chapters of evil.... They can certainly snuff out innocent lives and sow fear in our hearts. They are indifferent to the slaughter of children. They threaten our freedoms and our way of life, and we must stop them."

In a May 1st speech in Washington, DC before leaders of EMILY's List, a radical feminist group, the President once more ruminated on the subject of "the forces of organized evil," and again associated critics of federal usurpation with the specific individuals responsible for the bombing: "... we must also stand up against those who say that somehow this is all right, this is somehow a political act -- people who say, I love my country but I hate my government. These people, who do they think they are, saying that their government has stamped out human freedom?"

Displaying the cravenness which is his most recognizable trait, Mr. Clinton has declined specifically to identify "these people." As liberal columnist Charles Krauthammer has observed, the President has "repeatedly charged dark and unseen forces, a shadowy unnamed 'they,' with spreading paranoia -- a classic of the very paranoid style of politics Clinton is ostensibly decrying."

The President was certainly secure in the knowledge that the Establishment media cartel would do the dirty work of defaming specific targets -- and such has indeed been the case.

"Right-Wing Conspiracy"

As the investigation into the Oklahoma atrocity proceeds, journalists and commentators who habitually deride "conspiracy theories" are embracing a conspiracy theory of their own -- namely, that the bombing was the work of a secret network of stealthy and cunning "right-wing extremists." Timothy McVeigh, the only individual charged in the bombing thus far, has been described as an "anti-government extremist" with "links" to the militia movement -- and, by derivation, to the larger conservative movement. McVeigh himself has been silent regarding his political views. What little is known of his otherwise tacit convictions has been culled from letters he wrote to congressmen and to the editor of a New York newspaper, as well as from the hearsay reminiscences of McVeigh's acquaintances. It is known that McVeigh was in loose orbit around various militia groups but apparently was never formally affiliated with any of them.

Nevertheless, federal authorities have proceeded on the premise that McVeigh's actions were part of a "right-wing conspiracy" whose reach may extend to those who had no direct role in the atrocity -- and the major media has eagerly followed the federal government's lead.

"Conspiracy of Militias Suspected in Bombing: Right-Wingers who Incite Violence," blared a front-page headline in the April 25th San Francisco Examiner. The story blessed with that singularly tendentious title reported: "Investigators ... believe [the bombing] may be the result of a wide conspiracy peopled by right-wing militia members who incited violence and carnage." According to the report, "The possible existence of a conspiracy brought suggestions that the government will bring broad racketeering laws to bear on leaders of various right-wing militia groups." One federal investigator in Oklahoma City remarked, "This could go all over the country.... There are so many who incited so many people here."

The possible use of RICO actions against "right-wing extremists" is but one possible enrichment of federal power to persecute political critics. Representative Andrew Jacobs (D-IN) has renewed the call for enactment of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," a policy employed by leftists in the early 1960s for the admitted purpose of squelching conservative talk radio. Jacobs connects the Oklahoma tragedy with Francisco Duran's assault on the White House, and asserts that both of these acts indict talk radio: "Use right-wing monopoly airwaves to preach hatred and character assassination against the President, and watch the bullets fly at the White House from unstable listeners...."

"Criminal" Conservatism

Mr. Clinton's opportunistic invocation of "these people" was still fresh when New York Times editorial page editor A.M. Rosenthal decreed that all Americans have a patriotic duty to execrate the "extremists" in our midst. "As for those Americans who make a good business of spreading paranoia, they know what hatred can do," proclaimed Rosenthal. "Americans who refuse to recognize the President's right and duty to expose hate peddling are themselves abandoning a critical moral battlefield. If there is another Oklahoma, they will not have to tell themselves that they did it. No, but they will have to ask themselves what they did to prevent it."

The April 24th Wall Street Journal placed critics of federal usurpation along the same continuum with those responsible for the bombing: "By launching an extreme attack against the government, the truck bombers who blew the side off the Oklahoma City federal building could cause others to rethink their own, less-radical attacks." From the perspective promoted by the Establishment, peaceful conservative activism differs from mass murder in degree, not in kind.

Furthermore, the New York Times hastened to depict the "right-wing conspiracy" as a global menace. In its April 24th issue, the flagship periodical of the Establishment carried an op-ed column by Ingo Hasselbach entitled "Extremism: A Global Network," in which the author -- an erstwhile neo-Nazi gangster -- opined, "In my opinion, the leaders of the Michigan Militia and other such groups cannot dodge a larger moral responsibility [for the bombing], whether or not they are legally to blame." This is because, in Hasselbach's view, "Extremist groups in America and in Europe create a climate" in which violent acts occur.

The concept of guilt by climatological metaphor has been peddled by pundits too numerous to mention. Additionally, some have extended the libel to include a pat reference to "angry white men" -- the controlled media's preferred stereotype for conservatives of all races and both genders. This invocation of race and class resentment has been used by the Wall Street Journal, syndicated columnists Carl Rowan and Juan Williams, and numerous others.

Furthermore, terms such as "pathological," "virulent," and "violent" have been used to describe "conservative extremists" critical of the government. The facile phrase, "what the late historian Richard Hofstadter called 'the paranoid style in American politics,'" has been deployed countless times by writers whose acquaintance with the volume extends only to title and author. The use of this therapeutic vocabulary suggests, in Soviet fashion, that "extreme" critics of the government are literally sick and must be "cured" of their political views. Perhaps the definitive example of this approach can be found in Time magazine's May 8th profile of right-wing "extremists," which bore the title: "Enemies of the State."

Such was the ideological flavor of post-bombing "news" coverage that it left no room on the left for the communist People's Weekly World. The April 29th edition of the Communist Party tabloid simply recycled potted phrases about the "virulently racist roots of the heinous massacre," the "incitements to violence" which are supposedly common on conservative talk radio, and the dangers of "rightist hate rhetoric."

Brzezinski's Dichotomy

Shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor received a briefing on the dangers of "right-wing extremism" from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Trilateral Commission heavyweight who is a pillar of the Establishment. Brzezinski was asked if conservative activism had created a "climate for the Oklahoma bombing." He replied, "I don't see how you can even remotely relate the conservative rhetoric to anything like this. Gingrich and Dole talk about fundamental changes of values."

However, this selective exculpation of the "right" was used by Brzezinski for the purpose of focusing on a more specific "enemy":

"... there is an absolute dividing line between what [the Republican leaders] are saying and those much further to the right, who really feel that the American government has been taken over by some kind of conspiracy and that a struggle for freedom now is underway which entitles them to commit these acts. We really are talking about the lunatic fringe. And I think there is an enormous gap between the conservative rhetoric and these lunatic fringe groups."

In this fashion, career politicians like Dole and Gingrich -- opportunists whose careers are unblemished by resolute statesmanship -- represent the limits of acceptable "conservatism." Beyond them, according to Brzezinski, lies the "lunatic fringe," composed of those who not only talk about but seek fundamental change and are allegedly willing to commit terrorist acts in pursuit of that change.

This is not to say that Brzezinski uniformly condemns those who would use violence to bring about change. Prompted to give his "global view" of terrorism, he stated, "There is a greater propensity in the extreme right toward individual violence than on the extreme left. The extreme left can be very brutal, of course, but it tends to be guided by some sort of an ideology, some sort of a systematic concept as to how to rebuild society -- first undermine it then rebuild it."

As Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, Brzezinski helped to craft policies which facilitated such violent restructuring of Iran and Nicaragua, and the diplomatic recognition of the incomparably blood-stained Red Chinese regime. He has also written that Marxism offers "the best available insight into contemporary reality," and that America is undergoing a crisis of "obsolescence." Thus it is not surprising that Brzezinski offered only qualified criticism of left-wing terrorists, while categorically denouncing "right-wing" terrorists.

A similar dichotomy has been evident in the media's treatment of the "Unabomb" murders. "Unabomb" is an eco-terrorist group responsible for 16 bombings over the past 17 years. Five days after the Oklahoma City bombing, Unabomb, a self-described violent conspiracy, claimed its latest victim: Gilbert B. Murray of the California Forestry Association. Murray had been selected for assassination because of his work as a lobbyist for the timber industry. The San Francisco Examiner observes that Murray's organization "has been in the forefront to temper the federal Endangered Species Act...." Accordingly, Murray was executed for his crimes against Gaia.

In a letter published by the New York Times, Unabomb declared that it seeks "the destruction of the worldwide industrial system" and it believes that "the time is ripe for the presentation of anti-industrial ideas." Employing the same logic the major media has applied to the Oklahoma City bombing, could it not be said that the rabid, anti-capitalist, anti-property rights environmentalist agenda promoted by the Clinton Administration has "created a climate" in which Unabomb feels free to kill with impunity?

The Clinton Administration has not seen fit to declare an armistice in its war against "eco-criminals." Four days after the latest Unabomb attack, Vice President Al Gore visited the Presidio military base, the future site of a federally funded "sustainable development" project, where he denounced the GOP-led Congress as "the worst anti-environment Congress in the history of the nation" and declared that it was in thrall to "extremist right-wing groups." If Unabomb strikes again, will Al Gore be held morally liable?

There is reason to believe that the Oklahoma City tragedy will be used as a pretext for political persecution. Columnist Frank Rich of the New York Times, whose beat deals almost exclusively with the "religious right," sees in the Oklahoma bombing a pretext for a full-scale federal crusade against the "far right." Reciting a theme from the Planned Parenthood breviary, Rich writes that there is a "demonstrable link between anti-abortion extremists and a growing militia movement" and reports, "Since the Oklahoma bombing, Federal law enforcement officials have been in constant touch with Planned Parenthood...."

Scant weeks before the bombing, Rich had written several columns condemning "paranoid conspiracy theories" about a UN-directed new world order. With quicksilver hypocrisy, Rich has now embraced a grand conspiracy theory of his own: "It's not yet known whether [the] evidence will connect a specific militia or far-right group to the Oklahoma tragedy. What is clear is how extensively the nation's far-right factions are interconnected, forming a political network that often publicly espouses the same ideology as the terrorists in our midst...." Rich insists that "even when all the Oklahoma City bombing suspects are arrested, the investigation will have only just begun."

An American Kristallnacht?

The opportunistic use of Oklahoma City suggests a troubling historical parallel. In Paris on November 7, 1938, a frantic Jewish refugee named Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed a minor German diplomat named Ernst von Rath. Grynszpan's target was Count Johannes von Welczeck, the German ambassador; the assassination was supposedly intended as retaliation for the imprisonment of Grynszpan's family in a concentration camp. Ironically, at the time of his death von Rath was under investigation for his alleged opposition to the anti-Semitic policies of the National Socialist government.

Grynszpan's act gave Germany's National Socialist regime a pretext to carry out its planned anti-Semitic purge. The night of November 9-10, 1938, is remembered in history as Kristallnacht, or the "Night of Shattered Glass." Jewish-owned shops in Berlin were vandalized, synagogues were torched, and scores of harmless people were killed or injured as Nazi-orchestrated mobs vented their "spontaneous" outrage for the murder of von Rath. The carnival of destruction was engineered by Nazi propaganda maestro Joseph Goebbels, who also used the Nazi-controlled press to rile the public against the "menace" in its midst.

As Reverend George Schenk points out, prior to Kristallnacht "Nazi propaganda had accused the German Jews of waging a 'hate campaign'" against the National Socialist government. Early in the National Socialist period, Brown Shirt leader Ernst Roehm frequently attacked "published bigotry," particularly that emanating from conservative Christian opponents of the regime. Criticism of the National Socialist regime, which had been muted at best before Kristallnacht, was redefined afterwards as sympathy with Jews and other "criminal elements."

A similar dynamic is apparent in post-bombing commentary regarding the Waco holocaust. Because McVeigh was reportedly agitated about the federal assault upon the Branch Davidians, and because the bombing occurred on the second anniversary of the Waco outrage, sympathy for the victims of that attack has been depicted as a symptom of "extremism" rather than an understandable human reaction to religious persecution. Unlike habitual criminal Rodney King, whose videotaped arrest was elevated as a symbolic indictment of police brutality, the tranquil Branch Davidians have not been identified as a worthy object of public concern.

In a moment of supreme hypocrisy during his EMILY's List speech, President Clinton declared: "We can't condemn one act of violence and condone another. That would be like trying to put out a fire by just watering one room and leaving the others to burn." Yet just days earlier Mr. Clinton himself arrogantly dismissed criticism of the federal government's behavior during the Waco siege during an interview on 60 Minutes.

Mr. Clinton, who now insists that words can "give the impression that violence is acceptable," displayed no such concern in the immediate aftermath of the Waco holocaust. On April 20, 1993, even as the embers of the Branch Davidian "compound" yet smoldered, Bill Clinton saw fit to depict the slaughter of the relatively harmless eccentrics as an object lesson to religious "fanatics": "I hope very much that others who will be tempted to join cults and to become involved with people like Koresh will be deterred by the horrible scenes they have seen over the last seven weeks.... There is, unfortunately, a rise in this sort of fanaticism all across the world. And we may have to confront it again."

The suggestion that Attorney General Janet Reno should resign as a result of the bloody debacle provoked this display of refined, compassionate humanitarianism from Mr. Clinton: "I was, frankly, 'surprised' would be a mild word, that anyone would suggest that the Attorney General should resign because some religious fanatics murdered themselves."

Personal Observation

In a little-noticed but significant essay, Rowland Nethaway, senior editor of the WacoTribune-Herald, pointed out that the arrogant indifference to individual rights and the public interest typified by Mr. Clinton's remarks was manifest by the federal authorities who conducted the Waco raid. Nethaway yields to no one in his disdain for "right-wing fanatics," but -- unlike most American journalists -- he had the unwanted opportunity to deal with the feds firsthand. He recalls: "As the siege became a routine of daily press briefings, it was evident that the ATF officials only inflamed their critics. They responded to legitimate criticism from responsible sources with ridicule and sarcasm. And they lied. ATF officials lied to reporters and the American public. And it was obvious."

Nethaway suggests that any indictment of those responsible for "inciting" the Oklahoma City bombing should include the federal agencies responsible for the Waco atrocity: "... when government officials lie and cover up, they make critics where there are none. And they further destabilize the already unbalanced among us."

from PDL 1999-Mar-18, from Capital Hill Blue:

White House uses "security threat" ploy to keep Clinton protesters at bay

Citing "a threat to the President's safety," White House officials are using Secret Service agents to keep protesters out of sight of both Bill Clinton and news media.

"The Secret Service has been instructed to remove any and all protesters from any immediate proximity to the President," a White House aide confirmed Wednesday. "The 'official' reason cited is the protesters pose a threat to the President. The real reason is to keep them away from the television cameras."

The plan, devised by White House communications advisor Sidney J. Blumenthal, is aimed at the increasing number of protesters who have appeared at events since the impeachment process began against Clinton last year.

"Mr. Blumenthal told the President the presence of such protesters could affect his job approval numbers," one White House source said. "It was his idea to concoct the 'security threat' issue so the Secret Service could be instructed to keep the protesters out of sight."

At a Presidential appearance in Texarkana last week, protesters carrying placards that read "Impeach him Again" and "There's a Pervert in our Neighborhood" were herded away from the front of the hotel where Clinton was arriving. Secret Service agents moved the protesters to the rear of the building, away from both the public and media view.

Blumenthal has reportedly referred to the protesters as "malcontents" and "crazies" and suggested it would be easy to convince the Secret Service that the presence of such protesters posed a security threat to Clinton.

"He said that anybody who opposed Clinton must be a nut so it made sense to keep them away from the President," a White House source said Wednesday night. "He said it with a straight face."

Some aides reportedly argued against the practice, saying the use of Secret Service in such a way could backfire on the President and give the appearance of a secret police.

"What are they going to do," Blumenthal is reported to have sneered, "vote against him in the next election?"

Neither the Secret Service nor the White House would comment on the report Wednesday, but other sources told Capitol Hill Blue that the practice would continue "until further notice."

And a conservative sounding like a Nazi:

from TPDL 2000-Mar-31, from Capitol Hill Blue, from the Daily Rant, by Doug Thompson:

The flag's burning issue

A constitutional amendment to ban burning the American flag damn near made it through the Senate this week, falling four votes short of the two-thirds needed to pass.

In the debate of free speech versus patriotism, the perceived right to burn the American flag as a form of protest arouses strong emotions on both sides of the issue.

Free speech advocates argue that banning the burning of the flag is the first step towards the loss of an American's right to protest.

Those who fought to defend the flag usually come down on the other side, saying the American flag must be given special status and protected from those who would desecrate it.

Our feeling is that if the law protects some malcontent's right to set our flag on fire, then it had better protect our right to leave that malcontent with broken bones and internal injuries.

You can talk about your right to protest until the cows come home, but if you desecrate the flag in front of us, you will get hurt.

That's not a threat.

It's a promise.

Call it our right of free speech -- the nonverbal kind.

And my letter to CHB:

Extensive Nazi background and reference material appears at the end of this chapter. In fact the background is so extensive as to be controversial.

The great irony of the "Third Reich" and its goofy premise of "Aryan" supremacy (the real Aryans are in Iran and northern India, and emphatically do not include the Nordic population) is that, if any "super-race" is to be acknowledged, it must be the Jews themselves (and moreover, the construal of the Jews as a race is dubious at best). This observation alone goes a long way toward accounting for the perennial persecution of the Jews, and in particular, their persecution by the ardently collectivist-conformist Nazis (though Hassidism is a pocket of similarly inflexible (though not similarly enforced!) collectivism-conformism within Jewry). In the final analysis, racism, and particularly an alleged super-race (of whatever variety), are seen to be patently stupid bases for policy and morality alike, inevitably resulting in evil.

from http://www.dorledor.org/advani-vi.html:

OUR GEOGRAPHIC CULTURAL CHAIN
IS AS STRONG TODAY AS EVER

Commencing next week a new column will salute outstanding Jews whose achievements through the ages have enriched the social, cultural, and scientific composition of the world. Discover the men and women whose pioneering leadership in all disciplines give us reason for pride in ourselves as a people.

They are many - the scientists, healers, writers, educators, scholars, inventors and others to whom we are indebted.

For two-thousand years, we have told and retold accounts of the brutalities and banishments from countries which Jews served loyally, creatively and productively. Yet we have told all too little of the accomplishments of our kinsmen in every field of human endeavor. Despite the importance of their contributions some may be virtually unknown.

We intend to help correct that omission in the spirit of our geographic cultural chain that spans three thousand years of Jewish history and touches every enlightened country.

Recent links in our historic chain are Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates who have won almost 21% of the 663 Nobel Prizes awarded from 1902 to 1995 - although Jews constitute less than one-quarter of one percent of the world's population.

[...]

A few words of explanation about the following two excerpts. What I intend is to exhibit the significant similarities between the human rights stance of the US government before the abolition of slavery, and the stance of the "Third Reich" regime in Germany.

from http://www.civnet.org/resoures/teach/basic/part4/21.htm:

[...]

The question then arises, whether the provisions of the constitution, in relation to the personal rights and privileges to which the citizen of a State should be entitled, embraced the negro African race, at that time in this country, or who might afterwards be imported, who had then or should afterwards be made free in any State; and to put it in the power of a single State to make him a citizen of the United States, and endue him with the full rights of citizenship in every other State without their consent? Does the constitution of the United States act upon him whenever he shall be made free under the laws of a State, and raised there to the rank of a citizen, and immediately clothe him with all the privileges of a citizen in every other State, and in its own courts?

The court think the affirmative of these propositions cannot be maintained. And if it cannot, the plaintiff in error could not be a citizen of the State of Missouri, within the meaning of the constitution of the United States, and, consequently, was not entitled to sue in its courts.

[...]

-Chief Justice Taney, Supreme Court of the United States of America, Dred Scott V. Sandford, 1857

from Reich Citizenship Law:

ARTICLE I

1. Until further provisions concerning citizenship papers, all subjects of German or kindred blood who possessed the right to vote in the Reichstag elections when the Citizenship Law came into effect, shall, for the present, possess the rights of Reich citizens. The same shall be true of those upon whom the Reich Minister of the Interior, in conjunction with the Deputy of the Führer, shall confer citizenship.
2. The Reich Minister of the Interior, in conjunction with the Deputy of the Führer, may revoke citizenship.

ARTICLE II

1. The provisions of Article I shall apply also to subjects who are of mixed Jewish blood.
2. An individual of mixed Jewish blood is one who is descended from one or two grandparents who, racially, were full Jews, insofar that he is not a Jew according to Section 2 of Article V. Full-blooded Jewish grandparents are those who belonged to the Jewish religious community.

ARTICLE III

1. Only citizens of the Reich, as bearers of full political rights, can exercise the right of voting in political matters, and have the right to hold public office. The Reich Minister of the Interior, or any agency he empowers, can make exceptions during the transition period on the matter of holding offices. These measures do not apply to matters concerning religious organisations.

ARTICLE IV

1. A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich. He cannot exercise the right to vote; he cannot occupy public office.

[...]

Berlin, 14 November 1935.

The Führer and Reich Chancellor
Adolf Hitler

The Reich Minister of the Interior
Frick

The Deputy of the Führer
R. Höß
Reich Minister without Portfolio

from the BBC World Service, 1998-Nov-19:

Argentina reveals Nazi secrets

(photo caption: "Argentina extradited Dinko Sakic for Nazi activities")

An official commission in Argentina has discovered evidence suggesting that the country's former populist leader, Juan Peron, was more involved than previously thought in efforts to shelter Nazi war criminals after World War II.

The commission says documents show that Mr Peron approved the creation of a network to bring European immigrants, including war criminals, to Argentina.

The commission say 150 war criminals went through Argentina avoiding trial in Europe.

Officials from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre say that the true figure is likely to be much higher.

Sensitive nerve

The BBC's Javier Aparisi in Buenos Aires says many Argentines still revere Mr Peron's image and the latest revelations have touched a sensitive nerve.

The commission which is investigating Nazi activities in Argentina is composed of international experts and historians. It was created in response to accusations that some of the Nazi gold looted from Jewish victims of the Holocaust might have been transferred to Argentina.

Its final report will be published next year.

Argentina had been criticised in the past for not investigating this period and for obstructing attempts to bring suspected war criminals to justice.

However in the last few years the government has changed this policy and it has now extradited several alleged former Nazis to Europe to face trial.

from the BBC World Service, 1998-Nov-17, by BBC South America Correspondent James Reynolds:

Argentina delves into Nazi past

(photo caption: "Argentina extradited Dinko Sakic for Nazi activities")

An official investigation in Argentina has been opened into the collaboration between the government and Nazi officials during and after the World War II.

The Commission for the Clarification of Nazi Activities in Argentina is expected to reveal how many former Nazis arrived in Argentina at the end of the war.

Opening the commission, Argentina's foreign minister, Guido di Tella, said that the collaboration between his country and Nazi Germany is a painful and shameful episode in Argentina's history.

He asked for investigators to have access to all the information they might need to complete their work.

The commission, which is made up of historians and non-governmental organisations, is expected to spend up to a year carrying out its investigation.

It will then present a final report.

Recent studies have argued that Argentina offered widespread support to Nazi Germany during World War II, disregarding its official position of neutrality.

After the war ended, the government of Juan Peron is thought to have helped hundreds of suspected Nazi sympathisers to enter Argentina and escape trial in Europe.

For many years, human rights groups criticised Argentina for not wanting to bring these suspected criminals to trial.

But in 1996, the Argentine government extradited the former SS captain, Erik Priebke and this year, it extradited the Croatian couple, Dinko and Nada Sakic, accused of running a concentration camp during the war.

The government will hope that this commission further proves its desire to amend for the past.

from http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/5284/david.htm:

Operation Gladio

© 1997 David Guyatt

When on the morning of 17 June 1982, the body of Roberto Calvi was found hanging beneath London's Blackfriars bridge, it was to speed a process that prised open a series of events spanning four decades. The circumstances of Calvi's death led knowledgeable observers to darkly whisper of a Masonic ritual slaying. With his hands tied behind his back and a brick thrust into his coat pocket, Calvi had been strangled, apparently by the rope that had been noosed around his neck. Moreover, the location itself was believed to be symbolic. Blackfriars bridge sits astride the border that connects the Masonically named "Square Mile" of the City of London to the rest of the Capital city.

The initial inquest into his death returned a verdict of suicide. Appealing against what they believed to be prejudice on the part of the Coroner - and suspicious of the Masonic affiliations of the City police - Calvi's family called for a second, more thorough inquest, which belatedly returned an open verdict. Meanwhile, Banco Ambrosiano, Calvi's massive, privately-owned bank, collapsed on the news of his death, revealing a huge "black hole" in the balance sheet amounting to $1.3 billion. A large proportion of the missing money was later located in accounts owned by the Vatican bank. The connections that unfolded in the wake of the Calvi "affair" were to link Masons with Mafiosi, Monks with Murder and Spies with wanted Nazi war criminals.

World War Two had barely ground to a final halt when, in 1947, Allied strategists set about planning for World War Three. Even as British and US intelligence officials scoured Europe seeking to apprehend Nazi's wanted on war crimes charges, other more secretive US and British intelligence units were actively engaged in helping those same Nazi's to escape.

Europe's "Stay Behind" Units Italy was not alone in having covert "stay behind" units in operation. The operation encompassed all of western Europe. In France the unit was called "Glaive" - again named after a Gladiatorial sword. Austria's unit was named "Schwert," also meaning sword. In Turkey the unit was named "Red Sheepskin" and in Greece "Sheepskin." Sweden's unit was called "Sveaborg." In Switzerland it went by the title P26. Other units in Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and Holland remain unnamed. Not least, the United Kingdom's unit was simply known as "Stay Behind."

The means of escape were the Vatican run "Ratlines." Operated with the knowledge and blessing of highly placed US and British government officials, the Ratlines guided 30,000 wanted Nazi's to sanctuary. Safe haven locations included the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the favourite bolt hole of them all: South America.

Those who reached safety in this manner read like a "Who's Who" of the most wanted Nazi war criminals. Klaus Barbie, the cruel Gestapo officer known as the "Butcher of Lyons;" Franz Stangl, Commandant of the notorious Treblinka extermination camp; Gustav Wagner Commandant of Sorbibor extermination camp; Alois Brunner, a brutal official in the Jewish deportation programme. Of the most famous to escape along the ratlines were Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the "Holoucast" and Dr Joseph Mengele, the "White Angel" of Auschwitz concentration camp. Not least was Deputy Fuhrer Martin Bormann. Incredibly, an entire Waffen SS division - the notorious "Galician Division" - consisting of 8000 men were smuggled to England and given "free settler" status.

Origins of the Stay Behind Network  Information that surfaced in recent years suggests that the "Stay Behind" concept first arose in Britain. Senior military sources told the Guardian newspaper in December 1990, that a British guerrilla network was already in place following the fall of France in 1940. Numerous arm "caches" were buried for later use by a special forces ski battalion of the Scots Guards under the leadership of Brigadier "Mad Mike" Calvert. After the war, the decision was taken to create new units throughout Europe. The plan was conceived by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and spearheaded by the newly formed CIA.

Secretly granted immunity these and thousands of other battle hardened Nazi soldiers were to form the fighting nucleus of a top secret Allied contingency group conceived by the first Director of the CIA, Allen Dulles. Loosely known as operation "Stay Behind," the idea was to build a Europe wide secret network of anti communist guerrillas who would fight behind the lines in the event of a Soviet invasion. The plan was later codified under the umbrella of the Clandestine Co-ordinating Committee of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the military arm of NATO.

US planners worried over the growing influence of Italy's large and popular communist party, established Operation "Gladio" in 1956. The name derived from the short sword used by Roman legionnaires 2000 years earlier, and was almost certainly drawn from the crest of SHAPE which features two swords arranged in an "A" shape. The Gladio network was operated by the secret services and initially funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency. 622 people were recruited and trained by US and British specialists in Sardinia. It is believed that up to 15,000 members were ultimately recruited to the Gladio network.

By 1972, with the prospect of a Soviet invasion receding, a decision was taken to "make a pre-emptive attack" on the Italian communist party - who had polled 27% in that year's election - and who would go on to increase their vote to 35% just four years later. There immediately followed a series of bomb outrages signalling the beginning of a "strategy of tension," designed to shift Italian politics sharply to the right. In April 1972 a Fascist bomb attack killed three carabinieri. In November 1973, an Argo 16 aircraft was destroyed in a mid-air explosion

Covert Political Destablisation in Britain  Britain's "Stay Behind" unit was modified after the war, for a "secondary use." This was to combat "the takeover of civil government by militant leftwing groups." The network was operated by Britain's intelligence services and selected members of the armed forces. Rumours persist that Harold Wilson's Labour government was the target of a Gladio type campaign not dissimilar to that of Italy. Wilson's surprise resignation has been credited to a dirty tricks campaign operated by British intelligence at the behest of the US. Known as operation "Clockwork Orange" Army psyops personnel began "fabricating" evidence that showed that senior members of the Wilson Cabinet, including the Prime Minister himself, were Soviet dupes. Waiting in the wings were senior military and other rightwing figures alleged to be planning a military style "Coup D'Etat" in the event that the Labour government won the forthcoming election

But if the Gladio network was the armed force, the secret Masonic lodge "Propaganda Due" (P2) was the Elitist "shadow government" tasked with directing them. Adhering to a right wing ideology bordering on fascism, P2 was headed by Licio Gelli - known as the "Puppet-master." During the war Gelli had been a member of Mussolini's notorious "Black shirts," and later acted as liaison officer to the Hermann Goering SS division. By 1974 P2 had in excess of 1000 members comprising a "who's who" of Italian political, military and economic power. Members included four Cabinet ministers, three intelligence chiefs, 160 senior military officers, 48 MPs, the Army Chief of Staff, as well as top diplomats, bankers, industrialists and media publishers.

It was also during 1974 that Gelli met secretly with Alexander Haig. Formerly, the NATO Supreme Commander, Haig had meanwhile become President Nixon's White House Chief of Staff. The secret meeting was held in the US Embassy in Rome. Receiving the blessing of Henry Kissinger, the US National Security Adviser, Gelli left the meeting with a promise of continued financial support for the Gladio network and it's plan for the "internal subversion." of Italian political life. As welcome as this was, Gelli required additional funds to support P2 and operation Gladio.

He turned to P2 member Roberto Calvi, Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano - the largest non-state owned bank in Italy. Calvi began to illegally siphon money from his bank, using the Vatican bank - the Istituto per de Religione (IOR) to launder it. Almost certainly, Gelli had a hold over Calvi. Earlier, in 1967, the former head of the Italian Secret Service had joined P2 and brought with him 150,000 sensitive dossiers that had been compiled on highly placed individuals of Italian society.

Whether as a result of blackmail or political ideology, Calvi continued to funnel a vast amount of funds to Gelli and P2, bankrupting his bank in the process. Meanwhile, other events were to occur that shocked not only Italy but the entire world. In early 1978, Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped and later assassinated by the so called "Red brigades" - a revolutionary pro Soviet group. Evidence now exists that shows Moro's murder was orchestrated by P2, and that both the "Red" and "Black" brigades were heavily penetrated by US intelligence - who are credited with "running" them.

Four years earlier, in 1974, Moro - then Foreign Minister - visited the US. Aware of the popular, democratic support the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was receiving from Italian voters, Moro wished to reach an accommodation with the PCI, and offer their leaders Cabinet rank in a new centrist ruling party. His Washington visit did not go well. During a meeting with then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, Moro was told that such a move was viewed in the US as "profoundly dangerous and mistaken." A later meeting with an unnamed intelligence official left Moro fearful for his life. The official told Moro he must abandon any idea to incorporate the communists ".or you will pay dearly for it." The official continued by warning Moro that "groups on the fringes of the official secret services might be brought into operation" if he didn't modify his position. It was a clear reference to P2 and the Gladio network. Moro cut short his visit and returned home in fear of his life, his wife later revealed.

Within months of Moro's assassination, the world awoke to hear the glad news that Albino Luciani had been elected Pope, taking the title Pope John Paul I. Revered as an honest, gentle and insightful man, Luciani's election caused anguish in many areas of the Vatican curia. Not least, Bishop Paul Marcinkus, the American head of the Vatican bank, felt his days were numbered. Marcinkus' removal from office would open a hornet's nest of financial sleaze. Via the Vatican bank, Marcinkus had engaged in a vast amount of financial skulduggery. In addition to his financial shenanigans with Banco Ambrosiano, the IOR was also using known Mafia figures to invest some of its vast wealth. Not least, Luciani was viewed by some on the far right of Italian politics to be soft on communism; his father being a committed Socialist and having once stood for political office.

Taken as a whole it was more than enough. Thirty three days after his election, the "Smiling Pope," as he was popularly known, was found dead. Replaced by Karol Wojtyla, who took the title of John Paul II, Bishop Marcinkus was not only reprieved but became a close confidant of the new Polish pope. Under the new, safer regime, Marcinkus went on to provide large sums to the Polish ship-workers union, Solidarity - which is largely credited with bringing an end to communism in Poland. Clearly, staunch anti communism was to be a continuing feature of Vatican life, as it had been under Luciani's predecessor, Pope Paul VI - who as the young Monsignor Giovanni Montini, the Under Secretary of State since 1937 - was heavily involved in the post war Ratlines.

In an additional "twist" it was revealed in 1992, by Mafia defector Francesco Mannino Mannoia, that Roberto Calvi had been strangled by Francesco Di Carlo, the Mafia's London based Heroin traffic manager. The order for the murder came from Pippo Calo, the Mafia treasurer and ambassador to Rome. Desperate to plug an increasingly large hole in his banks books, Calvi had agreed to launder large quantities of drugs money for the Corleone Mafia empire. Instead of laundering Mafia money, Calvi began skimming the profits to keep his bank afloat.

Faced with certain discovery and even more certain consequences, Calvi rushed to London to negotiate a loan from Opus Dei - a highly secretive and fabulously wealthy Catholic faction described by one authority as "sinister, secretive and Orwellian." A highly credible and knowledgeable source told this writer that Calvi met with the Treasurer of Opus Dei who had agreed to purchase a minority stake in Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano. The deal, had it proceeded would have provided the essential funds needed to repay the Mafia, and stave-off an imminent investigation into his affairs by Italy's Central bank.

Opus Dei - which translates as "God's work," had long sought to take effective control of the Vatican. Their cause had been advanced by the sudden death of Pope John Paul I and the election of a keen supporter: Pope John Paul II. With Machiavellian insight, senior figures of Opus Dei reasoned that with Calvi dead the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano would surely follow. This, in turn, would shake loose powerful enemies inside the Curia, opening the way for them to gain total dominance of the Vatican. Consequently, Roberto Calvi was thrown to the Wolves.

According to critics, Opus Dei is aggressively right wing in its teachings, and operates a form of thought control. Disciples undergo bouts of agonising self inflicted torture, allegedly designed to clarify thought and cleanse the spirit. They are also taught to avoid natural human feelings, being admonished instead to have a "reticent and guarded heart." Likewise, disciples are not permitted to read certain books, including those authored by communist ideologist Karl Marx.

Detractors believe it a religious faction that shares numerous values similar to the neo-nazi's that people the Masonic P2 lodge. Until recently - and for hundreds of years previously - any member of the Catholic church who was found to be a Freemason was automatically ex-communicated. Despite this many members of the Curia were discovered to be covert members of P2. Subsequently, in 1983, a new Canon Law announced that this would cease. Thereafter, any member of the Roman Church was free to become a Freemason.

Following the Calvi affair, the Vatican sought to diminish increasingly poor publicity by establishing a commission of enquiry. One of the so called "Four Wise Men" who sat on this enquiry was Dr Herman Abs, a senior German banker. During the war years Abs headed Deutsche Bank and was one of the principal financiers of Adolf Hitler. He also sat on the board of I G Farben, the massive Nazi conglomerate that used slave labour until they dropped. Farben also manufactured Zyklon B - the poisonous gas used with such devastating effect in the extermination camps. Arrested for war crimes at the end of WW11, Abs was quietly released following the intervention of the Bank of England.

Here is much more on Gladio, from Gladio: The Secret U.S. War to Subvert Italian Democracy, by Arthur E. Rowse.

excerpt from the Winter 1986 issue of Covert Action Quarterly, transcribed by Conspiracy Nation's Brian Redman:

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta

By Francoise Hervet

[...]

"Already in existence at the time of the first Crusade in 1099, in 1113 the Order of St. John was given its independence by Pope Pascal II, permitted to elect its own Grand Master, and soon the Order began military participation in the Crusades along with the Knights Templar and Teutonic Knights. The Order of St. John recruited successfully among the European aristocracy and soon controlled extensive estates throughout the continent, assimilating those previously belonging to the Knights Templar which it had helped crush during the first two decades of the 14th century, with the Templar leadership burned alive as heretics."

The Order was driven from Jerusalem in 1187, fled to Acre, Cyprus, and finally to Rhodes. At Rhodes they set up a military dictatorship and for the first time were a sovereign territory. By 1530 they were driven from Rhodes and moved their headquarters to Malta. On that island they built a powerful naval force and fought many naval actions. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) was a major military force in the Mediterranean until their defeat by Napoleon in 1789. The Order was given protection by Russian Emperor Paul I, and by 1834 had moved its headquarters to Rome with help from Pope Leo XIII.

The American Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (Knights of Malta, SMOM) was founded in 1927. "By 1941 Francis Cardinal Spellman was listed as the 'Grand Protector' and 'Spritual Advisor' of the Order, with John J. Raskob as Treasurer. Members included John Farrell, then President of U.S. Steel, Joseph P. Grace, and John D. Ryan. In 1934 Raskob, inspired by the French fascist Croix de Feu, and working closely with Morgan Bank's John Davis, had been a principal financier in the plot to organize a fascist coup in the U.S. The plan failed when General Smedley Butler, who had been set up to lead the project, denounced it."

His Eminence Cardinal Spellman, "Grand Protector" of the Knights of Malta, worked with Pope Pius XII to help Nazi war criminals escape justice. According to Frederic Laurent (*L'Orchestre Noir. Pairs: Editions Stock, 1978),

All studies [of the post-WWII nazi networks] have shown the determining role played by the Catholic Church in the flight of war criminals. Since April 1943, following negotiations between Pius XII and the ultra reactionary American archbishop Francis Spellman, the Holy See became the clandestine center of Anglo-American espionage in Italy. This collaboration in fact had begun the previous year... between Earl Brennan, a veteran of the American State Department and Gian Battista Montini, at the time a bishop and Under-Secretary of State at the Vatican. This close collaboration between the future [Pope] Paul VI and the American secret services continued after the war through the [CIA] intermediary James Angleton...

When the victorious Americans entered Rome in June of 1944, chief-General Mark Clark was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. On December 27, 1946 James Angleton received the Croci Al Merito Seconda Classe from the Knights of Malta. "On November 17, 1948 SMOM awarded one of its highest honors, the Grand Cross of Merit, to Reinhard Gehlen, the nazi chief of intelligence on the Soviet front. He was subsequently installed by the Americans as the first chief of West Germany's equivalent of the CIA, the *Bundesnachtrichtdienst* (BND: federal secret service), under West German Chancellor Adenauer, a devout Catholic who had received the Magistral Grand Cross personally from SMOM Grand Master Prince Chigi." In 1956, Clare Booth Luce of the *Time* magazine empire became a "Dame of Malta." (Clare Booth Luce is on the board of the Rev. Sun-Moon's Washington Times newspaper.) Former CIA Director John McCone is shown to be a member of the Knights of Malta by their 1980 list. (The article by Hervet, used as the source for this information, has many other noteworthy persons listed as belonging to the Vatican military order of SMOM. The article should still be available from Prevailing Winds Research. I have their phone number as 805-566-8016 or write to PO Box 23511, Santa Barbara, CA 93121.)

"Freemasonry generally purports to be hostile to Catholicism, and conversely, the Vatican has at various times forbidden Catholics to join Masonic organizations. Nevertheless, in December of 1969 an exclusive meeting was held in the Rome office of Count Umberto Ortolani, the Ambassador of the Order of Malta to Uruguay, who has been called 'the brains' behind the fascist P-2 Masonic Lodge, which had been established in the mid-1960s. In addition to Ortolani, the meeting included only Licio Gelli, Roberto Calvi, and Michele Sindona."

[...]

from http://www2.healthnet.org/MGS/Article10.html (from Medicine & Global Survival, originally from The British Medical Journal):

The 50th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Medical Tribunals

Nuremberg Lamentation: For the Forgotten Victims of Medical Science

William E. Seidelman, M.D.

Fifty years after the Nuremberg medical trial there remain many unanswered questions about the role of the German medical profession during the Third Reich. Other than the question of human experimentation, important ethical challenges arising from medicine in Nazi Germany which have continuing relevance were not addressed at Nuremberg. The underlying moral question is that of the exercise of professional power and its impact on vulnerable people seeking medical care. Sensitization to the obligations of professional power may be achieved by an annual commemoration and lament to the memory of the victims of medical abuse which would serve as a recurring reminder of the physician's vulnerability and fallibility.

The Nuremberg medical trial saw the prosecution of a few people who exploited the opportunities when medical science defined some human beings as "subhuman" and therefore qualified as subjects for inhuman medical experiments. Absent from the dock were the leaders of the medical profession of the Third Reich, in particular the academic and scientific elite. It was this elite who legitimized the devaluation of human life and set the stage for medical crimes -- crimes in which leading academics and scientists were either principals or accomplices. Of the 23 defendants at the Nuremberg medical trial, only Gerhard Rose (sentenced to life imprisonment) and Paul Rostock (acquitted) were internationally recognized scientists and academics (Figure 1) [1-3].

Doctors as "selectors"

The operant paradigm of medical practice during the Hitler period was that of the physician as a "selector" acting on behalf of the state in order to improve the health of the nation (Volksgesundheit). Having defined people as an underclass or a risk to the genetic or racial health of the population, medical science deemed the so called "inferiors" to be appropriate "subjects" who could be selected for enforced sterilization, incarceration, and eventually extermination. The "euthanasia" programs of organized murder began in medicine and ultimately led to the program of mass extermination in the death camps of German occupied Poland [4].

The professional and scientific context of the day promoted eugenic and racist ideas within the framework of the academic milieu and curriculum of the medical and scientific community. Eugenics and race hygiene were compulsory subjects taught in some of the foremost medical schools in the world. Special courses were also established for practicing physicians [3,5-7]. Research on eugenics and racial hygiene was conducted in university research institutes and those of the Kaiser-Wilhelm organization [7,8]. Many academic and scientific institutions which contributed to the evils of the Third Reich were the same organizations which had earlier helped give birth to modern medical science and medical education [9].

Having defined the victims, science had created its own research subjects. The helpless human quarry incarcerated by the state was viewed by medical science as a unique opportunity for the kinds of research which under German law were not permitted even on animals [10]. These people were exploited before death for inhuman research, and their bodies were exploited after death (Figure 2).

State misuse of professional power

Though the Nuremberg code has had a profound impact on human experimentation, the broader questions and challenges arising from medicine during the Hitler period have not received the full and sustained consideration they deserve. The issues include:

• The relationship of the physician to the state;
• The inherent conflict between caring for the individual as opposed to the health of the population;
• The role of the physician in deciding which genetically determined human characteristics are desirable or undesirable;
• Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide;
• The impact of political and economic pressures on the moral conscience of the medical profession;
• The role of the physician in the differential selection of human beings for treatment (or refusal of treatment);
• The role of the physician-teacher and physician-scientist as a vehicle of political and social change;
• The conscience of the medical profession in the face of institutional brutality.

The underlying moral question is how the exercise of professional power may affect vulnerable people who seek care, cure, and compassion from physicians and the health care system. Framing the response to this question over time is the moral responsibility of leadership.

Complicating the question is the role of the state in the exercise of that power. The past century has seen the expansion of the domain of the state in health care from that of public health and quarantine in the nineteenth century to influencing or controlling the very delivery of health services today. The Hitler era represents a crisis of the relationship between the physician and the state. Of all German occupational groups, physicians had the largest representation in the Nazi party [3,11]. The medical profession enhanced the racial and eugenic policies of the Nazi party and government and was itself subjugated by the party and the state [5]. Despite the professional crisis exemplified by the experience of the Third Reich, the past 50 years have seen the enhancement of the power of the state in health care and the exercise of that power through fiscal control [12]. The relationship between the profession and the state has become increasingly intertwined and interdependent, encompassing payment for health services, distribution of resources, and support for education and research.

The five decades since Nuremberg have seen within medicine and science repeated examples of the ethical challenges of definition and selection as well as those of exploitation of vulnerable people. There have been recurring instances of medical science contravening the Nuremberg code and exploiting vulnerable people for medical experimentation, including patients, prisoners, visible minorities, children in institutions, women, and soldiers [13-21]. Developments in biotechnology have accentuated the physician's role as "selector" on the basis of genotype or phenotype. Economic trends and indicators also exert great influence.

Fiscal pressures and lack of ethics to curb power

In poor and rich countries physicians participate in structures of social choice and access to health care that variously blunt or sharpen the ethical issues in selection. The debate among physicians in the developed world is now becoming particularly intense as business and government try to reduce the costs of health care. The emphasis of medical practice is shifting from the health of the individual patient to the health of the population (the new Volksgesundheit?). In response to economic pressures the phenomenon of "managed care" is occurring as a consequence of state policy in countries with government sponsored universal health insurance (for example, the United Kingdom and Canada) and in the marketplace of the United States, in which the private sector plays a major part.

To serve as a guide in these current circumstances physicians and patients can find no developed ethical examination of professional power and its limits except as professional action relates to human experimentation. This absence may in part be explained by the lack of accounting of the role of professors and scientists in the medical crimes of the Hitler era. This omission was explained by Kater as being a consequence of "the German medical tradition of arch-conservatism, closed-caste mentality, and selfishness to the point of shunning broader issues of social and general health care. . . ." The postwar response of the German academic and medical community has seen repeated examples of suppression and intimidation towards those who have attempted a critical examination of medicine during the Hitler period [3,22,23].

Naming names: Nazi academics and scientists

Listed below are examples of powerful academics and scientists during the Third Reich.

• The neuropathologist Professor Dr. Julius Hallervorden (1882-1965), director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry of Berlin-Buch. Hallervorden exploited the euthanasia program to collect the brains of victims for his neuropathological collection [8,24,25].
• The anatomist Professor Dr. Eduard Pernkopf (1888-1955), of the University of Vienna. As dean of the Vienna medical faculty Pernkopf led the purge of the Jewish faculty [26]. Pernkopf exploited Nazi terror to acquire specimens for his institute of anatomy [27]. The founding editor of a renowned textbook of anatomy, which continues to be published, Pernkopf included in the original editions paintings with Nazi icons (swastika and SS symbols) incorporated in the artists' signatures [28-31]. In a current edition two paintings by Entresser still incorporate these icons, though in all other paintings they have been removed [31]. Some of the subjects portrayed in the Pernkopf text may have been the victims of Nazi terror (Figure 3) [26].
• The psychiatrist-geneticist Professor Dr. Ernst Rudin (1874-1952), director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry of Munich. Rudin was a leader of the Nazi eugenics program and a principal architect of the program of enforced sterilization [8,32,33].
• The psychiatrist Professor Dr. Karl Schneider (1891-1946), professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry of the University of Heidelberg. Schneider exploited the euthanasia program for his own research, including the study of victims before their murder and the dissection of their brains after [34].
• The gynecological anatomist Professor Dr. Hermann Stieve (1886-1952), of the University of Berlin and the Berlin Charite Hospital. Stieve is known to have exploited women prisoners for his studies on the effect of mental stress on the menstrual cycle. The mental stress was the women's own impending execution. On the women's execution Stieve had their pelvic organs removed for study [35].
• The geneticist Professor Dr. Otmar von Verschuer (1896-1969), director of the University Institute of Genetics of the University of Frankfurt and the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology of Berlin-Dahlem. An internationally renowned expert on twin studies, Verschuer was the principal investigator in the experiments of Dr. Joseph Mengele at Auschwitz (Figure 4) [8,36].
• The anatomist Professor Dr. Hermann Voss (1894-1987), of the Reich University of Pozen. Voss used the bodies of executed Gestapo victims for his dissection classes and sold the skeletal remains for profit [35].

Postwar careers

None of these people was ever prosecuted. Professor Karl Schneider committed suicide in 1946. Though Pernkopf was incarcerated after the war, he was never indicted and was permitted to resume working on his anatomical text [28]. Professor Julius Hallervorden, together with his colleague Professor Hugo Spatz, is memorialized in the eponym for a congenital neurological condition -- Hallervorden-Spatz disease. Hallervorden's biography is included in a 1990 anthology of the founders of child neurology [25,37].

Rudin's work on the genetics of schizophrenia, which established a theoretical basis for his eugenics work, continues to be cited in psychiatric genetics without reference to his eugenics career [38-40]. Professor Hermann Stieve was honored after the war by the Berlin Charite Hospital with a bust and a lecture hall dedicated in his name. After the war Verschuer became professor and head of genetics at the University of Münster, where he trained many of the postwar leaders in genetics in Germany [8,36]. Voss had a distinguished postwar career. Together with his Posen colleague Robert Herrlinger he co-authored a textbook of anatomy, Taschenbuch der Anatomie, which was considered a standard work [35] and was published until the 1990s.

The careers of these professors stand in stark contrast with the fate of their victims. Remains of some of the victims continued to be held in the collections of anatomical and research institutes for over four decades after the war [41]. Others have never been properly accounted for and may still be in use today [35]. In March 1995 the Israel Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, Yad Vashem, made a formal request of the universities of Vienna (letter from A. R. Dafni, vice-chairman of Yad Vashem, to Professor Dr. Alfred Abenauer, rector of the University of Vienna, 23 March 1995) and Innsbruck (letter from A. R. Dafni to Professor Dr. Hans Moser, rector of the University of Innsbruck, 23 March 1995) for an independent inquiry to determine the origins of the subjects portrayed in Pernkopf's anatomical textbook.

Legacies of Nazism: the World Medical Association

The legacy of Nazism is not confined to the mortal remains of the victims or possibly paintings in an anatomical text. A continuing victim may be the Nuremberg code itself. A substantial blow to the Nuremberg code was delivered by the World Medical Association, which has enunciated the Helsinki declarations on human experimentation [42]. Under the Helsinki declarations the rigid requirement of Nuremberg for respect for persons is softened, and the requirement of informed consent is differentiated between therapeutic and non-therapeutic clinical research. Grodin et al believed that "The Declaration of Helsinki . . undermined the primacy of subject consent in the Nuremberg code and replaced it with the paternalistic values of the traditional doctor-patient relationship"[43]. As explained by Florkin (cited by Refsauge), Helsinki modified Nuremberg because the World Medical Association considered the Nuremberg code as applying to Nazi crimes with the World Medical Association declarations correcting that "error" [44]. Another possible explanation is that the World Medical Association itself has been compromised by its own Nazi legacy.

The leadership of the World Medical Association has, in fact, included physicians with direct links to the very organizations responsible for the horrors which brought about the enunciation of the Nuremberg code. The president of the World Medical Association for 1973-4 was Dr. Ernst Fromm (b 1917), of Hamburg, who had been a member of the SA (Nazi storm troops) and SS terror organizations [22,45]. In 1992 the World Medical Association appointed as president elect for 1993-4 Professor Dr. Hans Joachim Sewering (b 1916), of Dachau. During the Hitler period Sewering was a member of the Nazi party and the SS, and he has been linked with the death of a 14 year old girl, Babette Frowis. In October 1943, on Sewering's order, Babette Frowis was sent from an institution for handicapped children where Sewering worked to the killing center at Eglfing-Haar. Sewering was the German medical profession's representative to the World Medical Association from 1968 and in 1973 was appointed treasurer of the association [3,22,46,47]. He was forced to step aside in January 1993 when his past was revealed outside Germany [48,49].

Remembering the lessons of the past

Half a century after Nuremberg it is opportune to go back to the beginning and examine how the best and the brightest people in medical science could become parties to evil. Physicians need to examine the historical, social, and legal basis of their profound powers and influence, including the tragic example of the exploitation and abuse of those powers by the foremost medical and research communities of the day. The medical profession needs to examine what can happen when medicine is influenced by political ideology.

Examples of such an examination are coming from within the German medical community. Individual physicians [50] and medical organizations have taken the initiative in probing the tragic history of the medical profession in their own country. The organizations include the Berlin Chamber of Physicians, which organized a major exhibit on the history of medicine in Germany between 1918 and 1945 [51], and the German Chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. An English translation of the Berlin Chamber of Physicians' exhibit was shown internationally under the auspices of the Goethe Institute of Munich. German doctors publicly protested against Sewering's World Medical Association appointment [52]. Some German universities are supporting research into the subject at university based historical institutes [22]. It was the efforts of medical students at the University of Tubingen which resulted in a formal inquiry into the origins of pathoanatomical specimens from the Hitler era in the collections of that university [53].

In July 1990, at the burial of the Tubingen specimens, Professor Jurgen Peiffer called for an annual commemoration of faculty and students together so that the lessons of the past would not be forgotten [54]. Such an event would provide an opportunity to enunciate a new ethic in medicine as proposed by McIntyre and Popper [55]. An annual commemoration should be held in medical schools and research institutes throughout the world. On that day the medical profession would assemble to remember and to reflect on its responsibilities and ongoing challenges, in particular the role and influence of academics and scientists in medicine. The occasion should include a lament for the fate of the victims of medical abuse. Sensitization of the profession to its moral obligations requires an accounting of who the victims were and how, why, and by whom they came to be selected. In the spirit of McIntyre and Popper, the event would serve as a recurring reminder that the physician is a vulnerable and fallible human being and that no individual or institution, no matter how powerful or prestigious, is indefectible. An appropriate date for such an occasion would be the anniversary of the commencement of the Nuremberg medical trial - 9 December 1946 - the second Monday in December.

Two such commemorations are to be held this year. The first took place during 26-29 October in Nuremberg itself under the sponsorship of the German Chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The second will be in Washington, DC, during 8-10 December at the conference, "The Nuremberg code and human rights: 50th anniversary of the doctors' trial," to be held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Material in this paper was presented at the commemoration in Nuremberg and will be presented again at the commemoration in Washington.

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Acknowledgments

Many people contributed to this work but five deserve particular acknowledgment for their contribution to this paper: Professor Michael Grodin of Boston University; Professor Howard Israel of Columbia University; Professor Abyann Lynch of Toronto; Dr. George Webster of St Joseph's Health Center, Toronto; and Professor Velvl Greene, director of the Lord Immanuel Jakobovitz Center for Jewish Medical Ethics of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

References

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15. Jones JH. Bad blood: the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. New York: Free Press. 1981. [Return to text]
16. Rothman DJ. Ethics and human experimentation: Henry Beecher revisited. N Engl J Med 1987;317:1195-9. [Return to text]
17. Coney S. The unfortunate experiment Auckland NZ. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1988. [Return to text]
18. Paul C. The New Zealand cervical cancer study: could it happen again? BMJ 1988;297:533-9. [Return to text]
19. Lederer S E, Grodin M A. Historical overview: pediatric experimentation. In: Grodin MAA, Glantz LH (eds). Children as research subjects: science, ethics and law. New York: Oxford. 1994. [Return to text]
20. Masood E. MRC rejects call for radiation tests inquiry. Nature 1994;376:107. [Return to text]
21. MacIlwain C. US radiation report prompts bioethics move. Nature 1995;377:374. [Return to text]
22. Kater M. The burden of the past: problems of a modern historiography of physicians and medicine in Nazi Germany. Ger Stud Rev 1987;10:31-56. [Return to text]
23. Klee E. "Turning the tap on was no big deal." - The gassing doctors during the Nazi period and afterwards. In: Benz W, Distel B (eds). Dachau review 2. History of Nazi concentration camps. Studies, reports, documents. Vol 2. Brussels: Comiti International de Dachau. 1990:46-66. [Return to text]
24. Alexander L. Neuropathology and neurophysiology,including electroencephalography, in wartime Germany. Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee, G-2 division, SHAEF (rear), APO413. Washington, DC: National Archives, 20 July 1945. (Document No1-170 contd.) [Return to text]
25. Shevell M. Racial hygiene, active euthanasia, and Julius Hallervorden. Neurology 1992;42:2214-9. [Return to text]
26. Ernst E. A leading medical school seriously damaged: Vienna 1938. Ann Intern Med 1995;122:789-92. [Return to text]
27. Lehner M. Medizinische Fakultat der Universitat in den Jahren 1938-1945. Vienna: University of Vienna. 1990. (Dissertation.) [Return to text]
28. Williams DJ. The history of Eduard Pernkopf's Topographische Anatomie des Menschen. J Biomed Commun 1988; spring:2-12. [Return to text]
29. Pernkopf E. Topographische Anatomie des Menschen: Lehrbuch und Atlas der regionar-stratigraphischen Praparation. Berlin and Wien: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1943. (For the signature of Erich Lepier with swastika see II Band: Erste Hafte: Tafel 2 Abb 13,Tafel 33 Abb 14, Tafel 14 Abb 25, Tafel 15 Abb 26, Tafel 16 Abb 27,Tafel 17 Abb 28, Tafel 18 Abb 29, Tafel 32 Abb 43, page 351 Abb 108,and Tafel 65 Abb 4. For the signature of Karl Entresser with "SS" symbol see: II Band: Zweite Halfte: Tafel 102 Abb 188, Tafel 103 Abb189.) [Return to text]
30. Pernkopf E. Topographische Anatomie des Menschen:Lehrbuch und Atlas der regionar-stratigraphischen Praparation. Wien and Innsbruck: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1952. (For the signature of Franz Bratke with "SS" symbol see: III Band: Tafel 9 Abb 14, and Tafel 10 Abb 15.) [Return to text]
31. Platzer W, ed. Pernkopf anatomy: atlas of topographic and applied human anatomy. Vol 2. Baltimore and Munich: Urban &Schwarzenberg, 1989:338 (fig 336), 339 (fig 337). [Return to text]
32. Weindling P. Health, race and German politics between national unification and Nazism, 1870-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989. [Return to text]
33. Wistrich R. Who's who in the Third Reich. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. 1982. [Return to text]
34. Burleigh M. Death and deliverance: "euthanasia" in Germany 1900-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994. [Return to text]
35. Aly G, Chroust P, Pross C. Cleansing the fatherland: Nazi medicine and racial hygiene. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. 1994. [Return to text]
36. Lifton RJ. The Nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books. 1986. [Return to text]
37. Richardson E. Julius Hallervorden. In: Ashwal S, ed. The founders of child neurology. San Francisco: Norman. 1990:506-12. [Return to text]
38. Seidelman W. Mengele medicus: medicine's Nazi heritage. Milbank Q 1988;66:221-39. [Return to text]
39. Seidelman W. Lessons from eugenic history. Nature 1989;337:300. [Return to text]
40. Science citation index 1994 annual. Part 10. Citation index. Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information. 1994: col 98875. [Return to text]
41. Dickman S. Memorial ceremony to be held. Nature 1990;345:192. [Return to text]
42. Katz J. The consent principle of the Nuremberg code: its significance then and now. In: Annas G, Grodin M, eds. The Nazi doctors and the Nuremberg code: human rights in human experimentation. New York: Oxford University Press. 1992. [Return to text]
43. Grodin M A, Annas G J, Glantz L H. Medicine and human rights: a proposal for international action. Hastings Cent Rep 1993;23:8-12. [Return to text]
44. Fatturosso V. Cited by Refsauge W. The place for international standards in conducting research on humans. Proceedings of international conference on role of individual and community in research, development, and use of biologicals. Bull World Health Organ 1977;55 (suppl 2):133-9. [Return to text]
45. 27th World Medical Assembly. World Med J 1973;21:4-9. [Return to text]
46. Der Spiegel 1978 June 19:84-8. [Return to text]
47. Beck W. The World Medical Association and South Africa. Lancet 1989;i:1441-2. [Return to text]
48. Whitney CR. Top German doctor admits SS past. New York Times 1993 Jan 16:3. [Return to text]
49. Die Bundesarztekammer informiet: Professor Sewering stehtfur das Amt des Prasidenten des Weltarztebundes nicht mehr zur Verfugung. Cologne: Pressestelle der Deutschen Arzteschaft, 1993 Jan 23. [Return to text]
50. Hanauske-Abel H. From Nazi holocaust to nuclear holocaust: a lesson to learn? Lancet 1986:ii:271-3. [Return to text]
51. Pross C, Aly G, eds. Der Wert des Menschen: Medizin in Deutschland 1918-1945. Herausgegegen von der Arztekammer Berlin in Zusammenarbeit mit der Bundesarztekammer. Berlin: Edition Hentrich. 1989. [Return to text]
52. Deutsche Arzte protestieren. Die Zeit 1993 Jan 22:22. [Return to text]
53. Berichte: der Kommission zur \(berprufung der Praparatesammlungen in den medizinischen Einrichtungen der Universitat Tubingen im Hinblick auf Opfer de Nationalsozialismus. Tubingen: Eberhard-Karls-Universitat Tubingen Abdruck, 1990. (Herausgegeben vom Prasidenten der Eberhard-Karls-Universitat Tubingen Abdruck - auch auszugweise - nurmit Genehmigung des Herausgebers.) [Return to text]
54. Peiffer J. Neuropathology in the Third Reich: memorial to those victims of national socialist atrocities in Germany who were used by medical science. Brain Pathol 1991;1:125-31. [Return to text]
55. McIntyre N, Popper L. The critical attitude in medicine: the need for a new ethics. BMJ 1983;287:1919-23. [Return to text]

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* WES is professor of family and community medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto and The Wellesley Central Hospital. Address correspondence to: William E. Seidelman, M.D., The Wellesley Central Hospital, Toronto, Ontario M4X-1K2, Canada.

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© Copyright 1996 The British Medical Journal

Two articles about the Nazi legacy, from http://www.tiac.net/users/ddiam/Q/CIA.html:

From: jclancy@peg.apc.org
subject: CIA Torture Book.

The world's enemies have always been tortured, but the CIA, to make sure that its junior operatives have the right idea, have put it down in writing. It surfaced first in the US Phoenix program for the peasants of South Vietnam; about 200,000 of whom were practiced upon by CIA people and their willing South Korean assistants. The instruction was that if after treatment the subject was obviously a being who had not been indoctrinated into Communism, then he/she could be dumped back on the nearest roadway to find their way home. If they admitted to have a soft spot for Communism then the rule book allowed extremes of torture before the "final solution".

WASHINGTON- "They had ways of making you talk. In July 1963, the CIA printed a secret handbook on interrogation that remained a standard reference for two decades. The text, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation,"-KUBARK being a cryptonym, KU a random diptych and BARK the agency's code word for itself at that time was produced under the aegis of James J.Angleton, the CIA's chief counterspy from 1954 to 1974.

Like the late Angleton, it is sophisticated, scholarly, occasionally witty and utterly cold-blooded. Such interrogations were meant for traveling salesmen, refugees, defectors and spies, with corresponding intensity-subtle, skeptical, brutality. A suspected Soviet agent, for example, would be handled with Soviet methods. Take the case of Yuri Nosenko, the only documented instance of the use of these techniques. Angleton thought that Nosenko, a Soviet spy who defected to the United States in 1964, was dispatched by Moscow to mislead the CIA. The agency secretly imprisoned Nosenko in a tiny cell outside Washington and grilled him mercilessly for nearly five years. Angleton's suspicions were unproven.

The manual's description of coercive techniques, including the milder forms of torture-practices the agency says it abandoned in 1985. The 128-page text was unearthed last month by a Freedom of Information request filed by The Baltimore Sun. Herewith, excerpts from the CIA's handbook on winning friends, influencing people and, if necessary, breaking them like a dry twig.-TIM WEINER

From the introduction:

"Once it is established that the source is probably a counterintelligence target, a Communist, or a part of any other group engaged in clandestine activity directed against the national security, the interrogation is planned and conducted with increasing intensity as the focus on source resistance grows sharper."

Such interrogations usually happened abroad, where they were ostensibly outside the ambit of American law. When, as in Nosenko's case, punishing interrogation took place in the US, they were arguably illegal abuses of power.

The agency was aware of the danger:

The legislation which founded KUBARK specifically denied it any law-enforcement or police powers. Yet detention in a controlled environment and perhaps for a lengthy period is frequently essential. Interrogations conducted under compulsion or duress are especially likely to involve illegality and to entail damaging consequences for KUBARK. Therefore, prior Headquarters approval must be obtained for the interrogation of any source against his will and under any of the following circumstances:

If bodily harm is to be inflicted.

If medical, chemical, or electrical methods or materials are to be used to induce acquiescence.

The manual then discusses "non-coercive" interrogation:

"The effectiveness of most of the non-coercive techniques depends on their unsettling effect. The interrogation situation is in itself disturbing to most people in a traumatic or sub-traumatic experience which explodes, as it were, the world that is familiar to the subject as well as his image of himself within that world. . . .

"The interrogator . . . can create and amplify an effect of omniscience in a number of ways. For example, he can show the interrogatee a thick file bearing his own name. Even if the file contains little or nothing but blank paper, the air of familiarity with which the interrogator refers to the subject's background can convince some sources that all is known and that resistance is futile.

Then there was the "Alice in Wonderland" method: The Alice in Wonderland technique is designed not only to obliterate the familiar but to replace it with the weird. . . . A double-talk question (is followed by) a wholly unrelated and equally illogical query . day after day. . The subject begins to try to make sense of the situation, which becomes mentally intolerable. Now he is likely to make significant admissions, or even pour out his story, just to stop the flow of babble which assails him. If all else failed, violence and other coercive methods were options: The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources: The principal coercive techniques are arrest, detention, the depri- vation of sensory stimuli, threats and fear, debility, pain, heightened suggestibility and hypnosis, and drugs. etc etc ".

JC. All very mild stuff so far. The Baltimore Sun could have done a lot better with the truth. The CIA and US South American "Generals" have training in the US School of Assassins. Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu's picture of the death of her family and particularly of her brother is more like the TRUTH. US expansionism demands torture and starvation of their own poor and many foreign nations -eg CUBA.

And so, the voice of Rigoberta Menchu. "One little brother died from malnutrition. Nicolas died from pesticide spray fumes. When we were 14 my friend also died from cotton spray poisoning. In every village, hundreds of young girls and women were being raped by the military, so I slept in the trees and rain each night with others.

My father refused to part with our land so he was tortured regularly in jail. My mother said that when a woman sees her son being tortured, burnt alive, she is incapable of not hating. In 1979 my younger brother died under torture at age 16. His name was Petrocinio Menchu Tum. He was made to walk away, kicked incessantly until he fell, then kicked in the face. When they had done with him he didn't look like a person anymore. He was kept in a well with many bodies. They forced stones into his eyes, cut off his skin and burned him. The wounds were infected. They shaved his head then cut the skin and pulled it down over his face, then cut off the fleshy part of his face. Two weeks later they announced that all parents would have to come to the village to see their sons punished.

We all, including my father, brothers and sisters had to walk all night to get to that place. Hundreds of peasants were there and machine guns and helicopters (US) threatened them. Soldiers had to cut the clothing from the prisoners as the officer told details of each type of torture for these 'guerillas'. My brother had no soles left on his feet. Women had had their breasts or nipples slashed off, tongues, eyes and ears were missing everywhere. The Captain explained that the Government was democratic. What else do you want you are led by communists! All the sufferers were then doused in petrol and set alight. "Long Live Guatemala", said the Captain."

This gets closer to US methods, christianity, democracy? JC

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Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 21:41:11 -0700
To: nation-talk@thenation.com
From: Robert Cherwink
Subject: Part 3, ATROCITIES: Financed With Our Hard-Earned Pay

From: John DiNardo

From the Pacifica Radio Network station,
WBAI-FM (99.5)
505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
New York, NY 10018

(212)279-0707

Part 3, ATROCITIES: Financed With Our Hard-Earned Pay

NARRATOR:
John Stockwell spent 13 years with the CIA, including serving as a case officer in Africa and Viet Nam. He was commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976.

JOHN STOCKWELL:
Systematically, the Contras have been assassinating religious workers, teachers, health workers, elected officials, government administrators. Remember the "Assassination Manual" that surfaced in 1984? It caused such a stir that President Reagan had to address it himself in the presidential debates with Walter Mondale. They use terror to traumatize society so that it cannot function.

I don't mean to abuse you with verbal violence, but you have to understand what your Government and its agents are doing.

They go into villages. They haul out families.
With the children forced to watch, they castrate the father.
They peel the skin off his face.
They put a grenade in his mouth, and pull the pin.
With the children forced to watch, they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off.
And sometimes, for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.

This is nobody's propaganda !

There have been over a hundred thousand American "Witnesses for Peace" who've gone down there, and they have filmed and photographed and witnessed these atrocities immediately after they've happened, and documented thirteen thousand people killed this way -- mostly women and children.

These are the activites done by the Contras. The Contras are the people President Reagan called "freedom fighters." He said:

"They are the moral equivalent of our founding fathers."

In 1960, we came up with a new term, a policy of trying to correct the problems of Central and Latin America -- the economic imbalances -- by addressing them directly. In President Kennedy's famous program: He said:

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable."

However, the millions and millions of dollars that we put into this program, inevitably went to the rich, and not to the ordinary people of the countries involved. While we were doing this, or trying -- saying we were trying to correct the problems of Central and Latin America -- the CIA was doing its thing too.

The CIA was, in fact, forming the police units that are, today, the death squads in El Salvador. The leaders were on the CIA's payroll, trained by the CIA in the United States. We had the public safety program going throughout Central and Latin America for twenty-six years, in which we taught them to break up subversion by interrogating people: interrogation, including torture, the way the CIA taught it.

Dan Mitrione, the exponent of these things, spent seven years in Brazil and three in Uruguay, teaching interrogation; teaching torture. He was supposed to be the master of the business: how to apply the right amount of pain, at just the right times, in order to get the response you want from the individual. They gave them crank generators -- with "U.S. A.I.D." written on the side, so the people even knew where these things came from -- and developed a wire that was strong enough to carry the current and fine enough to fit between the teeth, so you could put one wire between the teeth, and the other in or around the genitals. You could crank, and submit the individual to the greatest amount of pain, supposedly, that the human body can register.

Now, how do you teach torture?

Dan Mitrione, I can teach you about torture, but sooner or later you have to get involved. You have to lay on your hands and try it yourself. They would pick up guinea pigs off the streets: beggars, and take them in to use in these torture training classes. Of course, the horror of that is, these people wouldn't know why they were being tortured. They couldn't give up. They couldn't say:

"I'm sorry! Stop the pain!

I'll tell you the names of everybody involved!"
All they could do was lie there and scream!

When they would collapse, they would bring in doctors who would shoot them up with Vitamin B and rest them up for the next class. And when they would die, they would mutilate the bodies and throw them out on the streets to terrify the population, so that everybody would be afraid of the police and the Government. This is what the CIA was teaching them to do.

One of the women who was in this program for two years -- tortured in Brazil for TWO YEARS -- testified internationally when she eventually got out. She said the most horrible thing about it, in fact, was that the people doing it were not raving psychopaths. She couldn't break mental contact with them the way you could if they were psychopaths. They were very ordinary people.

She told about being tortured one day:
She's on this table, naked in a room full of six men, and they're doing these incredibly painful, degrading things to her body. There's an interruption. The American is called to the telephone, and he's in the next room, and the others take a smoke break. She's lying on this table, and he's saying:

"Oh, hi Honey. Yes, I can wrap it up here in another hour or so, and meet you and the kids at the Ambassador's on the way home."

There's a lesson in all this. The lesson is:

It isn't just the Gestapo maniacs, or KGB maniacs, who do inhuman things to other people.

It's PEOPLE who do inhuman things to other people.
And we are responsible for doing these things on a massive basis, to people of the world today. We do it in a way that gives us plausible denial to our own consciences. We create a CIA, a secret police, with a vast budget, and let them go and run these programs in our name. We pretend like we don't know what's going on, though the information is there for us to know. And we pretend like it's okay because we're fighting some vague communist threat. We're just as responsible for these ONE TO THREE MILLION PEOPLE we've slaughtered, and for all the people we've tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was for the people that they slaughtered and killed. Genocide is genocide !!

AMY GOODMAN:
That is John Stockwell, with excerpts from two of his talks on "The Secret Wars of the CIA."
I'm Amy Goodman.

William Norman Grigg's article "Lessons From the Holocaust," describes in some detail the consonance and alignment of the Soviet and Nazi ideologies and methods, and explores the roots of the genocide of European Jews:

"Reading Marx," Vazsonyi points out, "it seemed that socialism could be used as a pretext for just about anything" - from confiscation of property to the wholesale liquidation of uncooperative subjects. Furthermore, "Since Marx listed more than a half dozen different kinds of socialism back in 1848, it also seemed that socialism was whatever a person said it was." Nearly any formula of grievances and utopian aspirations could be used to justify the seizure of total power and the collectivization of society. "Marx's outstanding pupils, Vladimir Illych Lenin and Adolf Hitler, chose from the Master's repertoire according to their personal preference, while remaining mindful of local conditions," Vazsonyi continues. "Lenin chose class, Hitler chose race. Both were crude, and both killed millions in the process" of creating their respective socialist utopias.

from "Road to Serfdom" by F.A. Hayek, http://www.fiu.edu/~vasquezc/NOMARX4.htm

"The connection between socialism and nationalism in Germany was close from the beginning. It is significant that the most important ancestors of National Socialism -- Fichte, Robertus, and Lasalle -- are at the same time acknowledged fathers of socialism. While theoretical socialism in its Marxist form was directing the German labor movement, the authoritarian and nationalist element receded for a time into the background. But not for long. From 1914 onward there rose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hardworking laborer and idealist youth into the Nationalist Socialist fold. It was only thereafter that the tide of nationalist socialism attained major importance and rapidly grew into the Hitlerian doctrine.

from http://www.security-policy.org/papers/1990/90-P69at.html:

from Karl Marx-Engels Collected Works (London 1975ff),vol. iii,pp146-74 (evidencing Marx's anti-semitism)

"Money is the Jealous God of Israel, beside which no other God may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities. The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of the world. In emancipating itself from hucsterism and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself...by destroying the empirical essence of Judaism, the Jew will become impossibe."

The difference between Nazi ideology and Soviet ideology is essentially sectarian.

from Thant Tessman <thant@acm.org>, from Usenet, 20 Oct 1997, in a thread started by Neo-Nazi propaganda:

[...]

Stalin led more people to their deaths than Hitler did. The difference is that journalists, historians, and others amongst the self-elected intellectual elite are more sympathetic to at least the overt goals of communism, and so give Stalin's crimes less attention than Hitler's.

The truth is that the psychology the Nazi movement was not all that different from the psychology for the communist movement. Hitler just happened to put a nationalist and racist spin on it, making him easier for us to demonize without giving up our own desires to `engineer' a better society by controlling people with government force.

"It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole; that pride and conceitedness, the feeling that the individual... is superior, so far from being merely laughable, involve great dangers for the existence of the community that is a nation; that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual."
--- Adolph Hitler

-thant

from Daniel Pouzzner <douzzer@ai.mit.edu> (me), a Usenet post of 1998-Mar-4:

Nazi is a contraction of "nationalsozialist," German for "national socialist." According to Webster's dictionary, socialism is "a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done." In practical usage, "socialism" and "communism" do not substantively differ in denotation.

Were the Nazis socialists? The core doctrine of Naziism is that the individual is nothing and the collective (and by extension the Party) is everything. Distractions such as theosophy and aggressive imperialism notwithstanding, this core doctrine is what best characterizes the mood of Nazi Germany, and it is this doctrine that it shares with the communists of Soviet Russia and the communists of China. Communism is intrinsically a denial of individual autonomy and primacy, and an embrace of an ostensible rule of the collective which, by necessity, invariably takes the form of a dictatorial oligarchy or autarchy. Most heinously, communism as actualized in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and communist China, consists centrally of the total and blanket denial of the very concept of human rights. The citizen of a communist country, insofar as one can be said to be a citizen in such an environment (viz. Webster's definition of citizen, "one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman"), is expected to be unfailingly obedient to the political apparatus, and where obedience fails, is put to the bayonet, the gallows, or the forced labor camp.

Marx's theories were not sound. They were disconnected from the emotional realities of the human condition. Because of this dissonance, every attempt to implement Marxist doctrine in the real world has led to massive corruption, immense misery, and egregious violations of the most basic human rights. Marx's ideas appeal to the ordinary man, much as the Catholic church's ideas do. But the ordinary man neither defines nor enriches humanity - that is the role of the extraordinary man. Any doctrine that benefits the ordinary man at the expense of the extraordinary man is patently evil. Marxism is such a doctrine.

another gem from Barbara Marx Hubbard, neatly demonstrating the fundamental consonance of Naziism, communism, and Christianity. This quote is from her book The Revelation, comments (authored by her) she attributes to the book's Christ character:

"The operation to save humanity is also painful. You do not want to kill bodies but to change minds, yet the 'good' will also suffer as you eliminate self-centeredness that would destroy the whole body" (comments on Rev. 8:7-9; 9:1-4, p. 145-146).

Hopefully Hubbard won't hook up with Janet and Chris Morris... These people simply suck. They are abominations, dangerous people with dangerous ideas who act as consultants to the US military and the CFR set, bandying about their contagious ideological diseases.

"Reich" is German for Order. In the Nazi nomenclature, the first Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, and the second Reich was the Prussian Empire of 1701-1914. The following joltingly terse chronology, from http://www3.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5011/history.html (part of the German Culture Page by Jason Godesky), sets the stage for an investigation of the Third Reich:

The Teutonic Tribes
2500 BC - 700 AD

The area which is now considered the German-speaking world is one of the oldest populated areas in Europe. The first culture to live there are those people we refer to as "Celts." Though they are better known today as the ancient inhabitants of the British Isles, one of the earliest forms of their civilization, the Halstatt Culture, is named for a small town in modern Austria.

A close cultural relative of the Celts began to emerge in Germany, though, about the time of Julius Caesar (first century BC). They were the Teutons. This group was actually a blanket term for many independent German tribes (the Alamanni, the Saxons, the Frisians, the Jutes, the Goths, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the Franks, the Angles, etc.).

At this time, such generals as Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Gaius Marius tried to lead the Romans on a conquest of "Germania," the Latin name from which our own English term "Germany" is derived. These invasions were repulsed. One particularly famous defeat of a Roman invasion was that led by Hermann, whom the Romans called "Arminius," meaning "hammer." But neither could the Teutons take Rome; in the second century, a confederation of Franks, Burgundians and Alamanni were stopped from crossing the Rhine. But, when things became desperate, the Teutons succeeded.

A worldwide temperature rise of about ten degrees in the last centuries of the pre-Christian era caused the Alps' snow to melt a bit, making them more traversible. This led to Rome's rise to power. But, in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, the temperature dropped back to normal. The Alps froze, causing the Empire to begin to degrade. Meanwhile, the same temperature drop caused several rivers in Asia to freeze, forcing the nomadic Huns to move westward. This migration pushed the Teutons out of their land, and right into the Roman Empire, leading to the "barbarian invasions."

When it was over, the pressure of the Germanic attack caused the crumbling Empire to buckle. In 476, Odoacer declared himself the King of Italy, officially ending the Western Roman Empire (the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, would last until the fall of Constantinople in 1453).

During these "barbarian invasions," Clovis (from whose name the "c" would later be dropped, and the "v" turned to a "u," to produce "Louis," as in Louis I), the first king of the Merovingian Dynasty, became chieftain of the Franks and carved out a kingdom for himself that included the Roman province of Gaul and southwestern Germany. He converted his subjects from the heresy of Arianism to orthodox Christianity, and established a major power in continental Europe in the wake of the fall of Rome.

There were other displacements as well, as the Anglo-Saxons took the former Roman province of Britannia. They would give their name to their new land, calling it Angle-land, later contracted to England.

But the Teutonic Tribes were divided and splintered. Their chieftains constantly fought amongst themselves for more power. The peace of Rome, the peace of the conqueror, was gone. This was the period called the Dark Ages. And they would not leave until another conqueror had brought his peace by the sword...

The First Reich
700 AD - 936 AD

In time, the Merovingian kings grew weak, until they retained all the rights and privileges of kingship, but the burden of responsibility rested on the shoulders of the Mayor of the Palace. In the reign of Childric III, that was Pepin the Short, descended from the great Frankish hero Charles Martel. In 751, with the pope's approval, Pepin took the title and rights of king for himself, as well, deposing Childric.

Pepin had two sons: Charles and Carloman. Between these two, he divided his empire, a common practice that led to the feuding that perpetuated the Dark Ages. Of the two brothers, Charles was the more able ruler and soldier. He conquered his brother's realm, as well as northern Italy and most of Germany. Later generations would fashion numerous stories about him. In his own lifetime, the coins of his realm were stamped with his name in Latin: "Carolus Magnus," meaning "Charles the Great." That same title was the source of his German name, Karl der Grosse, as well as his French name, Charle le Magne, which, in English, we contract to Charlemagne.

On Christmas Day in the Year of Our Lord 800, Charlemagne was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III. The reign of Charlemagne became the model of all subsequent medieval kings; a good king would rule like Charlemagne. But, upon his death, his great Empire was broken into three parts for each of his son. Louis the German recieved East Francia, what is modern Germany. Within a few centuries, the Carolingian line had died out, but the fragments of the Empire remained under a few rulers.

By the tenth century, East Francia was being attacked by another Teutonic people from the north, called the Norsemen, or Vikings. They were also attacked by the Magyars and Moravians, while rival tribes within the kingdom threatened to tear it apart. Now, the feudal system which Charlemagne had to a large extent implemented - an all-powerful king who ruled over a number of vassal lords - began to tear apart the kingdom, as the five tribal duchies - Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Lorraine - became, for all intents and purposes, independent. These five kingdoms set the tone for the rest of Germany's medieval history: a military and ecclesiastical aristocracy ruling over an agrarian peasantry. As these rulers were the ones who elected the kings, they chose weak rulers, so that none may oppose their own authority. Much like the election of Pope John Paul II in our own time, in 936, the electors, thinking they had chosen a weak-minded puppet, found they had underestimated the man they crowned...

The Holy Roman Empire
936 AD - 1517 AD

In 936, Otto I was elected king of East Francia. By strengthening the bond between Church and Empire, he solidified his own position, while he moved against the dukes. He himself appointed the dukes now, making them no longer hereditary. He gave them to his own relatives, so that the king would demand the loyalty of the nobility, rather than vice versa.

With a united kingdom, Otto set out to expand it. At the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, he permanently destroyed the Magyar threat. By such actions as the institution of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, Otto consolidated his power in the newly conquered lands. Otto also pushed into Italy, aiding the pope against his enemy, King Berengar of Italy. For his aid, he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 962. And, though Charlemagne had been the first to bear the title, it is truly Otto who founded the Holy Roman Empire. For when he died in 973, he left his Empire to a single heir, his son, Otto II.

The "Saxon Kings" reigned until 1024, when the Salian line of the same family took power. It was under their auspices that the Empire reached its zenith. Conrad II was the first of the Salian kings. His son was Henry III, who outlawed simony and introduced the "Truce of God," which banned warfare from Wednesday night until Monday morning (he tried to extend this to a permanent truce, but that was not realized). The reign of his successor, Henry IV, led to conflicts with the papacy and 20 years of civil war. He was finally deposed by his treacherous son Henry V, who continued the conflict with the papacy.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, Italy and Germany alike were rent by the feuding of the Hohenstaufen (a.k.a the Ghibellines in Italy and the Waiblingen) and Welf (a.k.a. Guelphs in Italy) families. While the Hohenstaufens controlled the Empire, the Welfs controlled the papacy. And so, the two former allies which had ruled Europe under Otto and Charlemagne became the puppets of feuding families.

The situation erupted into violence, as Conrad III (Hohenstaufen) put down the rebellion of Duke Henry the Lion of Bavaria (Welf). Upon Conrad's death, a new king was elected: Frederick I, later called "Barbarossa" for his red beard, who had both Hohenstaufen and Welf blood. The ideal medieval king, he is remembered as one of the Holy Roman Empire's greatest rulers. Upon his death, he was succeeded by Henry VI, who wished to become master of the known world. But in 1197, while planning a Crusade to the Holy Land, he died suddenly.

The empire fell apart. With the heir, Frederick II, still an infant, the Hohenstaufens and Welfs continued their wars, unchecked. That is, until Frederick II attained maturity, at which time, by a compromise designed by the pope, he gave Germany to his young son Henry, while he kept Sicily as his base of operations. When Henry grew to be king, he denounced how his father had given the power of Germany to its dukes, and revolted against him. But Frederick soon deposed and imprisoned him. Pope Gregory IX, fearing Frederick's power, excommunicated him, and, while he was in the Holy Land, invaded Sicily. Frederick was barely able to save his land and make peace when the Lombard League, led by the pope, attacked him. In retaliation, Frederick seized the Papal States. Soon after, as he was making headway against the League, he died.

Frederick's death led to the Great Interregnum (1254-1273), during which times foreigners claimed the rule of Germany and the princes ran amok. It was during this turbulent time that the Hanseatic League emerged as the dominant power in northern Germany.

In 1273, the electors installed the Habsburg Line, which would emerge as the single most powerful family in Germany's history. For a time, the Luxemburg Line reigned, until 1438, when the Habsburgs were reinstalled. They reigned continuously from then until the end of the Empire.

It was an emperor of the Habsburg Line, Charles V, who reigned in Germany during one of its darkest times, a time when a single monk, searching for the truth, would tear the world apart...

Renaissance & Reformation
1517 AD - 1701 AD

On October 31, 1517, so the story's told, an Augustinian monk nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, in protest of the Church's granting of indulgences. Martin Luther was simply looking for the truth, trying to reform the blatant corruption in the Church. But the people had become tired of the Church's long, tyrannical reign, and were ready to shake it off. Despite Luther's protestations, his teachings were used to splinter from the Roman Church. "The Great Schism" created the various Protestant faiths, and prompted centuries of bitter hardship and feuding.

The Catholics responded with the counter-Reformation, in which the doctrine of indulgences was denounced, but other measures were set up, so as to insure that reconciliation would be impossible (which has, so far, proven successful).

Of course, in the Empire, as in the Middle Ages, religion and politics were one. The beginning of Protestantism had split the nation in two. The Schmalkadic League, the Protestant League, the Catholic League - they all fought against each other. As foreign nations became involved, it finally accumulated in the devastating Thirty Years' War, a conflict that all but destroyed Germany.

Philip II, Spain's Catholic Habsburg ruler, was one of the great powers in Europe, and his kinsman Ferdinand II was the Holy Roman Emperor. Catholic France, though, was not willing to be overrun by either of its powerful Habsburg neighbors, while Protestant England thought of itself as the "defender of the true faith."

And so, Germany became the battleground for the great European powers when Protestant Bohemia refused to acknowledge the Catholic Ferdinand II as Emperor. The war resulted in the death of half Bohemia's population. The second phase of the war began in 1625, when the Danish king Christian IV, supported by Protestant princes who objected to the prescence of Spanish troops in their lands, invaded Germany. By 1629, Christian was beaten, and Ferdinand had begun to enforce Catholicism. The Protestants, though, soon found a new champion: Gustav II Adolph, the king of Sweden, who invaded Pommerania. The resulting war dragged on for years, until, in the end, the Swedes were forced to retreat, but in return for the revocation of some of the harsh terms Ferdinand had imposed on the Protestant princes. In the fourth and final phase of the war, France took advantage of the Empire's weakness in order to make certain that it would not become a kingdom of the Habsburgs. They paid the Swedes, still hungry for German land, while they crossed the Rhine. After a long conflict, the invaders were repulsed. After thirty years of war, the rulers were ready for peace.

The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War, but at a great price. The sovereignty of each of the states was acknowledged, including the right of each prince to choose the religion of his lands. This effectively ended the Holy Roman Empire, though the First Reich continued in name for some years to come. Germany, devastated, seemed a broken nation. But, within a few years, a new German kingdom would arise, and become one of the greatest powers in Europe.

The Second Reich
1701 AD - 1914 AD

Until this point, eastern Europe, tamed by the Teutonic Knights, had had little to do with the rest of the continent. But Frederick I, of the powerful Hohenzollern family, and elector of Bradenburg, wished to be more than a prince. He wished to be a king. He achieved his dream, and was crowned King of Prussia in 1701.

Prussia was then a tiny kingdom, built to satisfy Frederick's want of a title. It was his son, Frederick the Great, who made Prussia into a mighty power. The Holy Roman Empire was, for all intents and purposes, dead. But the title of Emperor still rested with the Habsburgs. And, while the Empire may have been gone, the Habsburgs' power certainly was not, for they controlled Austria. It was Maria Theresa, the ruler of Austria, that Frederick began fighting. The Prussian king's tactical genius turned his kingdom from a tiny realm into one of the greatest powers in Europe. In the Seven Years' War, several European nations tried, but failed, to destroy Prussia. It was this war that left England bankrupt, and began the events that led to the American Revolution. The American Revolution inspired the French to revolt against Louis XIV, the "Sun King," and set up a Republic. And it was the instability of this same Republic that allowed Napoleon to come to power.

By the time that Napoleon's Grand Armee marched across the German lands, Frederick was long dead. But still, the power of Prussia was not to be taken lightly. Napoleon forced the German states into the Confederation of the Rhine, which was kept under his control, while the Holy Roman Emperor Franz II was forced to take a different title: that of the Austrian Emperor. But it was Prussia, with the aid of an Alliance of European powers, that fought the French Emperor at Waterloo.

Napoleon's fall left Europe in a precarious political situation, and the Congress of Vienna was called to straighten out the order of things. By its conclusion, Prussia had emerged as the single most powerful German kingdom. At this time, Wilhelm I was King of Prussia, but it was his chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck, that is better remembered. For, though his diplomacy, blackmail, and instigation, he managed to unite all of the German states under Prussian rule; mainly by giving them a common enemy. It was he who created the German Empire, the Second Reich of German history.

Bismarck was dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who succeeded Wilhelm I. He concluded an alliance with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (a power created by the "dual monarchy" of Austria and Hungary), not long before the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serb. It was the "shot heard around the world," and would plunge the entire world into a war that would end with the destruction of the German Reich, and a devastation Europe had never before known.

The War to End All Wars
1914 AD - 1933 AD

World War I began as a minor conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, but both sides had numerous, powerful allies. The supporters of Serbia, the Allies, included France, England and later, America. Their enemies, the Central Powers, were led by the German Reich, under Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The First World War was also the first modern conflict. It was the first time airplanes were used in combat (with such famous pilots as Manfred von Richthofen and Hermann Göring setting the standard for later air forces). Tanks, gas, trenches, and machine guns were all utilized. It was partially due to this new face of war, and the lack of knowledge the generals had with it, that led to so many casualties. But, in 1918, the Germans were defeated, and the Central Powers were forced to capitulate.

In 1919, as the Allies signed the Treaty of Versailles, ending the conflict they had called "the Great War," or "the War to End All Wars," it was decided to punish Germany. The nation was broken and crippled, even as a revolution within its own borders overthrew the Kaiser and set up a republican government. This Weimar Republic was left to rule the shattered remnant of a once powerful nation.

Germany did not share in the boom times of the 1920s, and when, in 1929, a world-wide depression set in, Germany felt it hardest. In such dire times, any strong leader is eagerly accepted. And so, when Adolf Hitler appeared, he seemed a God-send. He gave the Germans back their pride, he rebuilt a crippled nation. Everyone loved Hitler; and no one could even guess the nightmarish regime he would soon emplace.

Hitler's success prompted the elections of 1930 to give his National Socialist party a majority in the Reichstag. That meant that most of Germany's legislative branch would obey his orders unconditionally, for Hitler, as Führer, already had dictatorial control over his party. And, in 1933, the Nazi Reichstag extended that control over all of Germany.

The Third Reich had begun.

The Third Reich
1933 AD - 1945 AD

Hitler's regime was established on four principles: Germans were the master race, Jews were inferior, Communists must be destroyed, and democracy is an evil. From the time of the Crusades, Germany had been the center for anti-Semitism. It had been boiling, like a pot, for centuries, and was ready to be let out. After the destruction of Germany and its "punishment" at Versailles, the German people were perfectly willing to blame their miseries on the Jews. They were even happier to hear Hitler's acclamation of them as a "master race," destined to rule the world. To a broken people, few things would be more appealing. Within months of assuming power, the Reichstag was burned. Göring, by now one of Hitler's main aides, blamed the fire on Communists, hightening the "Red fear." A similar trend was developing in America at the time, and had their been an American like Hitler here to use that trend to his advantage, it may very well have been here that the concentration camps were set up. And the fourth basis of the Nazi regime, that democracy was evil, was established by its institution. For, once the Gestapo were out in full force, no one dared to even dream of such things.

To solve the problem of Germany's massive unemployment, Hitler created new jobs; building up his armies. Many people thought that the terms in the Versailles treaty were too harsh, and were willing to look the other way as Hitler violated its terms. One by one, Hitler took over country after country, as the Allies, fearful of another world war, handed them over. It wasn't until late in 1939, when Hitler's armies invaded Poland, that they decided to take a stand.

By putting most of the population to work building his armies, Hitler had created a veritable War Machine that, for a long time, many thought to be completely unstoppable. Early in the war, France, one of the most prominent Allies in World War I, was overrun, and for a long time, it seemed that Britain would fall, as well. Indeed, there would have been no stopping the Nazis had it not been for a series of fateful blunders on the Führer's part, including sleeping in late. The most serious, however, was probably the invasion of Russia in 1941. At the beginning of the war, Russia had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, secretly dividing Poland between them. But, with this invasion, Hitler fell prey to his own hatred of Communism, and turned Joseph Stalin into an enemy. It was a mistake he would soon regret, for his invasion failed, and Stalin became one of the "Big Three" who led the Allies in opposition to the Axis Powers.

By 1945, everything was falling apart. Russia was pushing in from the east, while America had joined Britain and, in Operation Overlord, on D-Day, landed on the beaches of Normandy. Within a few months, they had liberated France. In April, Russian troops attacked Hitler's capital, and, in the Battle of Berlin, a few Panzer and SS units held the city against the Soviet army. But, on April 6, Hitler committed suicide, and by the end of the year, World War II was over.

By the time the war had broken out, the Allies had figured out that Hitler was not a nice man, but it was not until they took over Germany that they realized the depths of his madness, as they liberated the concentration camps he had herded Jews into throughout his regime as part of the "final solution" to wipe out first Judaism, then all others, until only the Aryan race remained.

Once the Third Reich had been destroyed, the victorious Allies divided Germany amongst themselves; France, England, America, and Russia all recieved a sector. Berlin, deep inside the Russian sector, was also divided. Little did they know that almost fifty years would pass before Germany would be united again.