Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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FTR #838 Interview (#1) with Peter Levenda about “The Hitler Legacy”

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by 12/19/2014. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #827.  (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012 and con­tained FTR #748.)

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment

Intro­duc­tion: The first of sev­er­al inter­views with Peter Lev­en­da, this pro­gram sets forth the his­tor­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion for the post­war per­pet­u­a­tion and oper­a­tion of Nazism–“The Hitler Lega­cy.”

Peter calls the first sec­tion of his book “Ori­gins of 21st Cen­tu­ry Con­flict.” It begins with events that occurred dur­ing, and in the imme­di­ate after­math of, “The Great War.”

We open our analy­sis with Peter’s dis­cus­sion of what he calls “The Amer­i­can Reich.” In order to under­stand the Nazi move­ment in America–a very pow­er­ful Fifth Col­umn that fused with the Third Reich’s dias­po­ra to form a key part of what Mr. Emory calls “The Under­ground Reich”–one must under­stand what took place at the end of World War I.

React­ing to the advent of the Sovi­et Union, abortive Marx­ist rev­o­lu­tions in Ger­many and else­where in Europe, large scale immi­gra­tion of Catholics from Ire­land and Italy and Jews from East­ern Europe, pow­er­ful ele­ments of the U.S. pow­er elite embraced fas­cism and eugen­ics ide­ol­o­gy.

With the onset of the Great Depres­sion, the poten­tial threat of Com­mu­nism was mag­ni­fied in the eyes of many pow­er­ful Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists, financiers and cor­po­rate lawyers. Ger­many’s suc­cess in putting down the Marx­ist rev­o­lu­tions with­in its own bor­ders, as well as the busi­ness rela­tion­ships between cor­po­rate Ger­many and its car­tel part­ners in the U.S. busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty inclined many influ­en­tial Amer­i­can reac­tionar­ies to sup­port fas­cism.

By the same token, these same ele­ments came to despise Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt and his “Jew Deal,” as it was called by his ene­mies. Attack­ing Roo­sevelt as a Jew and a Com­mu­nist, Amer­i­can fas­cists embraced a cog­ni­tive and rhetor­i­cal posi­tion not unlike the view of Barack Oba­ma as a “Kenyan Mus­lim,” and, con­se­quent­ly, a “trai­tor.”

The efforts of Amer­i­can right-wing pow­er bro­kers were sup­ple­ment­ed by pow­er­ful Fifth Colum­nists in the U.S., who sought to bring fas­cism to Amer­i­ca. Attempt­ing to com­bat what they saw as a “glob­al con­spir­a­cy” involv­ing Jews, Marx­ists trade union­ists and “racial infe­ri­ors,” William Dud­ley Pel­ley and his Sil­ver Shirts, Father Charles Cough­lin (“The Radio Priest”) and Count Anas­tase Von­si­atsky active­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Third Reich intel­li­gence and sought the over­throw of FDR.

Promi­nent in the ranks of Amer­i­can reac­tion was Amer­i­ca First, an osten­si­bly iso­la­tion­ist orga­ni­za­tion that actu­al­ly main­tained a pro-fas­cist ori­en­ta­tion and received fund­ing from Ger­man intel­li­gence as well. Avi­a­tor Charles Lind­bergh and a young Ger­ald Ford were among the mem­bers of this orga­ni­za­tion.

Also promi­nent in Peter’s analy­sis of the “Ori­gins of 21st Cen­tu­ry Con­flict” is the gen­e­sis of “glob­al jihadism.” Iron­i­cal­ly, what is per­ceived in parts of the Mus­lim world as an anti-impe­r­i­al doc­tine had its gen­e­sis as a vehi­cle for colo­nial dom­i­na­tion.

Seek­ing proxy war­riors on behalf of the Kaiser, archael­o­gist Max von Oppen­heim con­vinced Sul­tan Mehmet the V of the Ottoman Empire to declare a glob­al jihad against Eng­land, France and Rus­sia in an unsuc­cess­ful attempt to oust those nations from their colo­nial hold­ings in the Mus­lim world.

Britain, too, sought to employ proxy war­riors against the Ottoman Empire, uti­liz­ing T.E. Lawrence’s Arab Legion and King Faisal. After the defeat of the Ottoman armies, the British vio­lat­ed their pledge of sup­port for Arab self-gov­er­nance, opt­ing instead for the Sykes-Picot treaty divid­ing the Mid­dle East between France and Eng­land.

Dur­ing the First World War, Britain also signed the Bal­four Del­caratin, express­ing sup­port for a Jew­ish home­land in the Mid­dle East, in exchange for Jew­ish sup­port in the war. After the con­clu­sion of hos­til­i­ties, the British Empire vio­lat­ed its agree­ment with the Zion­ists as well.

It was in British-con­trolled Pales­tine that we see the rise of a very impor­tant fig­ure in the his­to­ry of the Mid­dle East, the grown of jihadism and the gen­e­sis of the col­lab­o­ra­tion between fas­cism and islamism–Haj Amin al-Hus­sei­ni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Seek­ing to mozilize the feel­ing of betray­al on the part of many Mus­lims in the Mid­dle East and else­where in the colo­nial world, al-Hus­sei­ni ulti­mate­ly became a gen­er­al in the Waf­fen SS and the first leader of the Pales­tin­ian Nation­al move­ment. Hus­sei­ni will be dis­cussed at greater length next week.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: 

  • The Pelypenko affair and what it revealed–particularly the links of Amer­i­can fas­cists to Third Reich intel­li­gence and eco­nom­ic infra­struc­ture.
  • The role of the Nazi-allied Ukrain­ian under­ground in this coun­try and the use of a Ukrain­ian assas­sin to elim­i­nate FDR. This on the heels of the 1934 coup attempt.
  • Sim­i­lar­i­ty in the point of view of Post World War I Ger­mans and Post World War I Arabs: Belief in betray­al by a “Glob­al Con­spir­a­cy.” How this dove­tails with sim­i­lar glob­al con­spir­a­to­r­i­al para­noia on the part of U.S. and Euro­pean elites. Jews and both “Bol­she­viks” and col­o­niz­ers will be tak­en up at greater length in future pro­grams. (This will be tak­en up at greater length next week.)

1. The dis­cus­sion begins with Peter’s read­ing of a quote from page 14.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 14.

. . . . I have seen doc­u­men­ta­tion that proves beyond any doubt that net­works exist­ed after the war to assist Nazi war crim­i­nals in their escape and sur­vival, and that these net­works were far more per­va­sive than even the fan­tasies of Fred­er­ick Forsyth and Ira Levin would have us believe. More to the point, the evi­dence that there exist­ed (and still exists) a strong rela­tion­ship between under­ground Nazi orga­ni­za­tions and under­ground “Islamist” orga­ni­za­tions is strong, incon­tro­vert­ible, and deeply trou­bling. . . .

. . . . The num­ber of Nazis who “con­vert­ed” to Islam after the war is astound­ing. The num­ber of Amer­i­cans who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Nazi under­ground is even more astound­ing.

When we dis­cuss the rise of what the press calls “jihadism” or “Islamist fun­da­men­tal­ism” or “Islamist ter­ror cells,” we have to put these terms and what they rep­re­sent into con­text.

This is the Hitler Lega­cy: From ter­ror bomb­ings in Europe in the 1960’s and 1970’s, to assas­si­na­tions of polit­i­cal lead­ers around the world, to drug-run­ning and arms smug­gling, to Oper­a­tion Con­dor, and all the way to the events of Sep­tem­ber 11,20011 what we have to con­front is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that our gov­ern­ments and our intel­li­gence agen­cies have become Sor­cer­er’s Appren­tices. Like the Dis­ney movie, our Mick­ey Mouse savants and spies have clum­si­ly sum­moned forces beyond their con­trol What began as an effort to con­tain the Sovi­et Union and the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na has become the tem­plate for a cam­paign of glob­al ter­ror­ism direct­ed at us.

This is that sto­ry. . . .

2. Next, we explore a sec­tion of the book titled the “Ori­gins of 21st Cen­tu­ry Con­flict.” Our first focal point is in Europe and North Amer­i­ca in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War I. High­lights of this part of the pro­gram include:
  • Ana­lyz­ing the abortive social­ist rev­o­lu­tions that took place in Ger­many at the end of the First World War, Peter notes the role of the Freiko­rps and relat­ed insti­tu­tions in sup­press­ing those revolts. In par­tic­u­lar, a num­ber of over­lap­ping Pan-Ger­man occult orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Thule Gesellschaft, con­tributed to the sub­stance of Ger­man reac­tion in the post-World War I peri­od.
  • In the Unit­ed States, the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion pro­duced a spate of anti-Com­mu­nist orga­ni­za­tions that saw Marx­is­m’s advo­ca­cy of a work­ers’ rev­o­lu­tion as a fun­da­men­tal threat to the exist­ing order.
  • Marx’s Jew­ish background–in tan­dem with large Jew­ish emi­gra­tion from East­ern Europe–fed a doc­tri­naire anti-Semi­tism which fused with anti-Com­mu­nism to become a key ele­ment of fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
  • The pro­gram set forth how Bol­she­vism, immi­gra­tion and anti-Semi­tism fused to become a the­o­ry of “glob­al con­spir­a­cy.”
  • We high­light the role in the for­ma­tion of this ide­ol­o­gy of Dar­win’s the­o­ries and eugen­ics, both in the U.S. and in Ger­many. (In par­tic­u­lar, we dis­cuss the impact of Irish and Ital­ian Catholic immi­gra­tion as well as Jew­ish immi­gra­tion on the con­scious­ness of ele­ments of the Amer­i­can pow­er elite.) We also detail how Nation­al Social­ists came to view their role in shap­ing the evo­lu­tion of homo sapi­ens.
  • The Depres­sion and FDR’s New Deal and their effects on many of those same ele­ments of the Pow­er Elite.
  • Hate-mon­ger­ing that labeled FDR as a “Jew” and a “Communist”–similar to anti-Oba­ma rhetoric por­tray­ing him as a Mus­lim and a trai­tor.
  • Atavism–the long­ing for a “sim­pler time” and its man­i­fes­ta­tions both in the 1930’s and present­ly.
3. The next sec­tion of the pro­gram presents infor­ma­tion about indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions promi­nent in the “Amer­i­can Reich:” Focal points of the dis­cus­sion include:
  • Major indus­tri­al and finan­cial inter­ests: cor­po­ra­tions like Stan­dard Oil (a Ger­man com­pa­ny orig­i­nal­ly), Gen­er­al Motors, Ford Motor Com­pa­ny, IBM, Dupont  and many oth­ers col­lab­o­rat­ed. Many promi­nent indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing George Her­bert Walk­er and Prescott Bush, Sr.; Hen­ry Ford; Thomas Wat­son; Allen and John Fos­ter Dulles.
  • Amer­i­ca First: its “iso­la­tion­ism,” pro-fas­cist sym­pa­thies and fund­ing by Ger­man intel­li­gence.
  • The Ku Klux Klan.
  • William Dud­ley Pel­ley and his Sil­ver Shirts. Pel­ley fore­saw the destruc­tion of the Jews as occur­ring on Sep­tem­ber 17,2001! (Close enough for a gov­ern­ment job as Peter says.)
  • Father Cough­lin.
  • Count Anas­tase Von­isi­atsky.
  • The Pelypenko affair and what it revealed–particularly the links of the above ele­ments to Third Reich intel­li­gence and eco­nom­ic infra­struc­ture.
  • The role of the Nazi-allied Ukrain­ian under­ground in this coun­try and the use of a Ukrain­ian assas­sin to elim­i­nate FDR. This on the heels of the 1934 coup attempt.

4. A quote from page 73 about the ide­ol­o­gy of Islamist ter­ror­ism both encap­su­lates dis­cus­sion about the ori­gins of glob­al jihad and antic­i­pates next week’s dis­cus­sion about the Grand Mufti and events sur­round­ing the advent of World War II.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 73.

. . . . A new nar­ra­tive was about to be born, and it became the Grand Uni­fied The­o­ry of Islamist ter­ror­ism; anti-Zion­ism became equiv­a­lent to anti-Semi­tism; the Jews had cre­at­ed Bol­she­vism as a mech­a­nism for divid­ing and con­quer­ing all oth­er races; they were aid­ed and abet­ted in this pro­gram by the Euro­pean powers–the “Crusaders”–who coop­er­at­ed with the Jews in order to enslave the Mus­lims; and that the only way to defend Arab, i.e. Mus­lim, ter­ri­to­ries against the invaders was to pro­claim a jihad. Since the Arabs did not have the same access to mon­ey and mil­i­tary equip­ment as the Cru­saders and the Jews, the jihad would have to be waged “by any means nec­es­sary.” This includ­ed the reg­i­men sug­gest­ed by Oppen­heim of indi­vid­ual assas­si­na­tions, inde­pen­dent bands of jihadists, and guer­ril­la war­fare that includ­ed tar­get­ing civil­ian pop­u­la­tions. Once Jews were iden­ti­fied as the ene­my of Islam, the des­ig­na­tion of ene­my com­bat­ant could be extend­ed to include not only able-boi­died men who car­ried arms and fought in pitched bat­tles, but any­one who was Jew­ish: women women, chil­dren, and all those pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered non-com­bat­ants. . . .

. . . . This new par­a­digm would become enshrined in the con­cept of “total war,” a phrase coined by for­mer Ger­man Gen­er­al Erich Luden­dorf (1865–1937) to des­ig­nate a state in which all the resources of a nation had to be mobi­lized in the war effort. When two such states are at war, then it is inevitable that civil­ian pop­u­la­tions on both sides would be slaugh­tered in an effort of each side to deprive the oth­er of the raw mate­r­i­al of conflict–to destroy logis­ti­cal suport, indus­try, agri­cul­ture and most of all every human who could grow food, make ammu­ni­tion, or fire a weapon. . . . .

5. One of the most impor­tant parts of Peter’s book con­cerns his analy­sis of the ori­gins of glob­al jihad. Key focal points of the dis­cus­sion include:

  • Max von Oppen­heim and his for­mu­la­tion of jihad in con­cert with the Ottoman Empire. An impor­tant point of empha­sis is the fact that what is today “jihadism” began as a tool of Euro­pean impe­ri­al­ism dur­ing World War I.
  • T.E. Lawrence and Britain’s use of the Arab Rebel­lion.
  • The Bal­four Agree­ment.
  • Eng­land and France’s betray­al of their promis­es to both the Arabs and the Jews. Sykes-Picot agree­ment and the replace­ment of the Hashemites as guardians of Mec­ca and Med­i­na.
  • Sim­i­lar­i­ty in the point of view of Post World War I Ger­mans and Post World War I Arabs: Belief in betray­al by a “Glob­al Con­spir­a­cy.” How this dove­tails with sim­i­lar glob­al con­spir­a­to­r­i­al para­noia on the part of U.S. and Euro­pean elites. Jews and both “Bol­she­viks” and col­o­niz­ers.
  • The Grand Mufti’s alliance with the Third Reich (we’ll have more to say about this in future inter­views.)

6. A third excerpt from page 307 serves to present the oper­at­ing the­sis of this book:

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 307.

. . . . The whole thrust of this book has been that Amer­i­can lead­ers in busi­ness, finance, media, and pol­i­tics col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazis before, dur­ing, and after the war. The West­’s share in the ‘blame” for Al-Qae­da, et al, goes back a long way–before Eisenhower–to a cabal of extrem­ist US Army gen­er­als and emi­gre East­ern Euro­peans who did­n’t have much of a prob­lem with Nazism since they feared Com­mu­nism more. The Church, the Tibetans, the Japan­ese, the Ger­mans, the Croatians–and the Americans–all felt that Com­mu­nism was the greater dan­ger, long before WWII. We enlist­ed war crim­i­nals to fight on our side. We appro­pri­at­ed the idea of glob­al jihad from the Nazis and their WW I pre­de­ces­sors. We amped up their plan to weaponize reli­gion and con­vinced Mus­lims, who hat­ed each oth­er, to band togeth­er to fight Com­mu­nism. And when Afghanistan was lib­er­at­ed and the Sovi­et Union was defeat­ed?

Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. . . .

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #838 Interview (#1) with Peter Levenda about “The Hitler Legacy””

  1. Excel­lent. One of the best (if not best) his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive on the rise of the Third Reich and asso­ci­at­ed fas­cist regimes and move­ments of the 20th cen­tu­ry I’ve heard. And I’ve heard a lot. I am in rapt antic­i­pa­tion of part two and would be over­joyed if there were a part 3. I’m learn­ing from oth­er sources just how right Dave has been about Ukraine. I still think Rus­sia ought to stay out of Ukraine. But the strong pres­ence of neo-Nazis there fur­nish­es Putin with an excuse for his own aggres­sion.

    Posted by Dusty | March 10, 2015, 11:42 am
  2. @Dusty–

    There will be at least 3, and maybe 5 or six inter­views with Peter Lev­en­da about “The Hitler Legacy,”–a book that, as I said in the inter­view, gets the “Dave Emory Five-Star Rat­ing.”

    We’re going to do as many as it takes to cov­er the mate­r­i­al he presents.

    Inter­view #2 will be record­ed this week­end.

    Best,

    Dave Emory

    Posted by Dave Emory | March 10, 2015, 4:38 pm
  3. This is great Mr. Emory. A few months back, I saw that you and Mr. Lev­en­da were cor­re­spond­ing in the com­ments sec­tion. I am glad to hear a longer con­ver­sa­tion.

    Posted by Mason | March 13, 2015, 10:18 pm
  4. I love this series of inter­views, which I’ve re-lis­tened to count­less times since last year. I fin­ished read­ing Lev­en­da’s book last week. Great Stuff espe­cial­ly on fas­cism in Asia. I hope you have him back some­day to talk about Unholy Alliance. I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing “The Beast Reawak­ens” by Mar­tin A. Lee which peo­ple should also check out along with the great inter­views you did with him. Check out my arti­cle on the CIA and the Gehlen org called “Nazis and The CIA” (Based on Christo­pher Simp­son’s “Blow­back” anoth­er must read) http://anti-imperialist‑u.blogspot.com/2014/06/nazis-and-cia.html

    Posted by Hugo Turner | May 6, 2017, 11:52 am

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