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FTR #697 Christian Fundamentalism and the Underground Reich

MP3 Side 1 [1] | Side 2 [2]

The Family [3]Intro­duc­tion: Recent decades have seen the growth of the Chris­t­ian Right, a major force with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty and on the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape itself. The Fam­i­ly [4], a recent book by Jeff Sharlet [5] has gained con­sid­er­able trac­tion and sets forth the pro­found influ­ence wield­ed with­in U.S. pow­er struc­ture by an orga­ni­za­tion called The Fam­i­ly, found­ed in the 1930’s by a Nor­we­gian immi­grant named Abram Verei­de [6] (usu­al­ly referred to by those famil­iar with him as “Abram.”) Although its pri­ma­ry influ­ence is with­in the GOP, the Fam­i­ly has con­sid­er­able grav­i­tas with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty as well.

This pro­gram high­lights the orga­ni­za­tion’s pro­found rela­tion­ship with the Under­ground Reich and the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work [7]. Verei­de and his asso­ciates played a sig­nif­i­cant role in neu­tral­iz­ing the de- Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and the polit­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Third Reich alum­ni for ser­vice both in the “New” Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and U.S. intel­li­gence. (Verei­de is pic­tured below and at right with then Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er in 1960.)

Thus: “Between the Cold War estab­lish­ment and the reli­gious fer­vor of Abram and his allies, orga­ni­za­tions that came of age in the post­war era–the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals [8], Cam­pus Cru­sade [9], the Bil­ly Gra­ham Cru­sade [10], Youth For Christ [11], the Nav­i­ga­tors [12], and many more–one finds the unex­plained pres­ence of men such as [Nazi agent Man­fred] Zapp, adapt­able men always ready to serve the pow­ers that be.”

After delin­eat­ing the pre-war and wartime careers in the Unit­ed States of Nazi spies Man­fred Zapp [13] (pic­tured above and at left) and Baron Ulrich von Gien­anth [14], the pro­gram notes that they were among those who became close asso­ciates of “Abram” in his “sav­ing” of Third Reich alum­ni for duty in the Cold War. They were typ­i­cal and by no means the worst of the Nazis recruit­ed by Verei­de and his asso­ciates.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Verei­de’s “sav­ing” of Her­mann J. Abs [15] (right), “HItler’s Banker” so that he might become “Ade­nauer’s Banker”. Verei­de’s role in sav­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing plants of top Nazis from seizure by the Allies; Verei­de and his asso­ciates’ suc­cess­ful efforts at aid­ing the rearm­ing of Ger­many for the Cold War; Verei­de’s suc­cess­ful attempt to lift trav­el restric­tions on “for­mer” Gestapo offi­cer von Gien­anth; pro­jec­tions by anti-fas­cists dur­ing the war that the Third Reich’s plans to sur­vive mil­i­tary defeat would involve net­work­ing with reac­tionary U.S. fun­da­men­tal­ists; Nazi gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen’s [16] “post-intel­li­gence” career as a reli­gious evan­ge­list.

1. We begin by exam­in­ing the back­ground of Man­fred Zapp, a Nazi spy who became a close evan­gel­i­cal asso­ciate of Abram Verei­de and the Fam­i­ly.

Man­fred Zapp, a native of Dus­sel­dorf by way of Pre­to­ria, mer­it­ed a line in the news when he stepped from an ocean lin­er onto the docks of New York City on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1938, a warm windy day at the edge of a South Atlantic hur­ri­cane. Just a few words in the New York Times’ “Ocean Trav­el­ers” col­umn, a list of the trav­el­ers of note buried in the back of the paper. By the time he left the Unit­ed States, his depar­ture would win head­lines. . . .

The Fam­i­ly by Jeff Sharlet; Harp­er Peren­ni­al (SC); Copy­right 2008 by Jeff Sharlet; ISBN 978–0‑06–056005‑8; p. 144. [17]

2. Zapp ran the Transocean News Agency, a Nazi espi­onage and pro­pa­gan­da out­fit dis­guised as a jour­nal­is­tic oper­a­tion.

. . . Zapp had been giv­en charge of the Amer­i­can offices of the Transocean News Agency, osten­si­bly the cre­ation of a group of unnamed Ger­man financiers. He had recent­ly left a sim­i­lar post in South Africa. “It is of para­mount impor­tance,” the Ger­man charge d’af­faires in Wash­ing­ton had writ­ten Zapp the month before his arrival, “that a cross­ing of wires with the work of the D.N.B.–Deutschland News Bureau–“be absolute­ly avoid­ed.” DNN was trans­par­ent­ly the tool of the Nazi regime and thus under con­stant scruti­ny. Transocean, as an alleged­ly inde­pen­dent agency, might oper­ate more freely. “My task here in Amer­i­ca is so big and so dif­fi­cult,” Zapp wrote the Ger­man ambas­sador to South Africa a month after he arrived, “that it demands all my ener­gies.”

Ibid.; p. 145. [17]

3. Note that Zap­p’s activ­i­ties in the U.S. involved net­work­ing with mem­bers of the New York elite whom he believed (in many cas­es cor­rect­ly) to be sym­pa­thet­ic to fas­cism. Like many Nazi and fas­cist sym­pa­thiz­ers, Zapp dis­dained many of the super­fi­cial trap­pings of fas­cism, while valu­ing the cor­po­ratist phi­los­o­phy at the foun­da­tion of the sys­tem.

What was Zap­p’s task? Dur­ing his Amer­i­can tenure, he flit­ted in black tie and tails from Fifth Avenue to Park Avenue enjoy­ing the hos­pi­tal­i­ty of rich men and beau­ti­ful women–the gos­sip colum­nist Wal­ter Winchell wrote of Zap­p’s “mad­cap girl­friend,” a big-spend­ing soci­ety girl who seemed to con­sume at least as much of Zap­p’s atten­tion as the news. He avoid­ed as much as he could dis­cus­sions of what he con­sid­ered the tedi­um of pol­i­tics. His friends knew he had dined with Cordell Hull, the sec­re­tary of state, and Roo­sevelt him­self, and some must also have known that he had worked quietly–and ille­gal­ly, if one must be technical–against the pres­i­den­t’s reelec­tion. But one did not ask ques­tions. He trav­eled, though no one was quite sure where he went off to. One moment he was hov­er­ing over the tele­type in Man­hat­tan; the next he was to be found in Havana, on the occa­sion of a meet­ing of for­eign min­is­ters. Some might have called him a Nazi agent, there to encour­age Cuba’s inclinations–a pop­u­lar radio pro­gram, trans­mit­ted across the Caribbean, was called The Nazi Hour–but Zapp could truth­ful­ly reply that he rarely stirred from the lob­by of the Hotel Nacional, where he sat sip­ping cock­tails, hap­py to buy drinks for any man–or, prefer­ably, lady–who cared to chat with him. . . .

Ibid.; pp. 145–146. [3]

4. More about Zap­p’s net­work­ing with ele­ments of the Amer­i­can elite who har­bored fas­cist sym­pa­thies.

. . . . To Zapp, total­i­tar­i­an­ism–the term he pre­ferred to fas­cism–was, once pruned of its absur­di­ties, a sen­si­ble and love­ly idea. The torch­es and the “long knives,” the death’s-head and all that red-faced singing and table pound­ing, these activ­i­ties Zapp did not care for. He actu­al­ly pre­ferred life in Amer­i­ca, the canyons of Man­hat­tan and the gin-lit bal­conies of the city’s best peo­ple, con­ver­sa­tions that did not begin with “Heil Hitler!” Zapp signed his let­ters with this invo­ca­tion, and a por­trait of the Fuhrer hung in his office, but Zapp the jour­nal­ist was too sen­si­tive a record­ing device to enjoy all that arm snap­ping. If only Man­hat­tan and Munich, Wash­ing­ton and Berlin, could be merged. It was a mat­ter not of war­fare but of har­mo­ny, democ­ra­cy’s bick­er­ing and bile giv­ing way to the “new con­cep­tion,” in which pow­er and will would be one.

Ibid.; p. 146. [3]

5. Even­tu­al­ly, Zap­p’s espi­onage activ­i­ties caused him to fall afoul of the U.S. author­i­ties.

With­in a year, how­ev­er, Zapp found cause to resist return­ing to that fine new sys­tem. After a series of unsolved mur­ders and per­plex­ing explo­sions and inter­cept­ed trans­mis­sions led the FBI to raid his front orga­ni­za­tions in Boston, Bal­ti­more, Buf­fa­lo, Den­ver, New Orleans, Philadel­phia, Pitts­burgh, and Zap­p’s spar­tan office off Fifth Avenue, where they found what they believed to be evi­dence of the orches­tra­tion of it all, Zapp began to recon­sid­er his enthu­si­asm for Hitler’s new order. He had failed the Fuhrer. How would his will judge him? What pow­er would be exert­ed in the Gestapo “beat­ing rooms” that Transocean employ­ees had once con­sid­ered them­selves priv­i­leged to tour?

The FBI seized him and his chief deputy and whisked them away to cold, bare rooms, on Ellis Island, no less, where not long before, the rab­ble of Europe had been processed into “mon­grel” Amer­i­ca, land of “degen­er­ate democ­ra­cy,” as Roo­sevelt him­self quot­ed Zapp in a speech denounc­ing Ger­many’s “strat­e­gy of ter­ror.” . . .

Ibid.; pp. 146–147. [3]

6. Anoth­er of the Nazi agents with whom Abram Verei­de and the Fam­i­ly would net­work after the war was Baron Ulrich von Gien­anth [14], the Gestapo chief of the Ger­man embassy in Wash­ing­ton and a mem­ber of the SS.

. . . . On the oth­er were men such as Zapp. Along with a D.C.-based diplo­mat named Ulrich von Gien­anth (whom he would rejoin after the war in Abram’s prayer meet­ings), Zapp con­sid­ered the com­ing con­flict between the Unit­ed States and the Reich one to be resolved through qui­et con­ver­sa­tion, between Ger­man gen­tle­men and Amer­i­can “indus­tri­al­ists and State Depart­ment men.”

Von Gien­anth, a mus­cu­lar, sandy-haired man whose dull expres­sion dis­guised a chilly intel­li­gence, “seems to be a very agree­able fel­low,” Zapp wrote his broth­er, who had stud­ied in Munich with the baron-to-be. Only sec­ond sec­re­tary in the embassy, von Gien­anth main­tained a fright­en­ing grip over his fel­low diplo­mats. He was an under­cov­er SS man, the ears and eyes of the “Reichsmin­istry of Prop­er Enlight­en­ment and Pro­pa­gan­da,” charged with keep­ing watch over its secret Amer­i­can oper­a­tions. He was, in short, the Gestapo chief in Amer­i­ca. While Zapp wor­ried about his legal prospects in the Indi­an Sum­mer of 1940, von Gien­anth was like­ly wait­ing for news of a major oper­a­tion in New Jer­sey: the det­o­na­tion of the Her­cules gun­pow­der plant, an explo­sion that on Sep­tem­ber 12 killed forty-sev­en and sent shock­waves so strong that they snapped wind into the sails of boaters in far-off Long Island Sound. . . .

. . . . Von Gien­an­th’s ini­tia­tives were whim­si­cal by com­par­i­son. Once for instance, he paid a pilot to dump pro-Nazi anti­war fliers on the White House lawn. He devot­ed him­self to chang­ing Goebbels’ gold into dol­lars, and those dol­lars into laun­dered “dona­tions” to the Amer­i­ca First Com­mit­tee, where unwit­ting isolationists–Abram allies such as Sen­a­tor Arthur Van­den­berg and Amer­i­ca First Pres­i­dent Robert M. Hanes among them–stumped for recog­ni­tion of the “fact” on Hitler’s inevitabil­i­ty.

Like Zapp, von Gien­anth con­sid­ered him­self a com­mon­sense man.

And Zapp–Zapp sim­ply report­ed the news and sold it on the wire. Or gave it away. To the papers of Argenti­na, Mex­i­co, Brazil and to the small-town edi­tors of Amer­i­ca’s gullible heart­land, Zapp offered Transocean reports for almost noth­ing. In some South Amer­i­can coun­tries, 30 per­cent or more of for­eign news–the enthu­si­as­tic wel­come giv­en con­quer­ing Ger­man forces, the Jew­ish cabal in Wash­ing­ton, the moral rot of the Amer­i­can people–was pro­duced by or chan­neled through Zap­p’s offices. On the side, he com­piled a report on Sovi­et-inspired “Pol­ish atroc­i­ties” against the long-suf­fer­ing Ger­man peo­ple and dis­trib­uted it to thou­sands of lead­ing Amer­i­cans, the sort sym­pa­thet­ic to the plight of the per­se­cut­ed Chris­t­ian. Zap­p’s sym­pa­thet­ic nature would prove, after the war, to be as gen­uine as his dis­tort­ed sense of his­to­ry’s vic­tims. . . .

Ibid.; pp. 147–148. [17]

7. Next, the broad­cast sets forth Abram [Verei­de] and the Fam­i­ly’s posi­tion­ing as a vehi­cle for the recruit­ment of Nazis to serve both the U.S. and the “New” Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. The orga­ni­za­tion involved in this served as a prin­ci­pal moral com­pass for much of the Amer­i­can pow­er elite dur­ing the Cold War and through the present. The orga­ni­za­tions which res­cued and reha­bil­i­tat­ed Third Reich alum­ni are at the foun­da­tion of the con­tem­po­rary evan­gel­i­cal estab­lish­ment.

. . . Estab­lish­ment Cold War­riors of [Mar­shall Plan admin­is­tra­tor Don­ald C.] Stone’s ilk dom­i­nate the his­to­ry books. Zapp, the ally with an ugly past, is his dark shad­ow. But Abram and the influ­ence of his fel­low fun­da­men­tal­ists would remain invis­i­ble for decades, their influ­ence unmarked by media and aca­d­e­m­ic estab­lish­ments. The role played by fun­da­men­tal­ists in refash­ion­ing the world’s great­est fas­cist pow­er into a democ­ra­cy would go unno­ticed. So, too, would the role of fascism–or, rather, that of fas­cis­m’s ghost–in shap­ing the new­ly inter­na­tion­al­ist ambi­tion of evan­gel­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives in the post­war era.

Between the Cold War estab­lish­ment and the reli­gious fer­vor of Abram and his allies, orga­ni­za­tions that came of age in the post­war era–the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals, Cam­pus Cru­sade, the Bil­ly Gra­ham Cru­sade, Youth For Christ, the Nav­i­ga­tors, and many more–one finds the unex­plained pres­ence of men such as Zapp, adapt­able men always ready to serve the pow­ers that be. From Amer­i­can Chris­ten­dom, Zapp and his ilk took the cloak of redemp­tion, cheap grace, in the words of Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer, one of their most famous vic­tims. To it, they offered some­thing hard­er to define. This is an inves­ti­ga­tion of that trans­mis­sion; the last mes­sage from the Min­istry of Prop­er Enlight­en­ment; the sto­ry of Amer­i­can fun­da­men­tal­is­m’s Ger­man con­nec­tion. . . .

Ibid.; pp. 151–152. [17]

8. When Abram got around to “sav­ing” Third Reich alum­ni for ser­vice to the “New Ger­many,” as well as U.S. intel­li­gence, he select­ed some gen­uine­ly ripe indi­vid­u­als.

Gedat was among the least taint­ed of the men that Abram and Fricke, and lat­er Gedat him­self, gath­ered into prayer cells to help forge the new West Ger­man state. But they were repen­tant men, this they tes­ti­fied to at every ses­sion. Repen­tant for what? It was hard to say. Every one of them claimed to have suf­fered dur­ing the war years. Men such as Her­mann J. Abs, “Hitler’s banker” and a vice pres­i­dent of Abram’s Inter­na­tion­al Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship (ICL), Ger­man divi­sion; Gus­tav Schmelz, a man­u­fac­tur­er of chem­i­cal weapons; Paul Rohrbach, the hyper­na­tion­al­ist ide­o­logue whose con­fla­tion of Ger­many with Chris­tian­i­ty, and most of Europe with Ger­many, had inspired the Nazis to under­stand their war-hunger as divine; and Gen­er­al Hans Spei­del, who had accept­ed the sur­ren­der of Paris on behalf of the Fuhrer in 1940, insist­ed that he had nev­er believed Hitler, had been forced into his arms by the Red Men­ace, had regret­ted the unfor­tu­nate alliance with such a vul­gar fool, a dis­grace to God’s true plan for Ger­many. They had done noth­ing wrong; they, too, if one gave it some though, were vic­tims.

Per­haps some of them were. That is one of the many clever strate­gies of fas­cism: per­se­cu­tion belongs to the pow­er­ful, accord­ing to its rules, both to dole out and to claim as the hon­or due mar­tyrs. Abram did not ask ques­tions; he sim­ply took out his wash­cloth and got busy with the blood of the lamb. He scrubbed his “new men” clean. Did it work? Abs, “Hitler’s banker,” became “Ade­nauer’s banker,” a key fig­ure in the West Ger­man gov­ern­men­t’s finan­cial res­ur­rec­tion. Schmelz kept his fac­to­ry. Rohrbach wrote on, author­ing trib­utes to Abram’s Inter­na­tion­al Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship in the Frank­furter All­ge­meine.

And Spei­del? He was a spe­cial case, a co con­spir­a­tor with Rom­mel in the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Hitler, the “July Plot” of 1944. There was some­thing almost Amer­i­can about him; like Buch­man, like Bar­ton, he con­sid­ered Hitler’s racial poli­cies a dis­trac­tion from his real­ly good ideas. For this ambiva­lence, the Allies reward­ed him: he served as com­man­der in chief of NATO ground forces from 1957 to 1963, when Charles de Gaulle, unper­suad­ed of his recon­struc­tion, insist­ed on his ouster.

Such men are only a few of those whom Abram helped, and by no means the worst. There were Zapp and von Gien­anth, there were “lit­tle Nazis” Abram cham­pi­oned for U.S. intel­li­gence posi­tions, and there were big ones: Baron Kon­stan­tin von Neu­rath, Hitler’s first for­eign min­is­ter, and Gen­er­al Oswald Pohl, the last SS com­man­der of the con­cen­tra­tion camps, among them. For those beyond hope of blank-slate rein­ven­tion, Abram and his web of Chris­t­ian cells led med­ical mer­cy (von Neu­rath, sen­tenced to fif­teen years for crimes against human­i­ty, was released ear­ly in 1953; Abram took up his case up his case upon learn­ing from von Neu­rath’s daugh­ter that her father, clas­si­fied as a “major War Crim­i­nal,” was receiv­ing less than exem­plary den­tal care in prison) or expediency(it was unjust, they felt, that Pohl, who while impris­oned by the Allies wrote a mem­oir called Cre­do: My Way to God–a Christ-besot­ted path that did not include acknowl­edg­ing his role in mass murder–should be left won­der­ing when he would be hanged.)

When occu­pa­tion forces charged Abs with war crimes, he offered a nov­el defense. He did not deny what he had done for Hitler; he sim­ply declared that he had done it for mon­ey, fas­cism be damned. He would glad­ly do as much for the Allies. And so he did, a task at which he so excelled that he would come to be known as the wiz­ard of the “Ger­man Mir­a­cle.” His past was forgotten–a phrase that must be writ­ten in pas­sive voice in order to sug­gest the gen­tle eli­sion of his­to­ry in the post­war years, under­tak­enby those eager to see a con­ser­v­a­tive Ger­man state rise from the ash­es, a sober son of Hitler’s father­land that would inher­it the old man’s hatred for one rad­i­cal­ism but not his love of anoth­er. . . .

Ibid.; pp. 165–167. [5]

9.  Sen­a­tor Alexan­der Wiley (R‑Wisconsin) was anoth­er close asso­ciate of Abram’s. Wiley was instru­men­tal in the suc­cess­ful­ly lob­by­ing (along with Abram and his aide Otto Fricke) for the rearm­ing of the Ger­man army against the for­mer Sovi­et Union.

. . . . Sen­a­tor Wiley want­ed total war. Take the men of Hitler’s old panz­er divi­sions, bless ’em under Christ, and point ’em toward Moscow. Abram’s Ger­man point man, Otto Fricke, was­n’t so blood-thirsty; he mere­ly want­ed twen­ty-five rearmed Ger­man divi­sions to slow the Russ­ian inva­sion he saw com­ing. “What Do We Chris­tians Think of Re-Arma­ment?” was the theme of one of Frick­e’s cell meet­ings in 1950. They were con­flict­ed, tempt­ed to take “mali­cious joy that the ‘Allies’ are now forced to emp­ty with spoons the bit­ter soup that has been served by the Rus­sians.” The judg­ments at Nurem­berg had dis­hon­ored the Wer­ma­cht, and the dis­man­tling had insult­ed and robbed Ger­many’s great indus­tri­al­ists, Krupp and Weiza­ck­er and Bosch–all well rep­re­sent­ed in Frick­e’s cells. By all rights they should stand down, refuse to rearm, let the Amer­i­cans defend Chris­ten­dom from the Slavs. But there it was: Chris­ten­dom.  They were Chris­t­ian men, cho­sen not by a nation but by Jesus him­self to lead their peo­ple into the “Order” God revealed to them in their prayers. “To accom­plish these tasks,” the Frank­furt cell con­clud­ed, “the state needs pow­er and this pow­er­ful­ness is indis­pens­able for the sake of love.” . . .

Ibid.; p. 171. [5]

10. Verei­de and the Fam­i­ly were suc­cess­ful in obtain­ing per­mis­sion for for­mer SS/Gestapo offi­cer von Gien­anth to trav­el out­side of Ger­many.

. . . . Von Gien­anth was bound to the Father­land. This, he com­plained to Abram, was an imped­i­ment to recon­struc­tion. He’d want­ed to attend a con­fer­ence in Atlantic City with fur­ther ideas of expan­sion in mind. Would the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary real­ly say that a man of his stature would blem­ish the board­walk? He was on a list of unde­sir­ables, he had learned from cer­tain connections–probably ICL men with­in the occu­pa­tion. This would be “unde­sir­able,” he thought, if he had been a com­mu­nist. “But I don’t see any sense in includ­ing peo­ple of my attitude”–ex-fascists ready to make com­mon cause with the Unit­ed States.

Among the many tes­ti­monies von Gien­anth col­lect­ed on his own behalf was a let­ter from an Amer­i­can diplo­mat’s wife who insist­ed the baron had not been a Nazi so much as an “ide­al­ist.” Even­tu­al­ly, von Gien­anth had believed, “the good and con­ser­v­a­tive ele­ment of the Ger­man peo­ple would gain con­trol.” Fas­cism had been like strong med­i­cine, unpleas­ant but nec­es­sary to what von Gien­anth had always believed would be the reestab­lish­ment of rule by elites like him­self. “In the com­ing years of recon­struc­tion,” his advo­cate wrote, “such men will be need­ed who can be trust­ed.”

Abram con­tact­ed the Com­bined Trav­el Board that decid­ed on which for­mer Nazis could be allowed to leave the coun­try. The baron was need­ed , Abram insist­ed. There were high Chris­t­ian coun­cils to be held in The Hague. “Expe­dite the nec­es­sary per­mit.”

Should that argu­ment prove inad­e­quate, Abram hired von Gien­an­th’s wife, Karein, as a host­ess on call for Amer­i­cans trav­el­ing on Chris­t­ian mis­sions. She was an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen, though she’d spent the war with her SS offi­cer hus­band. Now her Amer­i­can pass­port was being threat­ened. Abram saved it. That sum­mer, he sent the baron and his wife a gift of sort: a con­gress­man from Cal­i­for­nia, to be a guest on the baron’s estate. The fol­low­ing win­ter Sen­a­tor Frank Carl­son vis­it­ed. “As you know,” Abram advised Karein, “he is one of the clos­est friends and advis­ers to Eisen­how­er.”

A “serene con­fi­dence has filled me,” she replied, “as to Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er’s guid­ance by God.” That sum­mer, her hus­band flew with her to Eng­land, his pass­port evi­dent­ly restored.

Ibid.; pp. 173–174. [5]

11. Next, the pro­gram notes a func­tion con­vened at the cas­tle of the Teu­ton­ic Order (Teu­ton­ic Knights) in Bavaria. (For more about the his­to­ry of the Teu­ton­ic Knights, see Paul Win­kler’s The Thou­sand-Year Con­spir­a­cy [18], avail­able for down­load for free on this web­site.) Note that major play­ers from the Ger­man pow­er elite, busi­ness part­ners with their car­tel asso­ciates in the U.S. and else­where in the West, as well as key polit­i­cal fig­ures, were lec­tured to by Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist “converts”–“some of the best minds of the old regime.”

The assem­bled received “a let­ter of repen­tance for the sins of denaz­i­fi­ca­tion signed by more than thir­ty con­gress­men includ­ing Wiley and Cape­hart and a young Richard Nixon. [19]

. . . . The first meet­ing at Cas­tle Main­au had tak­en place in 1949, the same year the Allies allowed Ger­mans to begin gov­ern­ing them­selves again. The 1951 meet­ing was planned to mark what Abram con­sid­ered the com­plete moral rehabilitation–in just two years–of Ger­many. Abram want­ed the Amer­i­cans to go to them, a grand con­tin­gent of sen­a­tors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

. . . . Gen­er­al Spei­del was there, as was Rohrbach, the pro­pa­gan­dist: There were rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the major Ger­man banks and from Krupp and Bosch, and there was the pres­i­dent of Stan­dard Oil’s Ger­man divi­sion. There was at least one Ger­man cab­i­net mem­ber, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, may­ors, a dozen or more judges. A U‑boat com­man­der, famed for tor­pe­do­ing ships off the coast of Vir­ginia, cut a dash­ing fig­ure. A gag­gle of aris­to­crats, minor princes and princess­es, barons and counts and mar­graves were intim­i­dat­ed by some of the best minds of the old regime. There was the finan­cial genius Her­mann J. Abs, and a fas­cist edi­tor who hd once been a com­rade of the rad­i­cal the­o­rist Wal­ter Ben­jamin before throw­ing his lot in with the Nazis.

Wal­lace Haines spoke for Abram. He stayed up all night before his lec­ture, pray­ing for the spir­it that spoke aloud to his men­tor. The Amer­i­cans, God told him to say, were thrilled with the “eager­ness” of the Ger­mans to for­get the war. The Amer­i­cans came to the Ger­mans hum­bled, he told them. Haines brought proof of their new-found wis­dom: a let­ter of repen­tance for the sins of denaz­i­fi­ca­tion signed by more than thir­ty con­gress­men includ­ing Wiley and Cape­hart and a young Richard Nixon. . . .

Ibid.; pp. 175–176. [5]

12. Even­tu­al­ly, Verei­de, the Fam­i­ly and their Nazi and fas­cist asso­ciates (on both sides of the Atlantic) were suc­cess­ful in get­ting the rig­or­ous de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion pro­gram rescind­ed. Note the ref­er­ence to the “Mor­gen­thau boys.” This is a ref­er­ence to for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Robert Mor­gen­thau, who favored a rig­or­ous approach to de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion that includ­ed the de-indus­tri­al­iza­tion of Ger­many. For more about this top­ic, see FTR #578 [20], as well as All Hon­or­able Men [21], avail­able for down­load for free on this web­site.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that Verei­de was able to inter­cede on behalf of indus­tri­al plants to pre­vent their de-Nazification.In this regard, Verei­de was doing the work not of the Lord, but of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work [7].

. . . . For years, Man­fred Zapp had been Abram’s harsh­est cor­re­spon­dent, con­stant­ly warn­ing that the “man on the street” with whom he seemed to spend a great deal of time had had enough of Amer­i­ca’s emp­ty promis­es. Amer­i­ca had com­mit­ted “men­tal cru­el­ty,” he charged, hold­ing “so-called war crim­i­nals” in red coats–the uni­forms of the Lands­berg Prison–awaiting exe­cu­tion indef­i­nite­ly.

Abram agreed, and sent to the occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment let­ters signed by dozens of con­gress­men demand­ing action.

Amer­i­ca pre­vent­ed Ger­man indus­try from feed­ing the nation, Zapp argued.

Abram agreed, and inter­vened time and again on behalf of Ger­man fac­to­ries. He saved as many as he could, though a steel foundry named for Her­mann Goer­ing was beyond even his pow­ers of redemp­tion.

Amer­i­ca had put left­ists and trade union­ists and Bol­she­viks in pow­er, Zapp com­plained.

Abram agreed. The cleans­ing of the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment became an obses­sion, the sub­ject of his meet­ings with the Amer­i­can high com­mis­sion­er John J. McCloy and his week­ly prayer meet­ings with con­gress­men.

“Ide­al­ists” were pre­vent­ed from serv­ing their peo­ple, said Zapp. The man on the street was los­ing faith in the Amer­i­can reli­gion. “Free­dom in their inter­pre­ta­tion is the ide­al for which we shall fight and die but the real­i­ty is noth­ing else but a beau­ti­ful word for ser­vices for West­ern pow­ers . . . The word free­dom is not tak­en seri­ous­ly any­more.”

With­in a few years, nobody cared. The “Mor­gen­thau Boys” were as much a part of the past as the his­to­ry no Ger­man cared to speak of. . . .

Ibid.; pp. 177–178. [5]

13. Pub­lished before the 1944 Nor­mandy inva­sion, Curt Riess’ The Nazis Go Under­ground fore­cast that the Third Reich’s strat­e­gy for going under­ground would involve liai­son with Amer­i­can Protes­tant fun­da­men­tal­ists.

Also of inter­est to Berlin—particularly in view of the com­ing under­ground fight of the Nazis—must be the Fun­da­men­tal­ist Protes­tants, who have a con­sid­er­able fol­low­ing in Michi­gan, Kansas, Col­orado, and Min­neso­ta. To be sure, some of the Fun­da­men­tal­ists are among the most coura­geous fight­ers for democ­ra­cy, but a great many of them are def­i­nite­ly pro-Hitler. Their rea­son for this stand is that Fun­da­men­tal­ists do not believe in free­dom of reli­gion, and they do believe that the Jews should be pun­ished because they killed Christ. They say that Hitler has been sent by God to ‘save Chris­tian­i­ty and destroy athe­is­tic Com­mu­nism.’ To many of them Japan is the ‘ori­en­tal out­post of Chris­tian­i­ty’ des­tined to save Asia from the dan­ger of a ‘Com­mu­nis­tic Chi­na.’

The Nazis Go Under­ground; by Curt Riess; Copy­right 1944 by Curt Riess; Dou­ble­day, Doran and Co., Inc. [HC]; pp. 125–126. Library of Con­gress Con­trol Num­ber: 44007162. [22]

14. In the con­text of this dis­cus­sion, it should be recalled that Nazi spy chief Rein­hard Gehlen [16] became an evan­ge­list after his for­mal retire­ment from being the head of the Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice. [Chief of Hitler’s intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus for the East­ern front in World War II, Gehlen jumped to the CIA with his entire orga­ni­za­tion which became: the CIA’s depart­ment of Russ­ian and East­ern Euro­pean affairs, the de-fac­to NATO intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion and final­ly the BND, the intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many.]

In this con­text, it should be remem­bered that Gehlen report­ed to Bormann’s secu­ri­ty chief, Hein­rich Muller and that he was clear­ing his post­war actions tak­en in con­junc­tion with US intel­li­gence with Admi­ral von Doenitz (Hitler’s nom­i­nal suc­ces­sor as head of state) and Gen­er­al Franz Halder, his for­mer chief-of-staff. In his oper­a­tions, Gehlen was oper­at­ing as part of the Under­ground Reich.

Today, on the thresh­old of three score years and ten, Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen has found a sur­pris­ing new field of activ­i­ties. He has become an evan­ge­list. With still unim­paired ener­gy he has tak­en over the direc­tion of a cam­paign for build­ing new church­es and schools for the Evan­gel­i­cal Church in Catholic Bavaria. After a life of seclu­sion he fre­quent­ly attends meet­ings all over the province at which appeals for new funds are launched; on occa­sion he does not dis­dain to vis­it mem­bers of his reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty in order to encour­age the enter­prise and to pass the beg­ging bowl. . .

Gehlen: Spy of the Cen­tu­ry; by E.H. Cookridge; 1973 [SC] Pyra­mid Books; Copy­right 1971 by Euro­pean Copy­right Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed; ISBN 0–515-03154–2; p. 450.