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Henry Kissinger, BND Elements and Third Reich Veterans Contemplated the Overthrow Willy Brandt’s Government

 

COMMENT: A recent Dai­ly Mail sto­ry under­scores the degree of net­work­ing that Hen­ry Kissinger under­took in con­junc­tion with Third Reich alum­ni (undoubt­ed­ly oper­at­ing with approval of the Under­ground Reich.)

Dis­pleased with for­mer chan­cel­lor Willy Brandt’s “Ost­poli­tik,” Kissinger and his boss Richard Nixon col­lud­ed with SS offi­cers, oth­er Third Reich vet­er­ans and Ger­man aris­to­crats to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of stag­ing a coup against Brandt’s gov­ern­ment. Worth not­ing in this regard is the fact that the milieu of the plot­ters in Ger­many itself was appar­ent­ly assem­bled by Rein­hard Gehlen, head of the BND dur­ing most of the post­war peri­od. (Gehlen offi­cial­ly retired in 1968. He is not men­tioned by name in the arti­cle below, but would almost cer­tain­ly have been the “go-to” guy tabbed to mar­tial will­ing Nazis for the under­tak­ing at hand.)

As revealed in a Tele­graph arti­cle about the plot, one of their co-con­spir­a­tors was Hans Globke, the gray emi­nence behind Kon­rad Ade­nauer (see excerpt below.) Globke was expe­ri­enced with coup plots against the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, hav­ing been part of the Nau­mann coup attempt staged in 1953 and dis­cussed in The New Ger­many and the Old Nazis. One won­ders how many oth­er Nau­mann coup vet­er­ans were involved with the “lit­tle ser­vice” that net­worked with Kissinger et al.

Note that Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists who pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed Hitler financed the orga­ni­za­tion. This could not have been ini­ti­at­ed with­out the go-ahead of Mar­tin Bor­mann and his net­work.

For both Nixon and Kissinger, con­spir­ing with Third Reich alum­ni was noth­ing new. Nixon was piv­otal in assem­bling and nur­tur­ing the Nazi wing of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, as dis­cussed in (among oth­er pro­grams) FTR #465.

Kissinger helped to forge the Third Reich alum­ni into a guer­ril­la force to fight behind Sovi­et lines after World War II:

America’s Nazi Secret by John Lof­tus; Trine Day [SC]; 2010936158; p. 11

. . .Kissinger was recruit­ed as a pro­fes­sional spy for Dulles short­ly after the end of the war in Europe. Although there is no evi­dence that he per­son­ally recruit­ed Nazis, Kissinger ran the intel­li­gence file room where records of Nazi recruit­ment were kept. He then trans­ferred to Har­vard where he spe­cial­ized in recruit­ing for­eign stu­dents for espi­onage. Lat­er he worked for Dulles dur­ing the glo­ry days of Office of Pol­icy Coor­di­na­tion (OPC). He was hired as a con­sul­tant for a pri­vate group known as Oper­a­tions Research Office, which planned to use for­mer Nazis as agents behind Russ­ian lines in the event of World War III. Men­tion of Kissinger’s clas­si­fied work was cen­sored from the orig­i­nal man­u­script of this book. . .

“Kissinger and the Secret Spy Net­work of Old Nazis and Ger­man Aris­to­crats ‘Who Plot­ted to Over­throw West Ger­man Gov­ern­ment’ ” by Alan Hall; Dai­ly Mail; 12/03/2012.

EXCERPT: A Ger­man aca­d­e­m­ic has unearthed evi­dence show­ing for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Hen­ry Kissinger once dis­cussed a coup with dis­grun­tled Nazis to over­throw the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment in the 1970s.

Kissinger and Richard Nixon were aggriev­ed at the left-lean­ing gov­ern­ment of the day’s bur­geon­ing friend­ship with the hard­line East Ger­man gov­ern­ment. Kissinger became the con­tact man for a secret spy net­work made up of old Nazis and elite aris­to­crats aimed at tor­pe­do­ing the plans for­mu­lat­ed by Chan­cel­lor Willy Brandt.

By the end of 1970, Kissinger was offer­ing the spies advice on how to deal with Brandt’s Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment. The group he became embroiled with was called ‘The Lit­tle Ser­vice’ and was formed by the con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union (CDU), which was allied with Bavari­a’s Chris­t­ian Social Union.

One agent who vis­it­ed Kissinger quot­ed him say­ing, ‘It might be pos­si­ble to over­throw the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, but it remains to be seen whether this would involve risks which could put a Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union (CDU)/ Chris­t­ian Social Union (CSU) gov­ern­ment in great dif­fi­cul­ty. . . .

. . . . Brandt pur­sued a pol­i­cy of engage­ment with the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic, con­vinced it was bet­ter to build bridges with the dic­ta­tor­ship to defuse Cold War ten­sions rather than always being at log­ger­heads. For the all-white, all male con­ser­v­a­tives of the CDU, this was too much.

They want­ed West Ger­many to face off against the Sovi­et-backed regime in the belief that iso­la­tion would make it crum­ble. It was out of this belief that its pri­vate spy organ­i­sa­tion, made up of many for­mer Gestapo and SS men as well as titled barons and counts, was formed.

Polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Ste­fanie Waske spent sev­en years research­ing let­ters from politi­cians from the Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union and its Bavar­i­an sis­ter par­ty the Chris­t­ian Social Union, and her results are to be pub­lished next year; poten­tial­ly embar­rass­ing tim­ing for Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel, who in Novem­ber 2013 will seek re-elec­tion as CDU chan­cel­lor for the third time.

Waske approached Kissinger for com­ment but he refused, as did many of the noble­men who worked for the The Lit­tle Ser­vice which came into being in 1969 after the par­ty lost its first gen­er­al elec­tion since the post­war repub­lic was formed in 1949.

Details of her research are pub­lished in the cur­rent edi­tion of the Ger­man intel­lec­tu­al week­ly Die Zeit. The cat­a­lyst for the spy group was Brandt’s deci­sion to rec­og­nize post-WW2 bor­ders divid­ing Ger­many and a pledge Brandt gave that his state would not use vio­lence against the Com­mu­nist one in the east.

Con­ser­v­a­tive MP Karl Theodor Frei­herr zu Gut­ten­berg, who was the grand­fa­ther of the dis­graced for­mer defense min­is­ter who had to resign last year after it was dis­cov­ered he cheat­ed on his doc­tor­ate, held a meet­ing in the autumn of 1969 with for­mer chan­cel­lor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and lead­ing CDU and CSU politi­cians, the CSU being the Bavar­i­an wing of the par­ty.

‘They decid­ed to form an infor­ma­tion ser­vice for the oppo­si­tion,’ said Waske. ‘It was a secret spy ser­vice.’ The for­mer head of the BND, Ger­many’s [for­eign] intel­li­gence agency, was tapped and he offered up a ready-made web of infor­mants across the globe in coun­tries as far apart as the US, France and Sau­di Ara­bia.

Hans Christoph von Stauf­fen­berg, the cousin of the man who tried and failed to kill Hitler in the July 1944 bomb plot, was cho­sen to head the net­work. Casimir Prince of Sayn-Wittgen­stein, who would lat­er only nar­row­ly miss impris­on­ment for the CDU’s par­ty dona­tion scan­dal of a decade ago, was recruit­ed to raise the hun­dreds of thou­sands of D‑marks nec­es­sary to fund the net­work.

He col­lect­ed from con­ser­v­a­tives in indus­try, many of whom had pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed Hitler, and who now viewed with sus­pi­cion the appar­ent cozi­ness devel­op­ing between Brandt and the Com­mu­nists. The first act was to open a secret ‘back chan­nel’ to Kissinger who was keen to know what the Sovi­ets were up to at all times, includ­ing their pup­pets in East Berlin.

The trea­sur­er of the group was Alfred Sei­dl, a for­mer Nazi who act­ed as the chief defense lawyer for Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess.

‘In 1971 Brandt was talk­ing about the admin­is­tra­tion of Berlin with Leonid Brezh­nev in Yal­ta and Stauffenberg’s infor­mants were deliv­er­ing secret infor­ma­tion to the con­ser­v­a­tives who were dis­cussing it with Kissinger,’ said Waske. The intel­li­gence gleaned came from eaves­drop­ping, inter­cept­ed mail, inform­ers and tele­phone taps. . . .

“West Ger­many’s CDU Had Pri­vate Spy Ser­vice” by Matthew Day; The Tele­graph; 12/03/2012.

EXCERPT: . . . Draw­ing on the ranks of for­mer mem­bers of the Ger­man secret ser­vice, the net­work brought togeth­er such fig­ures as Hans Globke, co-author of the Nurem­berg laws . . .

Discussion

2 comments for “Henry Kissinger, BND Elements and Third Reich Veterans Contemplated the Overthrow Willy Brandt’s Government”

  1. Munich 1972.

    Posted by GW | December 21, 2012, 5:29 am
  2. from Deutsche Welle 12/27/12 ‑The shred­ding of impor­tant files per­tain­ing to far-right extrem­ism has sparked out­rage and shock, rais­ing sus­pi­cions that incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion was cov­ered up and that the per­pe­tra­tors may even have been pro­tect­ed.
    But it’s not the first time it has hap­pened. In the late 1990s, files on mass mur­der­er Alois Brun­ner, a high-rank­ing SS offi­cer, dis­ap­peared. The Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice (BND) was said to have destroyed files con­tain­ing con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion as to whether Brun­ner had worked for the BND at some point.
    Adolf Eich­mann lived under­cov­er in Argenti­na for sev­er­al years.
    Brun­ner was a close aide and con­fi­dante of Adolf Eich­mann who orga­nized the Holo­caust from his desk in Berlin. He was sen­tenced to death in 1961 in Jerusalem. Though the BND knew Eich­man­n’s loca­tion, he lived unde­tect­ed in Argenti­na for sev­er­al years.
    The BND is also believed to have pro­tect­ed war crimes crim­i­nal Klaus Bar­bie who was respon­si­ble for send­ing hun­dreds of Jews in France to their death. Just like Eich­mann, Bar­bie went under­ground in South Amer­i­ca. He even worked as an agent for the BND in the mid 1960s.

    Posted by kando | December 27, 2012, 9:21 am

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