by Paul Man­ning 1980, Lyle Stu­art, Inc.
ISBN 0–8184-0309–8
Illus­trated, 302 pages.
Down­load PDF (1.6MB)

See also: About Paul Manning

In late 2005, Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture paid homage to one of the great­est jour­nal­ists of all time. In “Good­night and Good Luck,” the life and work of CBS radio and tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ist Edward R. Mur­row pro­vided the mate­r­ial for a Hol­ly­wood fea­ture film. Paul Man­ning was arguably the great­est of “Murrow’s Boys”—the group of skilled jour­nal­ists Mur­row ran in Europe dur­ing World War II. After train­ing as a gun­ner and fly­ing com­bat mis­sions in both Europe and over Japan, Man­ning broad­cast the sur­ren­ders of both Ger­many and Japan on the CBS radio net­work. After the war, Man­ning under­took an inves­ti­ga­tion of Hitler’s Deputy, Mar­tin Bor­mann, and the post­war cap­i­tal net­work he ran, in con­sid­er­able mea­sure, at the encour­age­ment of Mur­row. Par­tially under­writ­ten by CBS, the story of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion proved too sen­si­tive for the net­work to report.

A deci­sively pow­er­ful net­work of cor­po­rate enti­ties run by hard­ened SS vet­er­ans, the Bor­mann group con­sti­tutes what one vet­eran banker termed “the great­est con­cen­tra­tion of money power under a sin­gle con­trol in his­tory.” The foun­da­tion of the organization’s clout is money—lots and lots of money. Con­trol­ling Ger­man big busi­ness and, through invest­ments, much of the rest of the world’s econ­omy, the orga­ni­za­tion was the repos­i­tory for the stolen wealth of Europe, esti­mated by British intel­li­gence to have totaled more than $180 bil­lion by the end of 1943 (not includ­ing the money taken from Greece and the for­mer Soviet Union, nor that taken after 1943.) [For more on the global eco­nomic sig­nif­i­cance of the Bor­mann group, see—among other programs—FTR#99.] This orga­ni­za­tion lit­er­ally con­sti­tutes a post­war “Under­ground Reich” with (as dis­cussed in FTR#155) a gov­ern­ing hier­ar­chy com­posed of the sons and daugh­ters of SS men, hold­ing mil­i­tary ranks and titles from the Third Reich.

In addi­tion to the enor­mous power deriv­ing from its con­sum­mate eco­nomic clout, the Bor­mann group has wielded tremen­dous global influ­ence through its intel­li­gence and enforce­ment net­work. Admin­is­tered by SS gen­eral Hein­rich Mueller, the wartime head of the Gestapo, the Bor­mann group’s intel­li­gence and secu­rity net­work was com­posed of some of the tough­est, most capa­ble vet­er­ans of the SS. In addi­tion, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion and Mueller’s secu­rity out­fit have com­manded the loy­alty of the polit­i­cal, intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary ele­ments req­ui­si­tioned by the Allies after the war. In that regard, the Bormann/Mueller oper­a­tion could draw on the loy­al­ties of the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit that han­dled the CIA’s intel­li­gence on the for­mer Soviet Union and which ulti­mately became the intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many. In addi­tion, Bor­mann and Mueller were the polit­i­cal mas­ters of the numer­ous sci­en­tists recruited by the U.S. and other nations for their exper­tise dur­ing the Cold War, as well as the numer­ous Nazis brought into the U.S. under the aus­pices of the Cru­sade For Free­dom. Those lat­ter ulti­mately coa­lesced into a major ele­ment of the Repub­li­can Party. (For more about the Cru­sade for Free­dom, see—among other programs—FTR#465.)

With its eco­nomic, polit­i­cal and espi­onage capa­bil­i­ties, the Bor­mann group embod­ies the tri­umph of the forces of National Social­ism in the post­war period. Whereas the United States was the dom­i­nant ele­ment within the inter­na­tional car­tel sys­tem prior to, and dur­ing, World War II, the Bor­mann group is the pri­mary entity in the post­war global cor­po­rate economy.

The organization’s clout has suc­cess­fully obscured its exis­tence in the face of jour­nal­is­tic inves­ti­ga­tion. Com­pare the “offi­cial” fate of Bor­mann (sup­pos­edly killed at the end of the war) with demon­stra­ble his­tor­i­cal fact, as researched by Man­ning. Relat­ing infor­ma­tion from the FBI’s file on Bor­mann, Man­ning writes: “ . . .The file revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name from his office in Ger­many in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argen­tin­ian dic­ta­tor Juan Peron, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had writ­ten checks on demand accounts in first National City Bank (Over­seas Divi­sion) of New York, The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, and Man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires. . . .”
(Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile, p. 205.)

FTR#305 is a con­den­sa­tion of some of the key seg­ments of text from Manning’s land­mark book. The story of the active sup­pres­sion of Manning’s work on Bor­mann is con­tained in FTR#152 (side A). The mov­ing tale of Manning’s heroic, decades-long inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bor­mann group is con­tained in a pro­fes­sional biog­ra­phy of Paul Man­ning that accom­pa­nies the text. That pro­fes­sional biog­ra­phy also recounts the pro­fes­sional ret­ri­bu­tion to which Man­ning was sub­jected in retal­i­a­tion for his work (includ­ing the 1993 mur­der of his son Gerry.)

Read­ers inter­ested the Man­ning text on Bor­mann should also inves­ti­gate Gold War­riors by the Seagraves—the story of Japan’s post­war cap­i­tal net­work and its pro­found rela­tion­ship with the global economy.

Mar­tin Bor­man — Nazi in Exile has also been posted as html by animalfarm.org.