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Germany Plots with the Kremlin

by T. H. Tetens
1953, Hen­ry Schu­man, 294 pages
Down­load Pt. 1 [1] | Down­load Pt. 2 [2]

T.H. Tetens’ Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin (1953) treats the piv­otal­ly impor­tant Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik,” which Ger­man pow­er struc­ture has tra­di­tion­al­ly exploit­ed in order expand and devel­op its influ­ence. The Ger­man threat to either remain neu­tral dur­ing the Cold War, or to ally with the USSR, was a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in per­suad­ing con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can pow­er bro­kers to go along with the rein­state­ment in Ger­many of the Nazi ele­ments that pros­e­cut­ed World War II. Under the cir­cum­stances, some of these con­ser­v­a­tives felt that per­mit­ting Nazi ele­ments to return to pow­er behind a demo­c­ra­t­ic façade was the less­er of two evils, although many would have pre­ferred a more tra­di­tion­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Ger­man polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. This Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik,” in turn, is char­ac­ter­is­tic of the geopo­lit­i­cal fore­sight and cyn­i­cism with which pan-Ger­man­ists have suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sued their goal of world dom­i­na­tion through the cen­turies.

An author­i­ty on pan-Ger­man­ism employed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment dur­ing World War II, Tetens ana­lyzes Ger­man Ost­poli­tik in the after­math of the war in the con­text of cen­turies of Ger­man pol­i­cy toward Rus­sia and the for­mer Sovi­et Union. Trac­ing the roots of Ost­poli­tik, Tetens begins with Fred­er­ick the Great’s secret pact of 1762 with Czar Peter III, which dis­rupt­ed the Euro­pean coali­tion that almost crushed Prus­sia in the Sev­en Years War. This pact saved Prus­sia from total defeat and led to the first par­ti­tion of Poland. In 1867, Ger­man chan­cel­lor Otto von Bis­mar­ck made a secret pact (called a “re-insur­ance treaty”) with Rus­sia, which secured Germany’s East­ern fron­tier, help­ing to make Ger­many the strongest mil­i­tary pow­er on the con­ti­nent. Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of their pre­de­ces­sors, Gen­er­al Hans von Seeckt (head of the Ger­man gen­er­al staff) cre­at­ed a new army after the Ger­man defeat in World War I. That army trained and armed in Sovi­et Rus­sia after the Rapal­lo Treaty between Ger­many and the USSR in 1922. While Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Gus­tav Stre­se­mann feigned neu­tral­i­ty, von Seeckt con­tem­plat­ed “war against the West in alliance with the East.” Per­haps the best-known exam­ple of Ost­poli­tik was the Hitler Stal­in pact of 1939, which secured Germany’s East­ern bor­der on the eve of World War II.

After World War II, the Ger­man geopoliti­cians (act­ing at the direc­tion of the lead­ers of the Under­ground Reich under Mar­tin Bor­mann) pur­sued a sim­i­lar tack. Threat­en­ing neu­tral­i­ty, or even an alliance with the Sovi­ets, the Ger­mans were able to manip­u­late the U.S. into woo­ing Ger­many as an ally- –grant­i­ng it renewed eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pow­er and re-installing Nazis in posi­tions of great influ­ence. Kevin Coogan’s remark­able text Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al [3] con­tains an excel­lent con­tem­po­rary account of this phe­nom­e­non. Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to read the Coogan text as a sup­ple­ment to the Tetens book (which was pub­lished in 1953.)

In 1950, the Madrid Geo-polit­i­cal Cen­ter (a Nazi think tank oper­at­ing in exile under the friend­ly aus­pices of fas­cist dic­ta­tor Fran­co) dis­cussed the suc­cess­ful real­iza­tion of the Reich’s plan to go under­ground. (These plans were described by Curt Reiss in The Nazis Go Under­ground. The Nazi groom­ing and instal­la­tion of Fran­co, whose coun­try was an impor­tant base for the post­war Reich activ­i­ties, is dis­cussed in Falange by Alan Chase.) The fol­low­ing pas­sage appears on page 73 of the Tetens text: “Accord­ing to the Madrid Cir­cu­lar Let­ter, referred to above, the Ger­man plan­ners have nev­er ceased their polit­i­cal war­fare against the Allies. They admit that they had ‘blue­print­ed the bold plan and cre­at­ed a flex­i­ble and smooth­ly work­ing orga­ni­za­tion,’ in order to safe­guard Ger­many from defeat and to bring Allied post-war plan­ning to nought. They boast that they were able to cre­ate total con­fu­sion in Wash­ing­ton, and that they saved Ger­man heavy indus­try from destruc­tion: ‘By no means did the polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship of the Third Reich skid into the cat­a­stro­phe in an irra­tional man­ner as so many block­heads and igno­ra­mus­es often tell us. The var­i­ous phas­es and con­se­quences of the so-called ‘col­lapse’ . . . were thor­ough­ly stud­ied and planned by the most capa­ble experts . . . Noth­ing occurred by chance; every­thing was care­ful­ly planned. The result of this plan­ning was that, already a few months after Pots­dam, the coali­tion of the vic­tors went on the rocks.’. . .”

The Madrid Cir­cu­lar Let­ter goes on to set forth the course to be pur­sued by Ger­many, more star­tling­ly rel­e­vant from the van­tage point of ear­ly 2006 than in it was in 1950. The fol­low­ing is from page 52 of Tetens’ book:

“ ‘In view of the present polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion . . . the pol­i­cy of ori­en­ta­tion towards the West has lost all mean­ing or sense. . . . We must not for­get that Ger­many has always con­sid­ered ori­en­ta­tion towards the West as a pol­i­cy of expe­di­ence, or one to be pur­sued only under pres­sure of cir­cum­stances. Such was the case in Napoleon’s time, after 1918, and also after 1945. All of our great nation­al lead­ers have con­stant­ly coun­seled the long-range pol­i­cy of close coop­er­a­tion with the East . . . .’” Fear of this dynam­ic drove the U.S. to accede to all of Germany’s demands for renewed pow­er. “Anti-Com­mu­nism Uber Alles!”

A stun­ning mea­sure of the suc­cess of the Under­ground Reich and Ger­man Ost­poli­tik can be obtained by read­ing Dorothy Thompson’s analy­sis of Germany’s plans for world dom­i­nance by a cen­tral­ized Euro­pean eco­nom­ic union. (In this, we can see the plans of pan-Ger­man the­o­reti­cian Friedrich List, as real­ized by the Euro­pean Mon­e­tary Union.) Ms. Thomp­son was writ­ing in The New York Her­ald Tri­bune on May 31, 1940! Her com­ments are repro­duced by Tetens on page 92.

“The Ger­mans have a clear plan of what they intend to do in case of vic­to­ry. I believe that I know the essen­tial details of that plan. I have heard it from a suf­fi­cient num­ber of impor­tant Ger­mans to cred­it its authen­tic­i­ty . . . Germany’s plan is to make a cus­toms union of Europe, with com­plete finan­cial and eco­nom­ic con­trol cen­tered in Berlin. This will cre­ate at once the largest free trade area and the largest planned econ­o­my in the world. In West­ern Europe alone . . . there will be an eco­nom­ic uni­ty of 400 mil­lion per­sons . . . To these will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Bel­gian empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Ger­man­i­ca . . .”

“The Ger­mans count upon polit­i­cal pow­er fol­low­ing eco­nom­ic pow­er, and not vice ver­sa. Ter­ri­to­r­i­al changes do not con­cern them, because there will be no ‘France’ or ‘Eng­land,’ except as lan­guage groups. Lit­tle imme­di­ate con­cern is felt regard­ing polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions . . . . No nation will have the con­trol of its own finan­cial or eco­nom­ic sys­tem or of its cus­toms. The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of all coun­tries will be accom­plished by eco­nom­ic pres­sure. In all coun­tries, con­tacts have been estab­lished long ago with sym­pa­thet­ic busi­ness­men and indus­tri­al­ists . . . . As far as the Unit­ed States is con­cerned, the plan­ners of the World Ger­man­i­ca laugh off the idea of any armed inva­sion. They say that it will be com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary to take mil­i­tary action against the Unit­ed States to force it to play ball with this sys­tem. . . . Here, as in every oth­er coun­try, they have estab­lished rela­tions with numer­ous indus­tries and com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions, to whom they will offer advan­tages in co-oper­a­tion with Ger­many. . . .”

Again, check out the cur­rent Euro­pean Mon­e­tary Union and the “bor­der­less” EU against the back­ground of what Ms. Thomp­son fore­cast in 1940 and Mr. Tetens repro­duced in 1953.