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

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Snowden’s Ride, Part 12: The Gruppenhobbit, the Deep Fifth Column and the Underground Reich

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: In this post, we exam­ine the cir­cum­stances, per­son­al his­to­ry and polit­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al antecedents of Alex Karp, the CEO of Palan­tir, the com­pa­ny that makes the PRISM soft­ware at the cen­ter of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook [Snowden]‘s “dis­clo­sures.” (We nick­name him The Grup­pen­hob­bit, because of his com­pa­ny’s affin­i­ty with Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.”)

NOTE: Palan­tir offi­cial­ly claims that “their PRISM” is NOT the same PRISM in the focal point of the Snowden/NSA imbroglio. We feel this claim is laugh­able, frankly. The notion that the intel­li­gence services–including NSA–are using TWO counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­grams with iden­ti­cal names is not cred­i­ble. Had a com­pa­ny devel­oped a counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­gram for use by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and called it “PRISM,” there would have been lit­i­ga­tion. The major tech com­pa­nies are NOTHING if not liti­gious, and Thiel and com­pa­ny have PLENTY of mon­ey! 

In our recent, volu­mi­nous analy­sis of “Snow­den’s Ride”–the Nazi psy-op so suc­cess­ful­ly per­pe­trat­ed by Eddie The Friend­ly Spook and the forces who have man­aged his escapade–we are look­ing at the activ­i­ties of an Under­ground Reich milieu/intelligence net­work. Our series on this is long, com­plex and mul­ti-lay­ered: Part IPart IIPart IIIPart IVPart VPart VIPart VII, Part VIIIPart IXPart X, Part XI, Part XIIPart XIIIPart XIVPart XVPart XVIPart XVII, Part XVIII. It is impos­si­ble to ade­quate­ly encap­su­late the over­all scope of the inquiry in this post. Please exam­ine the pre­vi­ous posts and lis­ten care­ful­ly to the series of pro­grams being pro­duced on “The Adven­tures of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook.”

It is less clear pre­cise­ly who is the imme­di­ate intel­li­gence con­troller of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook, although BND is almost cer­tain­ly involved and may be the ulti­mate exec­u­tive author­i­ty. The prob­a­bil­i­ty is very strong that a “deep fifth col­umn” with­in U.S. intel­li­gence, mil­i­tary, cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal struc­ture is involved.

(For new­er users of this web­site, we note that it is impos­si­ble to briefly explain the con­cept of The Under­ground Reich. The very men­tion of such a term will seem like mad­ness to the uni­ti­ti­at­ed. We rec­om­mend that peo­ple read The Nazis Go Under­groundMar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in ExileThe New Ger­many and the Old Nazis, and “The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt.”)

Although life cer­tain­ly presents exam­ples of strange bed­fel­lows, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Alex Karp’s sit­u­a­tion sug­gest that there is more to his pro­fes­sion­al and polit­i­cal life than meets the eye. The same could be said for his aca­d­e­m­ic men­tor Juer­gen Haber­mas, one of Ger­many’s most pres­ti­gious post-war philoso­phers.

NB: We are of the con­sid­ered pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion that both the Grup­pen­hob­bit and his men­tor Haber­mas are Under­ground Reich. We should also note that, in the age of mind con­trol, it is alto­geth­er pos­si­ble that–IF our work­ing hypoth­e­sis is correct–both men may be under the effects of such pro­cess­ing. Mind con­trol can be imple­ment­ed in such a way as a subject–in this case Karp and Habermas–could pass a lie detec­tor test or even be tor­tured to death with­out reveal­ing the infor­ma­tion con­cealed by the process. (See AFA #‘s 5–7.)

Some crit­i­cal points to be eval­u­at­ed care­ful­ly:

  • The cir­cum­stances of Alex Karp’s pro­fes­sion­al involve­ment with Palan­tir and Peter Thiel seem improb­a­ble on their sur­face. (See text excerpts below.)
  • In this con­text, we note that Karp is an osten­si­ble “neo-hippy”/lefty/progressive, or his back­ground is so rep­re­sent­ed. The notion that he would sus­tain a life­long, lucra­tive pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with uber reac­tionary Peter Thiel seems high­ly unlike­ly. Thiel’s polit­i­cal views are so fascis­tic that he has explic­it­ly denounced democ­ra­cy as incom­pat­i­ble with free­dom, in con­sid­er­able mea­sure, because we made what he sees as the mis­take of allow­ing women to vote! 
  • NB: The name of the firm is derived from the Palantiri–the see­ing stones of The Lord of the Rings. In keep­ing with the Tolkien theme, Palan­tir’s head­quar­ters are nick­named “The Shire”–the home­land of the hob­bits. Hence our nick­name for Karp as The Grup­pen­hob­bit. A more appro­pri­ate nick­name for Palan­tir’s head­quar­ters would appear to be “Mor­dor,” under the cir­cum­stances.
  • In addi­tion to Palan­tir, which oper­ates in con­junc­tion with mul­ti­ple intel­li­gence ser­vices, the mil­i­tary and law enforce­ment (includ­ing the intru­sive PRISM oper­a­tions), Karp has teamed with Thiel in RobotX, which man­u­fac­tures secu­ri­ty robots.
  • Again, we find the cir­cum­stances of Karp’s ascent to be unlike­ly. A lefty/hippie/freedom loving/“Tolkienesque” indi­vid­ual hook­ing up with an ante­dilu­vian reac­tionary like Thiel seems improb­a­ble. After study­ing law, Karp decamps for Ger­many. We won­der if Thiel’s inter­ac­tion with Karp at Stan­ford was more than rep­re­sent­ed here? Did Thiel hook The Grup­pe­hob­bit up with the Bor­mann network/Underground Reich? 
  • In Ger­many, Karp spends years study­ing under Juer­gen Haber­mas, one of Ger­many’s most famous post­war intel­lec­tu­al fig­ures, also an osten­si­ble left­ist. More about Haber­mas is to be found below. Haber­mas appears to be the sin­gle great­est intel­lec­tu­al influ­ence on Karp. We sus­pect the influ­ence may be more than intel­lec­tu­al.
  • After get­ting an inher­i­tance from his grand­fa­ther, Karp begins to dab­ble in invest­ments (with no appar­ent back­ground in secu­ri­ties analy­sis.) His efforts are so suc­cess­ful, that oth­er invest­ment pro­fes­sion­als and peo­ple with sig­nif­i­cant sums to invest start flock­ing to this “crazy guy,” as he is termed, to invest their mon­ey. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble, this seems unlike­ly, under the cir­cum­stances.
  • The Grup­pen­hob­bit’s mon­ey man­ag­ing suc­cess leads to his estab­lish­ment of a Euro­pean-based cap­i­tal man­age­ment firm. We won­der if, per­haps, Karp was “hooked up” with ele­ments of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work and/or cor­po­rate Ger­many. Is that where his Caed­mon Group has its gen­e­sis?
  • After return­ing to the U.S., the Grup­pen­hob­bit hooks up with Thiel, whose back­ground appears to be Under­ground Reich, with roots in the I.G. Far­ben suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions.
  • As we have seen, Palan­tir is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, hav­ing its begin­nings enabled by In-Q-Tel, a CIA-linked ven­ture cap­i­tal firm. As can be seen in the Forbes article–which should be read in its entirety–Palantir also works with law enforce­ment and the finan­cial com­mu­ni­ty. It would appear to be the ulti­mate data min­ing enti­ty.
  • Our ques­tions about the Grup­pen­hob­bit’s activ­i­ties in Ger­many derive large­ly from analy­sis of the osten­si­ble left­ist Juer­gen Haber­mas’ cur­ricu­lum vitae. Again, Haber­mas appears to be the dom­i­nant intel­lec­tu­al (and pos­si­bly pro­fes­sion­al) influ­ence on Karp.
  • Haber­mas was one of the “flakhelfer”–young Ger­mans who served in the Hitler Youth and then served with anti-air­craft units near the end of the war. (See text excerpts below.) Joseph Ratzinger was one such flakhelfer. (See text excerpts below.) Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s cir­cum­stances argue strong­ly for his belong­ing to the Under­ground Reich.
  • The flakhelfer yield­ed much of the creme de la creme of Ger­man intel­lec­tu­als for the post­war peri­od. (See text excerpts below.)
  • As set forth in pages 78–79 of The Nazis Go Under­ground, youths such as the flakhelfer were seen as essen­tial for form­ing the post­war lead­er­ship of the post­war Under­ground Reich. (See text excerpt below.)
  • Among the most promi­nent of the flakhelfer is Nobel-Prize win­ning write Gun­ther Grass. He turned out to have served in the Waf­fen SS. Rather more than a flakhelfer, under the cir­cum­stances. (See text excepts below.)
  • Anoth­er of the flakhelfer, write Hans Mag­nus Enzens­berg­er has been an ardent defend­er of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Although the Grup­pen­hob­bit’s intel­lec­tu­al men­tor Haber­mas has writ­ten crit­i­cal­ly of the Nazi peri­od and one of his intel­lec­tu­al antecedents–Martin Heidegger–the pri­ma­ry influ­ences on Haber­mas were Nazis. Hei­deg­ger was an ardent Nazi. (See text excerpts below.)
  • His doc­tor­al super­vi­sors are cas­es in point. Both were in the Nazi camp. One was Oskar Beck­er. (See text excerpts below.) 
  • The oth­er of his doc­tor­al super­vi­sors was Erich Rothack­er, close to Third Reich lumi­nar­ies Goebbels and Alfred Rosen­berg. (See text excerpts below.)
  • In addi­tion to Nazi par­ty mem­ber Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, anoth­er of the intel­lec­tu­al influ­ences on Haber­mas was Got­tfried Benn, anoth­er who turned to the Nazi phi­los­o­phy, despite lat­er alleged dif­fer­ences. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Chief among the rea­sons we seri­ous­ly doubt the integri­ty of Haber­mas’ per­sona as a “leftist/progressive” con­cerns the fact that he was appoint­ed direc­tor of the Max Planck Insti­tute for 12 years. (See text excerpts below.) We won­der if Palan­tir might be the deriv­a­tive of Under­ground Reich/Max Planck Insti­tute research?
  • The Max Planck Insti­tute was the name giv­en in the post­war peri­od to the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute. A pri­ma­ry influ­ence on the sci­ence of the Third Reich, the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute was heav­i­ly cap­i­tal­ized by the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion and was an epi­cen­ter of eugen­ics think­ing and leg­is­la­tion pri­or to, and dur­ing the ascent of, the Third Reich. (Text excerpts from FTR #664 are pre­sent­ed below, to under­score the exact nature of the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute, rechris­tened The Max Planck Insti­tute.)
  •  As we have seen, the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tutes were the recip­i­ents of Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion gen­eros­i­ty. The Rock­e­feller milieu saw to it that the best sci­en­tists, includ­ing Jew­ish ones, were kept on staff in order to max­i­mize the qual­i­ty of the work that they were fund­ing. (The War Against the Weak, pp. 302–303.)
  • Gen­er­al­ly viewed as an iso­lat­ed event and an aber­ra­tion, Josef Men­gele’s Auschwitz work with twins was the direct out­growth of main­stream eugen­ics research. (See text excerpts below.)
  • Long pre­oc­cu­pied with the study of twins, eugeni­cists cel­e­brat­ed the Nazi dic­ta­tor­ship for its abil­i­ty to use coer­cion to achieve their objec­tive of detailed, inten­sive research of the sub­ject. (See text excerpt from The War Against the Weak, pp. 352.)
  • The Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion’s fund­ing went well into the tenure of the Third Reich. The Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tutes were the pri­ma­ry focal point of Nazi eugen­ics research on twins. Eugen Fis­ch­er was the direc­tor of The Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Genet­ics and Eugen­ics through most of the Nazi peri­od and was deeply involved in the devel­op­ment of the pro­grams that paved the way for Men­gele’s work at Auschwitz. (See text excerpt from The War Against the Weak, pp. 354–355.)
  •  Josef Men­gele con­duct­ed his bru­tal, lethal research at Auschwitz in con­junc­tion with the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute and his intel­lec­tu­al men­tor at that insti­tu­tion, Dr. Frei­herr Otmar von Ver­schuer, who replaced Max Planck­’s asso­ciate Eugen Fis­ch­er. (See text excerpt from The War Against the Weak, pp. 354–355.)
  • Although Men­gele’s ghast­ly work with twins at Auschwitz became fair­ly well-known after the war, few real­ize that this endeav­or was a direct exten­sion of the eugen­ics work at the Kaiser Wil­helm Institute–again, recip­i­ents of lav­ish Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion fund­ing. (See text excerpt from The War Against the Weak, pp. 359–360.) It is this insti­tu­tion that was head­ed by Haber­mas for twelve years after the war.
  • Sim­ply put, Ger­many was nev­er effec­tive­ly de-Naz­i­fied. The Third Reich con­tin­ued under­ground. The notion that an insti­tu­tion such as the Max Planck Insti­tute, nee the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute would have been head­ed for twelve years by a left­ist is not cred­i­ble. An OSTENSIBLE left­ist work­ing as an Under­ground Reich func­tionary would make excel­lent pub­lic rela­tions fod­der, while main­tain­ing the Reich secu­ri­ty nec­es­sary for an insti­tu­tion cen­tral to Ger­man sci­en­tif­ic research. 
  • Max Planck him­self, although opposed to the Reich’s treat­ment of Jew­ish sci­en­tists, whom he shield­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly, head­ed the Insti­tutes for much of the ear­ly peri­od of the Third Reich. (See text excerpts below.) It was dur­ing this time that the hor­rors man­i­fest­ed by Men­gele were gath­er­ing momen­tum. His protests against the treat­ment of Jew­ish col­leagues were con­sis­tent with the wish­es of the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion fun­ders of the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tutes. 
  • Planck was re-installed as head of the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tutes just over a week after the con­clu­sion of hos­til­i­ties. Undoubt­ed­ly, Kaiser Wil­helm research and research sci­en­tists would have been part of the Project Paper­clip recruit­ment effort, under which the Allies req­ui­si­tioned much of the Nazi sci­en­tif­ic estab­lish­ment to con­tin­ue their work in the West.  (See text excerpts below.) 
  • His glow­ing rep­u­ta­tion notwith­stand­ing, Planck­’s cir­cum­stances sug­gest he may well have been one of the indi­vid­u­als with an anti-Nazi rep­u­ta­tion select­ed to estab­lish con­ti­nu­ity dur­ing the post­war peri­od. (See The Nazis Go Under­ground, pp. 181–185.)

“How A ‘Deviant’ Philoso­pher Built Palan­tir, A CIA-Fund­ed Data-Min­ing Jug­ger­naut” by Andy Green­berg and Ryan Mac; Forbes; 9/2/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . . Palan­tir lives the real­i­ties of its cus­tomers: the NSA, the FBI and the CIA–an ear­ly investor through its In-Q-Tel ven­ture fund–along with an alpha­bet soup of oth­er U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism and mil­i­tary agen­cies. . . .

. . . .  The answer dates back to Karp’s decades-long friend­ship with Peter Thiel, start­ing at Stan­ford Law School. The two both lived in the no-frills Crothers dorm and shared most of their class­es dur­ing their first year, but held stark­ly oppo­site polit­i­cal views. Karp had grown up in Philadel­phia, the son of an artist and a pedi­a­tri­cian who spent many of their week­ends tak­ing him to protests for labor rights and against “any­thing Rea­gan did,” he recalls. Thiel had already found­ed the staunch­ly lib­er­tar­i­an Stan­ford Review dur­ing his time at the uni­ver­si­ty as an under­grad.
“We would run into each oth­er and go at it … like wild ani­mals on the same path,” Karp says. “Basi­cal­ly I loved spar­ring with him.” . . . .

. . . .With no desire to prac­tice law, Karp went on to study under Jur­gen Haber­mas, one of the 20th century’s most promi­nent philoso­phers, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Frank­furt. . . .

. . . . Not long after obtain­ing his doc­tor­ate, he received an inher­i­tance from his grand­fa­ther, and began invest­ing it in star­tups and stocks with sur­pris­ing suc­cess. Some high-net-worth indi­vid­u­als heard that “this crazy dude was good at invest­ing” and began to seek his ser­vices, he says.To man­age their mon­ey he set up the Lon­don-based Caed­mon Group, a ref­er­ence to Karp’s mid­dle name, the same as the first known Eng­lish-lan­guage poet. . . .

. . . . Enter Karp, whose Krameresque brown curls, Euro­pean wealth con­nec­tions and Ph.D. masked his busi­ness inex­pe­ri­ence. Despite his nonex­is­tent tech back­ground, the founders were struck by his abil­i­ty to imme­di­ate­ly grasp com­plex prob­lems and trans­late them to nonengi­neers. . . .

The Nazis Go Under­ground by Curt Riess; Dou­ble­day, Doran and Com­pa­ny, LCCN 44007162; pp. 78–79.

EXCERPT: . . . In spite of all this train­ing they are giv­ing the youth for future under­ground pur­pos­es, the lead­ers do not depend pri­mar­i­ly upon these young peo­ple in the first place, many of them will be dead at the zero hour, because many of them will have been thrown into the final bat­tles of the war. But far more impor­tant than this is anoth­er very potent argu­ment: these young men, many of them now still chil­dren, have nev­er known the hard times of the Nazi par­ty. They have lived the greater and the most deci­sive part of their lives in a peri­od when it was very easy to be a Nazi and very dan­ger­ous not to be one.

It is still an open ques­tion how these boys will behave at a time when it will be extreme­ly dan­ger­ous to be a Nazi. It is and always will be doubt­ful how they will con­form to par­ty dis­ci­pline at a time when much will depend on their per­son­al ini­tia­tive, and when it will be impos­si­ble for the par­ty to super­vise the actions of each mem­ber as close­ly as it has done in the past. . . .

“Juer­gen Habermas–Biography”; The Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School

EXCERPT: . . . .He was 15 when Ger­many lost the war to the Allies in 1945. He had served in the Hitler Youth and had been sent to defend the west­ern front dur­ing the final months of the war. His father was a pas­sive sym­pa­thiz­er with Nazism. . . .

 Legal­i­ty and Legit­i­ma­cy: Juer­gen Haber­mas’s Recon­struc­tion of Ger­man Polit­i­cal Thought  by Matthew G. Specter; pp. 16–17.

EXCERPT: . . . . The ‘58ers, have been defined by one gen­er­a­tion of his­to­ri­ans as the “Flakhelfer” gen­er­a­tion, in terms of its rela­tion­ship to the Nazi regime and World War II. . . . From 1944, boys as young as twelve were enlist­ed to help with the anti-air artillery bat­ter­ies; Haber­mas was recruit­ed to the Hitler Youth in 1944 and was sent with his group to man the west­ern wall defens­es in the Ruhr area. From this gen­er­a­tion emerged some of the lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic pro­tag­o­nists of the lib­er­al­iza­tion of West Ger­man polit­i­cal cul­ture: Haber­mas, the polit­i­cal sci­en­tists Kurt Son­theimer (1929) and Jur­gen Seifert (1929), the soci­ol­o­gists Ralf Dahren­dorf (1929), Niklas Luhrmann (1927), Renate Mayntz (1927), M. Rain­er Lep­sius (1928); the writ­ers Hans-Mag­nus Enzens­berg­er and Gun­ther Grass (1929). . . .

“Storm Grows over Grass’s Belat­ed SS Con­fes­sions” by Samuel Loewen­berg; The Guardian; 8/15/2006.

EXCERPT: The 78-year-old author, who has long been seen as the moral con­science of Ger­many, revealed his SS ser­vice in an inter­view with the Frank­furter All­ge­meine news­pa­per pub­lished on Sat­ur­day, in advance of the release next month of his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “Peel­ing the Onion.”

“My silence through all these years is one of the rea­sons why I wrote this book,” Grass announced. “It had to come out final­ly.”

Grass said he vol­un­teered at age 15 for the sub­ma­rine ser­vice and was refused, only to be called up for mil­i­tary ser­vice two years lat­er.

When he report­ed for duty in Dres­den, he found it was with the 10th SS Panz­er Divi­sion Frunds­berg. He said that under the sway of Nazi indoc­tri­na­tion he did not view the Waf­fen SS as some­thing repul­sive but as an elite force.

Pre­vi­ous­ly Grass had claimed he was a flakhelfer, a youth con­script forced to work on anti-air­craft bat­ter­ies in 1944. The word gave rise to a gen­er­a­tion who claimed they were the unwill­ing par­tic­i­pants in the Nazi war effort. . . .

“Sur­veil­lance Rev­e­la­tions Shake U.S.-German Ties” by Ali­son Smale; The New York Times; 8/25/2013.

EXCERPT:  . . . The week­ly news­pa­per Die Zeit not­ed in its lat­est edi­tion that the polit­i­cal storm in Ger­many appeared to be calm­ing down, though Mr. Snow­den con­tin­ued to draw praise from respect­ed fig­ures like the writer Hans Mag­nus Enzens­berg­er, who called him a “hero of the 21st cen­tu­ry” in a tele­vi­sion inter­view last week. . . .

Europe Since 1945: An Ency­clo­pe­dia, Vol­ume 1 by Bernard A. Cook.; p. 553. 

EXCERPT: . . . . His [Haber­mas’] most impor­tant teach­ers were Eric Rothack­er and Oskar Beck­er. . . .

Per­spec­tives on Haber­mas by Lewis Edwin Hahn; p. 361.

EXCERPT: . . . One must appre­ci­ate the sig­nif­i­cance of this event giv­en that not just [Mar­tin] Hei­deg­ger, but Haber­mas’ dis­ser­ta­tion direc­tors [in Ger­man, doc­tor-fathers] in Bonn, Erich Rothack­er and Oskar Beck­er, were more or less enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of nation­al social­ism (see Lea­man 1993). . . .

Hitler’s Philoso­phers by Yvonne Sher­ratt; Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press; p. 239.

EXCERPT . . . . Dur­ing the post-war years, Jew­ish schol­ars strug­gled for jus­tice, but a pat­tern of over­look­ing jus­tice had spread across Ger­many.  Aca­d­e­m­ic author­i­ties did lit­tle to exor­cise the demons of the uni­ver­si­ty halls. For exam­ple, Oskar Beck­er had been Edmund Husser­l’s assis­tant. After Husser­l’s sus­pen­sion, Beck­er had col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis. . . .

Lin­guis­tics and the Third Reich: Moth­er-Tongue Fas­cism, Race and the Sci­ence of Lan­guage by Christo­pher M. Hut­ton; p. 36.

EXCERPT: Erich Rothack­er was an engaged Nazi schol­ar, a mem­ber of the NSDAP, with links to both [Nazi pro­pa­gan­da min­is­ter Josef] Goebbels and [Nazi min­is­ter Alfred] Rosen­berg. . . .

Ger­man Intel­lec­tu­als and the Nazi Past by A. Dirk Moses; Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press; p. 116.

EXCERPT: . . . . A month lat­er, in June of 1952, Haber­mas found stim­u­la­tion in Got­tfried Ben­n’s lat­est pub­li­ca­tion. As with Hei­deg­ger, he was still large­ly igno­rant of Ben­n’s com­mit­ments in the 1930’s and 1940’s. . . .

Who’s Who in Nazi Ger­many by Robert J. Wistrich; Got­tfried Benn; p. 11.

EXCERPT: . . . . Tak­ing his inspi­ra­tion from Niet­szche, Goethe and Spen­gler, Benn rebelled pas­sion­ate­ly against the demons of a mech­a­nized world, against the ratio­nal­ism which was par­a­lyz­ing mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion and the polit­i­cal doc­trines which derived from it, preach­ing an aes­thet­ic nihilism and the cult of prim­i­tive atavism which ini­tial­ly attract­ed him to Nazism. Ben­n’s irra­tional­ism . . . . led him to see in Nation­al Social­ism a gen­uine renais­sance of the Ger­man nation, but he soon became dis­il­lu­sioned with the results. . . .

. . . . He took refuge in the army, ‘the aris­to­crat­ic form of emi­gra­tion,’ as he called it, serv­ing as a med­ical offi­cer from 1939 to 1945. . . .

“Heil Hei­deg­ger” by Car­lin Romano; The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion; 10/18/2009.

EXCERPT: . . . . Next month Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press will issue an Eng­lish-lan­guage trans­la­tion of Hei­deg­ger: The Intro­duc­tion of Nazism Into Phi­los­o­phy, by Emmanuel Faye, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris at Nan­terre. It’s the lat­est, most com­pre­hen­sive archival assault on the osten­si­bly mag­is­te­r­i­al thinker who informed Freiburg stu­dents in his infa­mous 1933 rec­toral address of Nazis­m’s “inner truth and great­ness,” declar­ing that “the Führer, and he alone, is the present and future of Ger­man real­i­ty, and its law.”

Faye, whose book stirred France’s red and blue Hei­deg­ger départe­ments into direct bat­tle a few years back, fol­lows in the inves­tiga­tive foot­steps of Chilean-Jew­ish philoso­pher Vic­tor Farias (Hei­deg­ger et le Nazisme, 1987), his­to­ri­an Hugo Ott (Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger: Unter­wegs zu Zein­er Biogra­phie, 1988) and oth­ers. Aim? To expose the oafish meta­physi­cian’s vul­gar, often vicious 1930s attempt to become Hitler’s chief aca­d­e­m­ic tri­bune, and his post-World War II con­tor­tions to escape prop­er judg­ment for his sins. “We now know,” reports Faye, “that [Hei­deg­ger’s] attempt at self-jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of 1945 is noth­ing but a string of false­hoods.” . . . .

Jur­gen Haber­mas; about.com

EXCERPT: . . In 1964, Haber­mas became the chair of phi­los­o­phy and soci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Frank­furt am Main. He remained there until 1971 in which he accept­ed a direc­tor­ship at the Max Planck Insti­tute in Starn­berg. In 1983, Haber­mas returned to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Frank­furt and remained there until he retired in 1994 . . .

Kaiser Wil­helm Soci­ety; Wikipedia

EXCERPT . . . The Kaiser Wil­helm Soci­ety for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (Ger­man Kaiser-Wil­helm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wis­senschaften) was a Ger­man sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tion estab­lished in the Ger­man Kaiser­re­ich in 1911. Dur­ing the Third Reich it was impli­cat­ed in Nazi sci­en­tif­ic oper­a­tions, and after the Sec­ond World War was wound up, its func­tions being tak­en over by the Max Planck Soci­ety. The Kaiser Wil­helm Soci­ety was an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion for many insti­tutes, test­ing sta­tions, and research units spawned under its author­i­ty. . . .

. . . . By the end of World War II, the KWG and its insti­tutes had lost their cen­tral loca­tion in Berlin and were oper­at­ing in oth­er loca­tions. The KWG was oper­at­ing out of its Aero­dy­nam­ics Test­ing Sta­tion in Göt­tin­gen. Albert Vögler, the pres­i­dent of the KWG, com­mit­ted sui­cide on 14 April 1945. There­upon, Ernst Telschow assumed the duties until Max Planck could be brought from Magde­burg to Göt­tin­gen, which was in the British zone of the Allied Occu­pa­tion Zones in Ger­many. Planck assumed the duties on 16 May until a pres­i­dent could be elect­ed. Otto Hahn was select­ed by direc­tors to be pres­i­dent, but there were a num­ber of dif­fi­cul­ties to be over­come. Hahn, being relat­ed to nuclear research had been cap­tured by the allied forces of Oper­a­tion Alsos, and he was still interned at Farm Hall in Eng­land, under Oper­a­tion Epsilon. At first, Hahn was reluc­tant to accept the post, but oth­ers pre­vailed upon him to accept it. Hahn took over the pres­i­den­cy three months after being released and returned to Ger­many. How­ev­er, the Office of Mil­i­tary Gov­ern­ment, Unit­ed States (OMGUS) passed a res­o­lu­tion to dis­solve the KWG on 11 July 1946. . . .

The War Against the Weak; Edwin Black; Four Walls Eight Win­dows Press; Copy­right 2003 by Edwin Black; ISBN 1–56858-258–7; pp. 302–303.

EXCERPT: . . . . Rock­e­feller mon­ey con­tin­ued to stream across the Atlantic. The 1933 finan­cial books of the Insti­tute for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Human Hered­i­ty and Eugen­ics reflect­ed the foun­da­tion’s con­tin­u­ing impact. Page four of the bal­ance sheet: Rock­e­feller paid cler­i­cal costs asso­ci­at­ed with research on twins. . . . The Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion’s agen­da was strict­ly bio­log­i­cal to the exclu­sion of pol­i­tics. The foun­da­tion want­ed to dis­cov­er the car­ri­ets of defec­tive blood–even if it meant fund­ing Nazi-con­trolled insti­tu­tions. More­over, Rock­e­feller exec­u­tives knew their mon­ey car­ried pow­er, and they used it to ensure that the most tal­ent­ed sci­en­tists con­tin­ued at the var­i­ous Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tutes, fre­quent­ly shield­ing them from peri­od­ic Nazi purges. . . .

. . . . With each pass­ing day, the world was flood­ed with more Jew­ish refugees, more noisy anti-Nazi boy­cotts and protest march­es against any sci­en­tif­ic or com­mer­cial exchanges with Ger­many, more pub­lic demands to iso­late the Reich, and more shock­ing head­lines doc­u­ment­ing Nazi atroc­i­ties and anti-Jew­ish leg­is­la­tion. Still, none of this gave pause4 to Amer­i­ca’s eugeni­cists. Cor­re­spon­dence on joint research flowed freely across the Atlantic. Amer­i­can eugeni­cists, and their many orga­ni­za­tions and com­mit­tees, from New York to Cal­i­for­nia and all points in between, main­tained and multi­u­plied their con­tacts with every ech­e­lon of offi­cial and semi­of­fi­cial Ger­man eugen­ics. As the Reich descend­ed into greater depths of depraved mis­treat­ment and impov­er­ish­ment of Jews, as well as ter­ri­to­r­i­al threats against its neigh­bors, these con­tacts seemed all the more insu­lat­ed from the human tragedy unfold­ing with­in Europe. Eager and coop­er­a­tive let­ters, reports, telegrams and mem­o­ran­da did not num­ber in the nun­dreds, but in the thou­sands of pages per month.

While con­cen­tra­tion camps, pau­per­iza­tion and repres­sion flour­ished in Nazi Ger­many, and while refugees filled ships and trains telling hor­ri­fy­ing sto­ries of tor­ture and inhu­man­i­ty, it was busi­ness as usu­al for eugen­ics. . . .

The War Against the Weak; Edwin Black; Four Walls Eight Win­dows Press; Copy­right 2003 by Edwin Black; ISBN 1–56858-258–7; pp. 350–351.

EXCERPT: . . . . Hered­i­tar­i­ans sought twins of all ages–not just children–for prop­er study. The fam­i­ly tree of a New Eng­land fam­i­ly of twins, includ­ing one pair nine­ty-one years of age, fas­ci­nat­ed eugeni­cists. Geneti­cists exca­vat­ed old jour­nals to dis­cov­er even ear­li­er exam­ples, such as s sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry Russ­ian woman who gave birth twen­ty-sev­en times,m each time pro­duc­ing twins, triplets or quadru­plets, yield­ing a total of six­ty-nine chil­dren.

Race and twins quick­ly became an issue for Amer­i­can eugeni­cists. . . .

Diag­nos­tic and phys­i­o­log­i­cal devel­op­ments in twin stud­ies from any sec­tor of the med­ical sci­ences were of con­stant inter­est to eugenic read­ers. So Eugeni­cal News reg­u­lar­ly sum­ma­rized arti­cles from the gen­er­al med­ical lit­er­a­ture to feed eugeni­cists’ unend­ing fas­ci­na­tion with the top­ic. In 1922, when a state med­ical jour­nal report­ed using stetho­scopes to mon­i­tor a twin preg­nan­cy, it was report­ed in Eugeni­cal News. When a Ger­man clin­i­cal jour­nal pub­lished a study of tumors in twins, this too was report­ed in Eugeni­cal News

With each pass­ing issue, Eugeni­cal News ded­i­cat­ed more and more space to the top­ic. The list of such reports became long. By the ear­ly 1920’s, arti­cles on twins became increas­ing­ly instruc­tive. One typ­i­cal arti­cle explained how to more pre­cise­ly ver­i­fy the pres­ence of iden­ti­cal twins using a cap­il­lary micro­scope. Jour­nal of Hered­i­ty also made twins a fre­quent sub­ject in its pages. . . .

. . . . Every lead­ing eugenic text­book includ­ed a sec­tion on twins. [Paul] Pope­noe’s Applied Eugen­ics explained that iden­ti­cal twins ‘start lives as halves of the same whole’ but ‘become more unlike if they were brought up apart.’ . . .

In a sim­i­lar vein, most inter­na­tion­al eugenic and genet­ic con­fer­ences includ­ed pre­sen­ta­tions or exhibits on twins–their dis­par­i­ty or sim­i­lar­i­ty, their sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to tuber­cu­lo­sis, their likes and dis­likes. R.A. Fish­er opened one of his lec­tures to the Sec­ond Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress of Eugen­ics with the phrase: ‘The sub­ject of the gen­e­sis of human twins. . .has a spe­cial impor­tance for eugeni­cists.’ . . .

The quest for a supe­ri­or race con­tin­ued to inter­sect with the avail­abil­i­ty of twins. In the July-August 1935 edi­tion of Eugeni­cal News, Dr. Alfred Gor­don pub­lished a lengthy arti­cle enti­tled ‘The Prob­lems of Hered­i­ty and Eugen­ics.’ . . .

There were so few twins to study that sur­geons in the eugen­ics com­mu­ni­ty passed along their lat­est dis­cov­er­ies, one by one, to advance the field­’s com­mon knowl­edge. . . .

The War Against the Weak; Edwin Black; Four Walls Eight Win­dows Press; Copy­right 2003 by Edwin Black; ISBN 1–56858-258–7; p.352.

EXCERPT: . . . . All that changed when Hitler came to pow­er in 1933. Ger­many surged ahead in its study of twins. . . Twins were now increas­ing­ly sought to helpo com­bat hered­i­tary dis­eases and con­di­tions, real and imag­ined. [Otmar Frei­herr von] Ver­schuer’s book, Twins and Tuber­cu­lo­sis, was pub­lished in 1933 and received a favor­able review in 1933 and received a favor­able review in Jour­nal of Hered­i­ty. . . .

But many more twins would be need­ed to accom­plish the sweep­ing research envi­sioned by the archi­tects of Hitler’s mas­ter race. In ear­ly Decem­ber of 1935, Ver­schuer told a cor­re­spon­dent for the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion that eugen­ics had moved into a new phase. . . . The arti­cle went on to cite Ver­schuer’s view that mean­ing­ful research would require entire families–from chil­dren to grand­par­ents. In plain words this meant gath­er­ing larg­er num­bers of twins in one place for simul­ta­ne­ous inves­ti­ga­tion. . . .

The War Against the Weak; Edwin Black; Four Walls Eight Win­dows Press; Copy­right 2003 by Edwin Black; ISBN 1–56858-258–7; pp. 354–355.

EXCERPT: . . . . Amer­i­can eugeni­cist T.U.H. Ellinger was in Ger­many short­ly after the decree to vis­it with [Eugen] Fis­ch­er at the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Hered­i­ty and Eugen­ics. In a Jour­nal of Hered­i­ty essay on his vis­it, Ellinger flip­pant­ly report­ed to his col­leagues, ‘Twins have, of course, for a long time been a favorite mate­r­i­al for the study of the rel­a­tive impor­tance of hered­i­ty and envi­ron­ment, of nature and nur­ture. It does, how­ev­er, take a dic­ta­tor­ship to oblige some ten thou­sand pairs of twins, as well as triplets and even quadru­plets, to report to a sci­en­tif­ic insti­tute at reg­u­lar inter­vals for all kinds of record­ings and tests.’

When twins did report to the Insti­tute for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Human Hered­i­ty and Eugen­ics, they were often placed in small, spe­cial­ly-con­struct­ed exam­i­na­tion rooms, each lined with two-way mir­rors and motion pic­ture cam­era lens­es cam­ou­flaged into the wall­pa­per. The staff proud­ly showed Ellinger all of these facil­i­ties. How­ev­er, eugeni­cists at the insti­tute could only go so far with mere obser­va­tions.

Reich sci­en­tists need­ed more if they were to take the next step in cre­at­ing a super race resis­tant to dis­ease and capa­ble of trans­mit­ting the best traits. Autop­sies were required to dis­cov­er how spe­cif­ic organs and bod­i­ly process­es react­ed to var­i­ous exper­i­ments. Ver­schuer need­ed more twins and the free­dom to kill them. The high­est ranks of the Hitler regime agreed, includ­ing Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Frick, who ran the con­cen­tra­tion camps, and SS Chief Hein­rich Himm­ler. Mil­lions of dis­pens­able human beings from across Europe–Jews, Gyp­sies and oth­er undesirables–were pass­ing through Hitler’s camps to be effi­cient­ly mur­dered. Among these mil­lions, there were bound to be thou­sands of twins.

Short­ly after Ver­schuer took over for Fis­ch­er at the Insti­tute for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Human Hered­i­ty and Eugen­ics, he pro­posed a Zwill­ingslager or ‘twins camp,’ with­in Auschwitz. . . . The camp was approved and was bureau­crat­i­cal­ly filed under the key­word ‘Twins Camp.’

At the end of May 1943, Men­gele arrived in Auschwitz, where he took con­trol of the ramps where Jews were brought in. Ver­schuer noti­fied the Ger­man Research Soci­ety, ‘My assis­tant, Dr. Josef Men­gele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is present­ly employed as Haupt­sturm­fuhrer [cap­tain] and camp physi­cian in the Auschwitz con­cen­tra­tion camp. Anthro­po­log­i­cal teswt­ing of the most diverse racial groups in this con­cen­tra­tion camp are being car­ried out with per­mis­sion of the SS Reichs­fuhrer [Himm­ler].’

Nazi Ger­many had now car­ried eugen­ics fur­ther than any dared expect. The future of the mas­ter race that would thrive in Hitler’s Thou­sand-Year Reich lay in twins. For this rea­son, there would now be a spe­cial class of vic­tims of Auschwitz. There would be a spe­cial camp, spe­cial med­ical facil­i­ties and spe­cial laboratories–all for the twins. . . .

The War Against the Weak; Edwin Black; Four Walls Eight Win­dows Press; Copy­right 2003 by Edwin Black; ISBN 1–56858-258–7; pp. 359–360.

EXCERPT: While evi­dence of mass mur­der in the trench­es of Rus­sia and the gas cham­bers of Poland was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly destroyed, Men­gele’s mur­ders were enshrined in the pro­to­cols of sci­ence. Men­gele’s ghast­ly files did not remain his pri­vate mania, con­fined to Auschwitz. Every case was metic­u­lous­ly anno­tat­ed, employ­ing the best sci­en­tif­ic method pris­on­er doc­tors could muster. Then the files were sent to Ver­schuer’s offices at the [Kaiser Wil­helm] Insti­tute for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Human Hered­i­ty and Eugen­ics in Berlin-Dahlem for study.

An adult pris­on­er, cho­sen to help care for the youngest twins, recount­ed, ‘The moment a pair of twins arrived in the bar­rack, they were asked to com­plete a detailed ques­tion­naire from the Kaiser-Wil­helm Insti­tute in Berlin. One of my duties as [the] ‘Twins’ Father’ was to help them fill it out, espe­cial­ly the lit­tle ones, who could­n’t read or write. These forms con­tained dozens of detailed ques­tions relat­ed to a child’s back­ground, health, and phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics. They asked for the age, weight, and height of the chil­dren, their eye col­or and the col­or of their hair. They were prompt­ly mailed to Berlin.’

Nyis­zli, who had to fill out volu­mi­nous post­mortem reports, recalled Men­gele’s warn­ing: ”I want clean copy, because these reports will be for­ward­ed to the Insti­tute of Bio­log­i­cal, Racial and Evo­lu­tion­ary Research at Berlin-Dahlem.’ Thus I learned that the exper­i­ments per­formed here were checked by the high­est med­ical author­i­ties at one of the most famous sci­en­tif­ic insti­tutes in the world.” [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

The reports, coun­ter­signed by Men­gele and sent to Berlin were not just received and ware­housed, they were care­ful­ly reviewed and dis­cussed. A dia­logue devel­oped between Ver­schuer’s insti­tute and Men­gele. Anoth­er pris­on­er assis­tant of Men­gele’s ‘would receive ques­tions about the twins from the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute in Berlin, and he would send them the answers.’ . . .

Max Planck; Wikipedia

EXCERPT: . . . . When the Nazis seized pow­er in 1933, Planck was 74. He wit­nessed many Jew­ish friends and col­leagues expelled from their posi­tions and humil­i­at­ed, and hun­dreds of sci­en­tists emi­grat­ed from Ger­many. Again he tried the “per­se­vere and con­tin­ue work­ing” slo­gan and asked sci­en­tists who were con­sid­er­ing emi­gra­tion to remain in Ger­many. He hoped the cri­sis would abate soon and the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion would improve.

Otto Hahn asked Planck to gath­er well-known Ger­man pro­fes­sors in order to issue a pub­lic procla­ma­tion against the treat­ment of Jew­ish pro­fes­sors, but Planck replied, “If you are able to gath­er today 30 such gen­tle­men, then tomor­row 150 oth­ers will come and speak against it, because they are eager to take over the posi­tions of the oth­ers.” . . . .

. . . Under Planck­’s lead­er­ship, the Kaiser-Wil­helm-Gesellschaft (KWG) avoid­ed open con­flict with the Nazi regime, except con­cern­ing Fritz Haber. Planck tried to dis­cuss the issue with Adolf Hitler but was unsuc­cess­ful. In the fol­low­ing year, 1934, Haber died in exile.

One year lat­er, Planck, hav­ing been the pres­i­dent of the KWG since 1930, orga­nized in a some­what provoca­tive style an offi­cial com­mem­o­ra­tive meet­ing for Haber. He also suc­ceed­ed in secret­ly enabling a num­ber of Jew­ish sci­en­tists to con­tin­ue work­ing in insti­tutes of the KWG for sev­er­al years. In 1936, his term as pres­i­dent of the KWG end­ed, and the Nazi gov­ern­ment pres­sured him to refrain from seek­ing anoth­er term. . . .

The Nazis Go Under­ground by Curt Riess; Dou­ble­day, Doran and Com­pa­ny, LCCN 44007162; pp. 181–185.

EXCERPT: A weak man, a man of compromises—that is exact­ly what the Nazis will want, a man who to all out­ward appear­ances will be opposed to all Nazi ideas,  a reac­tionary, unable ever to break away from the influence of the peo­ple he has lived with all his life—the reac­tionar­ies. A man who can­not pos­si­bly have any under­stand­ing of any­thing new. . . .

. . . . The pic­ture in Ger­many imme­di­ate­ly after the war would be some­what as fol­lows: at the top a few “decent, neu­tral” states­men [or sci­en­tif­ic experts/luminaries, such as Max Planck–D.E.] who, at first sight, seem to have no con­nec­tion with the Nazis. Behind and around them a great num­ber of men who seem will­ing, even eager, to col­lab­o­rate with the AMG and the occu­py­ing author­i­ties in order to retain their posi­tions. Behind them innu­mer­able front orga­ni­za­tions and Nazi cells bid­ing their time, wait­ing, lying low. . . .

Discussion

One comment for “Snowden’s Ride, Part 12: The Gruppenhobbit, the Deep Fifth Column and the Underground Reich”

  1. Dave;
    Won­der if this ties in; In “The Fas­cist Third Posi­tion” part 2a (appx. 36 min) there is an arti­cle by Mar­tin Lee in Moth­er Jones.
    It describes fas­cist youth sem­i­nars in the coun­try­side that trained youth in mil­i­tary weapons and pro­pa­gan­da.

    It’s called “Camp Hob­bit”.

    Won­der if the tim­ing was right for Karp the Grup­pen­hob­bit to have attend­ed while he was in Ger­many...

    Posted by Swamp | October 19, 2013, 8:30 am

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