The Hid­den His­to­ry of the Cold War, Part One
Part 1a 47:13 | Part 1b 45:09 | Part 1c 44:38 | Part 1d 47:24 | Part 1e 44:45 | Part 1f 10:47
(Record­ed April, 1984)

This broad­cast exam­ines inter­na­tion­al fas­cism as a reac­tion to the found­ing of the for­mer Sovi­et Union and the growth of social­ist move­ments in oth­er coun­tries and how this devel­op­ment led to World War II. The pro­gram focus­es on the crit­i­cal sup­port Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists and financiers gave to Hitler’s Ger­many and how this affect­ed allied mil­i­tary pol­i­cy dur­ing the war, as well as the incor­po­ra­tion of the Third Reich’s intel­li­gence forces into the CIA at the con­flic­t’s con­clu­sion.

As researched by the bril­liant Pter­rafractyl decades after this pro­gram was broad­cast, Von Krosigk was one of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the rump Nazi gov­ern­ment in Flens­berg.

Flens­burg Gov­ern­ment — Wikipedia

The Flens­burg Gov­ern­ment (Ger­man: Flens­burg­er Regierung), also known as the Flens­burg Cab­i­net (Flens­burg­er Kabi­nett), the Dönitz Gov­ern­ment (Regierung Dönitz), or the Schw­erin von Krosigk Cab­i­net (Kabi­nett Schw­erin von Krosigk), was the rump gov­ern­ment of Nazi Ger­many dur­ing a peri­od of three weeks around the end of World War II in Europe. The gov­ern­ment was formed fol­low­ing the sui­cide of Adolf Hitler on 30 April 1945 dur­ing the Bat­tle of Berlin. It was head­ed by Grand Admi­ral Karl Dönitz as Reich­spräsi­dent and Lutz Graf Schw­erin von Krosigk as the Lead­ing Min­is­ter.

The Bor­mann Broth­er­hood by William Steven­son; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1973 by William Steven­son; ISBN 978–1‑5107–2919‑3; p. 126.

. . . . “ ‘The Iron Cur­tain moves clos­er,’” he declared in a broad­cast. ‘Peo­ple caught in the mighty hands of the Bol­she­viks are being destroyed.’”

The term was picked up from the Ger­man broad­cast. Churchill used it when he cabled Pres­i­dent Har­ry Tru­man on May 12: “An Iron Cur­tain is drawn upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind.” A year lat­er, he dropped it into a speech in the Unit­ed States. It demon­strates the infec­tious nature of the fears delib­er­ate­ly released by Hitler’s fol­low­ers in order to win West­ern sym­pa­thy. . . .

The Bor­mann Broth­er­hood by William Steven­son; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1973 by William Steven­son; ISBN 978–1‑5107–2919‑3; pp. 130–131.

. . . . Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen was charged with mil­i­tary direc­tion of Enter­prise Were­wolf . . .

. . . . Gehlen and [Otto] Sko­rzeny were to pro­vide cap­tured Allied uni­forms for the resis­tance fight­ers [Were­wolves] . . . It was the sym­bol­ism as always that count­ed. Radio Were­wolf ham­mered the theme “Rather dead than Red” (a phrase that lived long after.) Bol­she­vism was the real ene­my; the Nazis had always resist­ed the Bol­she­viks . . . .

Gehlen: Spy of the Cen­tu­ry by E.H. Cookridge; Ran­dom House [HC]; Copy­right 1971 by Euro­pean Copy­right Com­pa­ny; ISBN 0–394-47313–2; p. 101.

. . . . But one fea­ture, and to his [Gehlen’s] mind the only impor­tant one, of the Were­wolf enter­prise attract­ed his atten­tion . . .

. . . With his R‑Net, which he was deter­mined to main­tain behind the Sovi­et lines, these Were­wolf  under­tak­ings could lat­er could have become extreme­ly use­ful. Gehlen obtained from SS Ober­gru­pen­fuhrer Prutz­mann and his staff detailed infor­ma­tion about the deploy­ment of their Were­wolf groups in the East. He was to make some use of this in lat­er years. . . .

 

Gehlen: Spy of the Cen­tu­ry by E.H. Cookridge; Ran­dom House [HC]; Copy­right 1971 by Euro­pean Copy­right Com­pa­ny; ISBN 0–394-47313–2; pp. 146–147.

. . . . Inside the Sovi­et Union and in Poland, how­ev­er, large scat­tered groups of the “Whites” had remained and were putting up a des­per­ate fight. In South-West Ukraine and East­ern Poland bands of the nation­al­ist UPA, many still with their Ger­man SS offi­cers, harassed the Red Army, the Pol­ish mili­tia of the com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed War­saw gov­ern­ment and the local author­i­ties set up in the lib­er­at­ed ter­ri­to­ries. At var­i­ous times between Novem­ber 1945 and the spring of 1947, these “counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary ban­dits” were in effec­tive con­trol of many vil­lages and rur­al dis­tricts. Trained in gueril­la war­fare by the Ger­mans, they ambushed Sovi­et road con­voys, used hit-and-run tac­tics, and car­ried out innu­mer­able sab­o­tage actions. Indeed, some of the insur­gents held out in the forests of the Carpathi­an moun­tains until 1952.

The Sovi­et author­i­ties also encoun­tered trou­ble in the for­mer Baltic states; after four years of Nazi occu­pa­tion, many Ger­man sol­diers, par­tic­u­lar­ly of the Cur­land Army, which had been cut-off in the win­ter of 1944, had remained there. Togeth­er with Lat­vian and Eston­ian patri­ots, they now turned on the “Red Lib­er­a­tors.” . . . .

. . . . Although the Sovi­et gov­ern­ment announced that by the spring of 1947, all “counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary fas­cist bands had been anni­hi­lat­ed,” in fact this was not so. For years the com­mu­nists kept qui­et about the extent of the fight­ing, which in many areas amount­ed to a minor civ­il war. It was not until 1959 that a Pol­ish mil­i­tary writer pub­lished some stag­ger­ing details about the wide­spread sab­o­tage car­ried out by anti-com­mu­nist bands and the heavy casu­al­ties suf­fered by both sides. . . .

. . . . As long as the insur­rec­tions con­tin­ued Colonel [Her­mann] Baun at Oberursel was able to main­tain fair­ly reg­u­lar radio links with his “White Armies which were main­tained for sev­er­al months. In the Ukraine and, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Baltic coun­tries, sev­er­al of his WALLI men had remained with these gueril­la units and had main­tained their trans­mit­ters. . . .

 

Pro­gram high­lights include: Her­bert Hoover’s diver­sion of aid req­ui­si­tioned by Con­gress to Pol­ish and Baltic armies fight­ing against the U.S.S.R. in the ear­ly 1920’s; the growth of Mus­solin­i’s “cor­po­rate state” (as he termed his fas­cist sys­tem of gov­ern­ment); the Hearst news­pa­per chain’s glow­ing por­tray­al of Nazi Ger­many and Fas­cist Italy pri­or to the out­break of World War II; the Amer­i­can Legion’s award­ing of an hon­orary mem­ber­ship to Mus­soli­ni in 1935; the Cur­tis-Wright Com­pa­ny’s delib­er­ate betray­al of dive-bomb­ing (a close­ly-guard­ed U.S. Navy tech­nique) to the Axis pow­ers; Alger Hiss’ role as spe­cial coun­sel to the Nye-Van­den­burg com­mit­tee (inves­ti­gat­ing Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions’ aid to the Axis pow­ers); the Allies’ re-stora­tion of fas­cist infra­struc­ture in French North Africa and Italy fol­low­ing “lib­er­a­tion;” the British polit­i­cal betray­al of, and mil­i­tary attacks upon the anti-fas­cist par­ti­sans in Greece before the end of the war; the for­ma­tion of gueril­la groups estab­lished by the Nazis dur­ing the war’s clos­ing days in order to fight against the Sovi­et Union; the adop­tion of the Nazi guer­ril­la groups by the CIA and oth­er West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies; the fierce war­fare con­duct­ed by the fas­cist gueril­las (under West­ern spon­sor­ship) in Poland and the for­mer Sovi­et Union until 1953; the incor­po­ra­tion of the Nazi East­ern Front intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion into the CIA (under the stew­ard­ship of its wartime head, Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen); the Third Reich gen­e­sis of many of the “catch-phras­es” of the Cold War, includ­ing “Bet­ter Dead than Red” and “Iron Cur­tain.”