COMMENT: We’ve received many e‑mails about the recent Bloomberg News story excerpted below.
In addition to detailing that fascism wasn’t some kind of freak occurrence, we’ve noted the spawning of the Bormann capital network [1] from the political and economic forces underpinning Nazi Germany. Controlling the German core corporations as well as powerful interests around the world, the Bormann group [2] is preeminent on the world economic landscape.
Noting that BMW is controlled by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels (whose stepchild inherited the Quandt industrial empire), the Bloomberg story notes that Mercedes-Benz also has significant capital participation by the Quandts.
In FTR #155 [3], we presented Paul Manning’s research [4] indicating that the Bormann network features the heirs of key Third Reich officials and military officers, hierarchically structured along lines deriving from the power structure of the Third Reich itself.
The Quandt story excerpted below provides significant depth to Manning’s reportage on the Bormann group and the Underground Reich.
We also noted (in AFA #3 [5]) that Quandt served as the corporate cover for Eichmann deputy Alois Brunner’s postwar work for the Gehlen spy outfit. (The August, 1944 document detailing the Third Reich’s plans to go underground provided for German heavy industry to give accused war criminals jobs to help them survive.)
EXCERPT: In the spring of 1945, Harald Quandt, a 23-year-old officer in the German Luftwaffe, was being held as a prisoner of war by Allied forces in the Libyan port city of Benghazi when he received a farewell letter from his mother, Magda Goebbels — the wife of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
The hand-written note confirmed the devastating news he had heard weeks earlier: His mother had committed suicide with her husband on May 1, after slipping their six children cyanide capsules in Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin. . . .
. . . Quandt was released from captivity in 1947. Seven years later, he and his half-brother Herbert — Harald was the only remaining child from Magda Goebbels’ first marriage — would inherit the industrial empire built by their father, Guenther Quandt, which had produced Mauser firearms and anti-aircraft missiles for the Third Reich’s war machine. Among their most valuable assets at the time was a stake in car manufacturer Daimler AG. (DAI) They bought a part of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) a few years later.
While the half-brothers passed away decades ago, their legacy has endured. Herbert’s widow, Johanna Quandt, 86, and their children Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, have remained in the public eye as BMW’s dominant shareholders. The billionaire daughters of Harald Quandt — Katarina Geller-Herr, 61, Gabriele Quandt, 60, Anette-Angelika May-Thies, 58, and 50-year-old Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo — have kept a lower profile.
The four sisters inherited about 1.5 billion deutsche marks ($760 million) after the death of their mother, Inge, in 1978, according to the family’s sanctioned biography, “Die Quandts.” They manage their wealth through the Harald Quandt Holding GmbH, a Bad Homburg, Germany-based family investment company and trust named after their father. Fritz Becker, the chief executive officer of the family entities, said the siblings realized average annual returns above 7 percent from its founding in 1981 through 1996. Since then, the returns have averaged 7.6 percent.
“The family wants to stay private and that is an acceptable situation for me,” said Becker in an interview at his Bad Homburg office. “We invest our money globally and if it’s $1 billion, $500 million or $3 billion, who cares?” (Italics added.) . . .
Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile by Paul Manning; pp. 26–27. [2]
EXCERPT: . . . . 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’s 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 German industrialists must be prepared to finance the continuation of the Nazi Party, which would be forced to go underground, just as had the Maquis in France. (Italics added.) . . .
. . . . From this day, German industrial firms of all rank were to begin placing their funds—and, wherever possible, key manpower—abroad, especially in neutral countries. Dr. Bosse advised that ‘two main banks can be used for the export of funds for firms who have made no prior arrangements; the Basler Handelsbank and Schweizerische Kreditanstalt of Zurich.’ He also stated, ‘There are a number of agencies in Switzerland which for a five percent commission will buy property in Switzerland for German firms, using Swiss cloaks.’
“Dr. Bosse closed the meeting, observing that ‘after the defeat of Germany, the Nazi Party recognizes that certain of its best known leaders will be condemned as war criminals. However, in cooperation with the industrialists, it is arranging to place its less conspicuous but most important members with various German factories as technical experts or members of its research and designing offices. (Italics added.) . . .