Lis­ten: Side 1 | Side 2

1. Given the com­plex­ity and ref­er­en­tial nature of the For The Record pro­grams, it is not nec­es­sar­ily easy for the casual lis­tener to under­stand many of the con­nec­tions between sub­jects pre­sented on the broad­casts. FTR-278 is specif­i­cally designed to elu­ci­date some of these con­nec­tions. Con­se­quently, most of the infor­ma­tion pre­sented in this pro­gram is reprised from other broadcasts.

2. The pro­gram begins with review of an excerpt from FTR-245, which details the activ­i­ties of Deutsche Telekom, a Ger­man government-controlled mobile phone com­pany. Mobile phones are seen as being cen­tral to the antic­i­pated world of the inter­net and e-commerce. As such, DT’s advance into the Amer­i­can mobile phone mar­ket fig­ures promi­nently in the series on Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol over Amer­i­can media.

In order to resist leg­is­la­tion that would impede the firm’s pur­chase of Voic­eS­tream and Pow­er­tel, Deutsche Telekom has retained the pow­er­ful Wash­ing­ton law firm of Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing. (The Wall Street Jour­nal, 7/21/2000, p. A9.)

3. In an excerpt from FTR-139, the pro­gram high­lights the recent addi­tion of Matthias Wiss­man, the trea­surer of the CDU party in Ger­many (and a for­mer trans­port min­is­ter) to Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing. (Finan­cial Times, 3/2/99.)

4. The pro­gram also notes that Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing had rep­re­sented Swiss banks in a law­suit filed by Holo­caust vic­tims against Swiss banks, as well as act­ing as coun­sel for Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions being sued over their use of slave labor in World War II. (Idem.)

5. This con­nec­tion also sug­gests the pres­ence of the Bor­mann group in the back­ground of the law­suits, as well as in the DT machi­na­tions. It should be noted that, as trea­surer of the CDU, Wiss­man must have had first hand knowl­edge of the CDU fund­ing scandal.

When con­sid­er­ing Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that they are con­trolled by the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion. This insti­tu­tion has per­pet­u­ated its power in an effec­tive, clan­des­tine, and deadly, Mafia-like fash­ion in the years since World War II. Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions are dri­ven by the profit motive and coor­di­nate poli­cies on labor, envi­ron­men­tal, mar­ket­ing and tax­a­tion issues – they are oth­er­wise rel­a­tively apo­lit­i­cal. In con­trast, Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, under con­trol of the Bor­mann group, func­tion as coor­di­nated ele­ments of inter­na­tional eco­nomic and polit­i­cal con­trol, not unlike the divi­sions of an army. Although they, too, strive to make money, profit is sub­or­di­nate to the goal of Ger­man national hegemony.

6. After the dis­cus­sion of DT, Wiss­man & Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing, the pro­gram reviews the impli­ca­tions of Holocaust-related law­suits for cor­po­rate oper­a­tions in both the United States and Europe. FTR-275 dis­cusses a recent law­suit that charges IBM with com­plic­ity in the Nazi exter­mi­na­tion pro­grams. (“Law­suit Says IBM Helped Nazis” by Barn­aby J. Felder [New York Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 2/11/2001; p. A9.)

7. The coun­sel for the plain­tiffs noted that “pub­lic rela­tions strate­gies have been as impor­tant as legal argu­ments in their Holo­caust suits.” (Idem.)

8. This law­suit was timed to coin­cide with the pub­li­ca­tion of a book that presents doc­u­men­ta­tion for the plain­tiffs’ argu­ments. Inter­est­ingly (and per­haps sig­nif­i­cantly) the book is being pub­lished by Crown books, a Ran­dom House (and Ber­tels­mann) sub­sidiary. (“Book Links IBM to Hitler” by Paul D. Col­ford; New York Daily News; 2/10/2001.)

9. This law­suit now threat­ens the set­tle­ment of pre­vi­ous Holocaust-related law­suits by dis­turb­ing the “legal peace” in the United States. (“IBM Legal Bomb­shell Threat­ens Land­mark Holo­caust Deal” by Richard Wolffe and John Authers; Finan­cial Times; 2/15/2001; p. 5; “Pol­ish Vic­tims of Nazis Angered by Delay in Pay­ing Com­pen­sa­tion” by John Reed; Finan­cial Times; 2/28/2001; p. 3.)

10. The pos­si­bil­ity that the IBM suit may con­sti­tute (inten­tion­ally or oth­er­wise) a “pres­sure point” that may hold the key to busi­ness oper­a­tions in both Europe and the U.S. is not one to be too read­ily cast aside. Specif­i­cally, the infor­ma­tion about the IBM suit, the pub­li­ca­tion of the Edwin Black vol­ume by Ber­tels­mann (and the impor­tance of the book for the IBM suit), the impli­ca­tions of the IBM suit for the set­tle­ment of lit­i­ga­tion against Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions and the role of the Third Reich era lit­i­ga­tion in the trans-Atlantic glob­al­iza­tion process con­sti­tute the rea­son for the reprise of this infor­ma­tion in FTR-278. The pos­si­bil­ity is men­tioned that the open­ing up of the Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions mar­ket to Deutsche Telekom and greater access to Euro­pean mar­kets by Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions may hinge on the issue of the law­suits. Note the posi­tion of Wilmer, Cut­ler & Pick­er­ing and CDU trea­surer Wiss­man in this sce­nario. Note also the infor­ma­tion pre­sented in FTR-275 con­cern­ing the pub­li­ca­tion in Ger­many of a book claim­ing that the holo­caust has become “an extor­tion racket” run by “an American-Jewish elite.” One won­ders if the IBM suit and/or the pub­li­ca­tion by Ber­tels­mann of the Black book may be (per­haps) intended to jus­tify this charge in the minds of the Ger­man peo­ple. This should not be inter­preted as cyn­i­cism toward the book IBM and the Holo­caust.

11. Next, the pro­gram takes up the issue of the impact of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal (and related issues) on domes­tic French pol­i­tics and EU polit­i­cal inte­gra­tion. One of the major focal points of FTR-276 is French indus­tri­al­ist Alfred Sir­ven. A prin­ci­pal fig­ure in the inter­na­tional finan­cial web that fig­ures in the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, Sir­ven was a major exec­u­tive with Elf-Aquitaine, a French oil com­pany that served as “an oil min­istry in a cor­po­rate guise.” (“Light Shed on an Extra­or­di­nary Past” by Bertrand Benoit; Finan­cial Times; 2/3/-2/4/2001; p. 3.)

12. The firm served as a con­duit for the plac­ing of polit­i­cal bribes, a fund­ing source for France’s right-wing polit­i­cal par­ties, as well as a front for French intel­li­gence activ­ity. (Idem.)

13. One of the most sig­nif­i­cant maneu­vers con­ducted by Elf while Sir­ven was with the firm was the plac­ing of a bribe with Hel­mut Kohl’s CDU. (Idem.)

14. This bribe secured the pur­chase of the Leuna oil refin­ing facil­ity for Elf. (Idem.) (Oper­ated by the Nazi I.G. Far­ben firm on behalf of the Third Reich, the Leuna facil­ity is located in the for­mer East Germany.)

15. Even­tu­ally, Elf “suc­cumbed to a hos­tile bid from rival Total­Fina in 1999.” (Idem.)

16. On his way back to France, Sir­ven was to stop over in Frank­furt, Ger­many. (“Star Wit­ness in French Cor­rup­tion Trial Arrested” by Raphael Min­der, David Owen, and Hugh Williamson; Finan­cial Times; 2/3–2/4/2001; p. 1)

17. Sir­ven boasted that he “knew enough secrets to blow up the French Repub­lic ten times over.” (“Sir­ven Set to Unpack Explo­sive Evi­dence” by Raphael Min­der; Finan­cial Times; 2/3/2/4/2001; p. 3.)

18. The pro­gram high­lights aspects of the French polit­i­cal and eco­nomic infra­struc­ture before, dur­ing, and after World War II. As dis­cussed in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M-61, the French power elite (its eco­nomic movers and shak­ers, in par­tic­u­lar) had strong con­nec­tions to their Ger­man coun­ter­parts. (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; by Paul Man­ning; copy­right 1981; Lyle Stu­art [hard­cover]; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 70–71.)

19. “They regarded the war and Hitler as an unfor­tu­nate diver­sion from their chief mis­sion of pre­vent­ing a com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion in France. Anti-bolshevism was a com­mon denom­i­na­tor link­ing these French­men to Ger­mans, and it accounted for a vol­un­teer French divi­sion on the East­ern Front.” (Ibid.; p. 71.)

20. These same inter­ests effec­tively col­lab­o­rated with the Third Reich. “Society’s nat­ural sur­vivors, French ver­sion, who had served the third Reich as an exten­sion of Ger­man indus­try, would con­tinue to do so in the period of post­war tri­als, just as they had sur­vived the war, occu­pa­tion and lib­er­a­tion. These were many of the French elite, the well-born, the prop­er­tied, the titled, the experts, indus­tri­al­ists, busi­ness­men, bureau­crats, bankers.” (Ibid.; p. 30.)

21. In addi­tion, the struc­ture of “cor­po­rate France” was wed­ded to that of Ger­many dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, with the dom­i­nant ele­ment becom­ing Ger­man. “These eco­nomic pen­e­tra­tion spe­cial­ists of the Third Reich han­dled France sim­i­larly, with but a slight dif­fer­ence. In the years before the war the Ger­man busi­ness­men, indus­tri­al­ists and bankers had estab­lished close ties with their coun­ter­parts in France. After the blitzkrieg and inva­sion, the same French­men in many cases went on work­ing with their Ger­man peers. They didn’t have much choice, to be sure, and the occu­pa­tion being insti­tuted very few in the high ech­e­lons failed to col­lab­o­rate. The Third Republic’s busi­ness elite was vir­tu­ally unchanged after 1940.” (Ibid.; pp. 70–71.)

22. In the post­war period, the afore­men­tioned Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion main­tained effec­tive con­trol over the French econ­omy, in part­ner­ship with the French elite. “The char­ac­ter­is­tic secrecy sur­round­ing the actions of Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists and bankers dur­ing the final nine months of the war, when Bormann’s flight cap­i­tal pro­gram held their com­plete atten­tion, was also car­ried over into the post­war years when they began pulling back the skeins of eco­nomic wealth and power that stretched out to neu­tral nations of the world and to for­merly occu­pied lands. There was a sug­ges­tion of this in France. Flora Lewis, writ­ing from Paris in The New York Times of August 28, 1972, told of her con­ver­sa­tion with a French pub­lisher: ‘It would not be pos­si­ble to trace own­er­ship of cor­po­ra­tions and the power struc­ture as in the United States ‘They’ would not per­mit it. ‘They’ would find a way to hound and tor­ture any­one who tried, com­mented the pub­lisher. ‘They’ seem to be a fairly small group of peo­ple who know each other, but many are not at all known to the pub­lic. ‘They’ move in and out of gov­ern­ment jobs, but pub­lic ser­vice appar­ently serves to win pri­vate pro­mo­tion rather than the other way around. The Gov­ern­ment ‘con­trol’ that prac­ti­cally every­one men­tions can­not be traced through stock hold­ings reg­u­la­tory agen­cies, pub­lic deci­sions. It seems to func­tion through a maze of per­sonal con­tacts and under­stand­ings.” The under­stand­ings arrived at in the power struc­ture reach back to pre­war days, were con­tin­ued dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, and have car­ried over to the present time. Lewis, in her report from Paris, com­mented fur­ther: “This hid­den of gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions has pro­duced a gen­eral unease in Paris.” Along with the unease, the fat that France has lin­ger­ing social and polit­i­cal ail­ments is a residue of World War II and of an eco­nomic occu­pa­tion that was never really ter­mi­nated with the with­drawal of Ger­man troops beyond the Rhine.” (Ibid.; p. 271.) This Bor­mann con­trol of the French econ­omy, and the rel­a­tive secrecy sur­round­ing it may very well be the essence of what Sir­ven threat­ened to reveal.

23. It should be noted that at this time, Ger­many is engaged in an attempt at “fed­er­al­iz­ing” the EU, much to the con­ster­na­tion of France. Bertelsmann’s par­ent (the Ber­tels­mann foun­da­tion) spon­sored a think tank at which Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Ger­hard Schroder called for the fed­er­al­ist inte­gra­tion of the EU into a Euro­pean super­state. (“Schroder Launches Brus­sels Offen­sive” by Alan Hall; The Scots­man; 1/26/2001.)

24. This step would entail “a Europe where deci­sions on tax, defense, health, insur­ance and a plethora of other issues were defined by the EU and not national gov­ern­ments.” (Idem.) Such a state would, of course, be dom­i­nated by Ger­many. In effect, this would give Ger­many the con­trol of Europe that it has sought through mil­i­tary con­quest in two world wars.

25. In lan­guage rem­i­nis­cent of the ora­tory of Adolf Hitler, Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter warned that, unless this inte­gra­tion took place, grave mea­sures would fol­low. (Idem.)

26. “The Ger­man gov­ern­ment will not stand idly by, but would take coura­geous steps against the cen­trifu­gal forces of the inter-governmentalists,” warned Fis­cher. (Idem.) The pos­si­bil­ity that the evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing to( and from) the CDU fund­ing scan­dal are being delib­er­ately manip­u­lated in order to ensure French acqui­es­cence in some of the Ger­man pro­pos­als for EU “reform” should not be too read­ily cast aside. It should be noted in that con­text that there was con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety in France over the tem­po­rary deten­tion of Sir­ven in Frankfurt.

27. Yet another con­nec­tion between the “dots” con­cerns the over­lap between Ber­tels­mann and Total­Fina. As noted in FTR #‘s 275 and 276, one of the minor­ity cor­po­rate part­ners in a cru­cial deal between Ber­tels­mann and RTL deal has sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion in Total­Fina Elf. (“Global GBL Falls for Bertelsmann’s Charms” by Dan Bilef­sky; Finan­cial Times; 2/6/2001; p. 18.)

28. Total­Fina Elf is, in turn, involved in the com­plex con­spir­a­to­r­ial web involved in the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. It should be recalled that Total­Fina took over Aquitaine Elf, as dis­cussed ear­lier in the program.

29. The broad­cast dis­cusses the his­tory of the Leuna refin­ery. Germany’s most impor­tant syn­thetic oil refin­ery dur­ing World War II, Leuna was the focal point of one of the major air bat­tles of the war in West­ern Europe. (The Crime and Pun­ish­ment of I.G. Far­ben; by Joseph Borkin; The Free Press [Macmil­lan]; Copy­right 1978 [HC]; ISBN 0–02-904630–0; pp. 128–30.)

30. The pro­gram excerpts FTR-193, detail­ing an impor­tant aspect of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. This excerpt, in turn, comes from a major arti­cle about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal from the New York Times. (“Big Kick­backs Under Kohl Reported” by Roger Cohen and John Tagli­abue; New York Times; 2/7/2000.)

31. Ger­man indus­trial con­cern Thyssen AG was involved in a sale of tanks to Saudi Ara­bia (one of the many facets of this enor­mous, inter­na­tional scan­dal.) (Idem.)

32. In addi­tion, Thyssen was involved with Aquitaine-Elf in some of the oper­a­tions of the Leuna refin­ery. (Idem.)

33. Next, the pro­gram excerpts FTR-273. Recently, for­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial John Lof­tus dis­closed that the Bush fam­ily for­tune came from the 1951 liq­ui­da­tion of the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. (“Author Links Bush Fam­ily to Nazis;” Sara­sota Herald-Tribune; 11/11/2000.)

34. Excerpt­ing a June, 1992 adden­dum to Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M-11, the pro­gram illus­trates that the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion was con­fis­cated by the Alien Prop­erty Cus­to­dian in World War II. (“Will Fam­ily Scan­dals Sink George Bush?” by Cur­tis Lang; Vil­lage Voice; 5/5/92.)

35. This firm was a front for the Thyssen inter­ests before, and dur­ing, the war. (Idem.) (Fritz Thyssen was one of Hitler’s ear­li­est and most promi­nent finan­cial backers.)

36. This broad­cast notes that the I.G. Far­ben stock held in the Her­mann Schmitz trust was folded into the Bor­mann group, report­edly giv­ing the Bor­mann group as much stock in Stan­dard Oil as the Rock­e­feller fam­ily. (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; p. 292.) The I.G. is a major ele­ment of the Bor­mann group.

37. The Thyssen firm is a major ele­ment of the Bor­mann group. “Dur­ing the final year of his life, in Argentina, divid­ing his time between the villa in Buenos Aires and the ranches, one in Argentina, the other in Paraguay, Fritz Thyssen com­pleted estab­lish­ing the con­trol that would assure ever­last­ing fam­ily through Thyssen A.G. Elder Grand­son Count Fed­erico Zichy-Thyssen of Buenos Aires was placed on the board of this Ger­man steel trust. When the count votes at board meet­ings in Dus­sel­dorf three or four times a year, he votes for the entire Thy­sen fam­ily of South Amer­ica and Europe. Count Fed­erico Zichy-Thysen, who has a younger brother Count Clau­dio Zichy-Thyssen, rep­re­sents the largest sin­gle share­hold­ing group with the 25 per­cent of the stock of Thyssen A.G. The remain­der of the stock is dif­fused into Deutsche bank in Frank­furt and Buenos Aires, which holds shares for many indi­vid­u­als on both con­ti­nents includ­ing those rep­re­sent­ing the Bor­mann group.” (Ibid.; pp. 256–7.)

38. As noted in a num­ber of pro­grams, the Thyssen fam­ily remained very close to Mar­tin Bor­mann him­self after the war. “Count Fed­erico Zichy-Thyssen, grand­son of old Fritz Thyssen, Clau­dio Zichy-Thyssen, and their fam­i­lies are inti­mate friends of Bor­mann Because of this friend­ship, Mar­tin Bor­mann has three sanc­tu­ar­ies: his own pam­pas spread in Argentina and the Thyssen ranches in Argentina and Paraguay.” (Ibid.; p. 292.)

39. Next, the pro­gram reviews the fact that Ber­tels­mann king­pin Rein­hard Mohn maneu­vered one of his pro­teges (Dieter Vogel) into the top posi­tion of Thyssen A.G. (Global Dreams: Impe­r­ial Cor­po­ra­tions and the New World Order; Richard Bar­net and John Cavanaugh; Simon & Schus­ter; Copy­right 1994 [HC]; ISBN 0–671-63377–5; p. 75.) This is indica­tive of the prob­a­ble sta­tus of Ber­tels­mann within the Bor­mann group.

40. Next, the pro­gram reviews the Bush fam­ily involve­ment with the Hamburg-Amerika line, con­fis­cated as a Nazi front com­pany dur­ing World War II. (The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple, by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press; copy­right 1994; ISBN 0–312-11057-X; p. 359.)

41. The Hamburg-Amerika line, in turn, was deeply involved with “Himmler’s Cir­cle of Friends,” a group of indus­tri­al­ists that financed the day-to-day oper­a­tions of the SS. “Himm­ler, for exam­ple had been tap­ping lead­ing bankers and busi­ness lead­ers for con­tri­bu­tions to his WW wel­fare fund, from which he did not per­son­ally ben­e­fit, oddly enough. The com­pa­nies con­tribut­ing com­prised a list of impor­tant banks and indus­tries: Deutsche Bank, Dres­d­ner Bank, Com­merzbank, the Reich­stag Bank, the J.H. Stein Bankhaus, Nordeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg-Amerika Ship­ping Line.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; by Paul Man­ning; p. 43.)

42. In the post-war plan­ning for the Bor­mann group, a Third Reich offi­cial stressed that the Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists must con­tinue to fund the Nazi party in an under­ground fash­ion. “A smaller con­fer­ence in the after­noon was presided over by Dr. Bosse of the Ger­man Arma­ments Min­istry. It was attended only by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Hecko, Krupp, and Rochling. Dr. Bosse restated Bormann’belief that the war was all but lost, but that it would be con­tin­ued by Ger­many until cer­tain goals to insure the eco­nomic resur­gence of Ger­many after the war had been achieved. He added that the Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists must be pre­pared to finance the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Nazi Party, which would be forced to go under­ground, just as had the Machis in France.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile: by Paul Man­ning; p. 26.)

43. The pro­gram excerpts FTR-193, dis­cussing Ger­man politi­cian Franz Joseph Strauss, a link between Karl-Heinz Schreiber (one of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the CDU fund­ing scan­dal) and a post­war “Cir­cle of Friends.” (The Bor­mann Broth­er­hood; Har­court Brace, Jovanovich; Copy­right 1973 [HC]; ISBN 0–15-113590–8; p. 133.)

44. Next, the pro­gram excerpts FTR-194, reca­pit­u­lat­ing infor­ma­tion about Bertelsmann’s involve­ment with the Cir­cle of Friends. Ber­tels­mann patri­arch Hein­rich Mohn was also a mem­ber of the “Cir­cle of Friends.” (Insert ref­er­ence from the New York Times.)

45. It should also be noted that Ber­tels­mann CEO is a friend of the Bush fam­ily. (“Lead­ing Bertelsmann’s Race to the Future” by Doreen Car­va­jal; New York Times; 1/30/2000.)