The Hid­den His­to­ry of the Cold War, Part Two
Part 2a 47:19 | Part 2b 44:37 | Part 2c 44:45 | Part 2d 44:41 | Part 2e 44:43| Part 2f 44:42
(Record­ed May 23, 1984)

Pick­ing up where part one left off, this pro­gram begins with an exam­i­na­tion of the role of SS vet­er­ans in the for­ma­tion of the Green Berets. Formed ini­tial­ly under the aus­pices of the CIA, the Green Berets grew under the CIA stew­ard­ship of SS Brigadier Gen­er­al Franz Alfred Six, SS Colonel Emil Augs­burg (like Six, a vet­er­an of Hitler’s “Final Solu­tion” to the “Jew­ish Prob­lem”) and Michael Achme­teli, a White Russ­ian and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor who worked close­ly with the SS and was viewed as an expert on the for­mer Sovi­et Union. The Green Berets were formed against the back­ground of the gueril­la war­fare that raged in East­ern Europe and the for­mer U.S.S.R. for years after the for­mal con­clu­sion of World War II. (See AFA‑1 for more details.)

The pro­gram then high­lights the delib­er­ate sab­o­tag­ing of the de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many after the war. Derailed by polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic forces sym­pa­thet­ic to fas­cism, many of which had enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sup­port­ed Hitler and Mus­soli­ni before the war, this fail­ure result­ed in the return to pow­er of the same indus­tri­al­ists and financiers who had sup­port­ed Hitler. Even more impor­tant­ly, Nazis and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors were put right back in posi­tions of polit­i­cal pow­er in Ger­many, where they pur­sued a pol­i­cy of restor­ing Ger­many’s “lost ter­ri­to­ries,” includ­ing parts of Poland, the Czech Repub­lic and the for­mer Sovi­et Union.

The pro­gram also focus­es on: the Nazi antecedents of Inter­pol (the inter­na­tion­al police orga­ni­za­tion); the role of Her­bert Hoover in help­ing to foil de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­man indus­try at the end of World War II; the Nazi sym­pa­thies of Whit­tak­er Cham­bers (the prin­ci­pal accuser of Alger Hiss); Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy’s per­se­cu­tion of Amer­i­can P.O.W.‘s who sur­vived a Nazi mas­sacre at the Bat­tle of the Bulge; Joe McCarthy’s promi­nent, pro-Nazi polit­i­cal back­ers; the role of Richard Nixon in block­ing a con­gres­sion­al move to breakup of I.G. Far­ben (the Nazi chem­i­cal giant); Nixon’s spon­sor­ship of promi­nent Roman­ian war crim­i­nal Nico­lai Malax­a’s res­i­dence in the Unit­ed States and Nixon’s invi­ta­tion to Valer­ian (nee Viorel) Tri­fa, anoth­er Roman­ian Iron Guard butch­er, to give the open­ing prayer before the U.S. Sen­ate in 1955.

In the decades since the pro­gram was record­ed, the Inter­net came into being. We present some of the orig­i­nal hard copy includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast:

1.   Gehlen: Spy of the Cen­tu­ry by E.H. Cookridge; Ran­dom House [HC]; Euro­pean Copy­right Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed; ISBN 0–394-47313–2; pp. 240–243.

. . . . Wis­ner had already dis­cussed . . . a plan to recruit men from amongst East­ern Euro­peans for hush-hush armed units to assist insur­gents inside com­mu­nist coun­tries. . . . A pri­vate mer­ce­nary force was to be estab­lished in Ger­many to be ready for such an emer­gency and to be employed with­out involv­ing reg­u­lar US forces.

Who else than Gehlen was the man to help in lay­ing the foun­da­tions for such “Spe­cial Forces”? He and his for­mer FHO and WALLI men, and also the SS offi­cers who had served in the “Bran­den­burg” sab­o­tage units and the Jagd­kom­man­dos against the Red Army and Sovi­et par­ti­sans had all the expe­ri­ence that was need­ed. . . .

. . . . In the space of two years, about five thou­sand were enlist­ed, assem­bled in camps at Bad Wiessee, at Kauf­beuren in Bavaria and at the US Army Ham­mand Bar­racks near Mannheim, and trained by Amer­i­can offi­cers and for­mer Ger­man Wehrma­cht and Waf­fen SS NCO’s. At Kauf­beuen the com­man­dant and chief instruc­tor was Major Ronald Otto Bol­len­bach, for­mer US assis­tant mil­i­tary attache in Moscow.

These units became the nucle­us of CIA’s pri­vate army, lat­er bet­ter known as the “Green Berets” in Viet­nam. . . .

. . . . Gehlen alert­ed sev­er­al of his assis­tants who had a thor­ough knowl­edge and first-hand expe­ri­ence of East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries and their peo­ple, and also approached an acknowl­edged expert on any­thing about the East, whom he had known and admired since his school-days in Bres­lau. He was Dr. Michael Achme­teli, born in 1887 in Bor­jom in the Causasus, where his father amassed a great for­tune when oil was dis­cov­ered on his land by British and Amer­i­can min­ing engi­neers (amongst them the lat­er Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, Her­bert Hoover). Dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion Achme­teli had fought with the White Armies against the Bol­she­viks and even­tu­al­ly came to Ger­many, becom­ing a lec­tur­er in Slavon­ic Stud­ies at Bres­lau Uni­ver­si­ty. He was a close friend of Gehlen’s fam­i­ly; sev­er­al of Achmeteli’s books were pub­lished by Fer­di­nand Hirt & Son, of which Gehlen’s father was man­ag­er. Achme­teli had been close­ly con­nect­ed with Abwehr intel­li­gence in its ear­ly days. The Ost-Insti­tute he found­ed was, in fact, a “front” for espi­onage against the Sovi­et Union even before the Nazi regime. Under Hitler, he had become pro­fes­sor and head of the Insti­tute for the study of com­mu­nism and the USSR. As a friend of Hitler’s chief the­o­reti­cian of the Nazi Aryan doc­trine, Alfred Rosen­berg, his advice was need­ed at OKW, and he also act­ed as a “super ana­lyst” for Gehlen’s FHO. . . .

Pro­fes­sor Achme­teli went to work with two Pul­lach offi­cers select­ed by Gehlen to form the first staff of the secret “Spe­cial Forces”. One was anoth­er aca­d­e­m­ic, Dr. Franz Alfred Six, ex-lec­tur­er at Koenigs­berg Uni­ver­si­ty, who had man­aged to com­bine his schol­ar­ly voca­tion with the ser­vice in the SS; he had risen to the rank of SS Brigade­fuhrer (equiv­a­lent to brigadier-gen­er­al) and became head of Sec­tion VII at Himmler’s RSHA. He had “dived under” after the col­lapse of the Third Reich, but Allied intel­li­gence offi­cers, search­ing out war crim­i­nals, found him after two years. In April 1948, Six came before a US mil­i­tary tri­bunal at Nurem­berg, charged with hav­ing ordered the exe­cu­tions of civil­ians, includ­ing hun­dreds of Jews, when in com­mand of a Jagd­kom­man­do in July and August 1941 at Smolen­sk. Judge Dixon sen­tenced him to twen­ty years’ impris­on­ment. How­ev­er, four years lat­er Six was free and busy advanc­ing the fruition of the CIA-Gehlen project.

The third mem­ber of the tri­umvi­rate was Dr. Emil Augs­burg, born in 1904 in Lodz in Poland, accord­ing to offi­cial Pol­ish sources, of Jew­ish parentage—which, if true, did not ham­per his ulti­mate admis­sion to the SS in which he rose to become Stan­darten­fuhrer (colonel) head­ing a sec­tion attached to Adolf Eichmann’s S‑4 depart­ment which han­dled the “Jew­ish prob­lem”, with “final results” that are well known. After the col­lapse, Augs­burg fled, as did Eich­mann, with the assis­tance of ODESSA to Italy, where he found char­i­ta­ble aid from cir­cles close to the Vat­i­can which helped escaped Nazis. . . .

. . . . These three experts pre­pared the briefs for the would-be agents to be sent into Rus­sia. . . .

2.  The Belarus Secret by John Lof­tus; Alfred A. Knopf & Co. [HC]; Copy­right 1982 by John Lof­tus; ISBN 0–394-52292–3; pp. 78–79.

 . . . . Gehlen sug­gest­ed that Wis­ner hire Dr. Franz Six to head the recruit­ment and train­ing of the spe­cial forces. Six knew most of the lead­ing Byelorus­sians, he explained hav­ing recruit­ed them for Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa, the inva­sion of Rus­sia. Six how­ev­er, was at that moment on tri­al for his crimes at Nurem­berg. . . . In 1950, [Gen­er­al Lucius] Clay’s suc­ces­sor, High Com­mis­sion­er John J McCloy, com­mut­ed the sen­tence to time served, and Six went to work for Gehlen on the spe­cial forces project. . . .

. . . . Many of the recruits from the Byeloruss­ian SS were put on the gov­ern­ment pay­roll as mem­bers of “Pol­ish” labor ser­vice bat­tal­ions. . . . The Byeloruss­ian units kept the same com­mand struc­ture used under the Nazis and sim­ply changed uni­forms as they went on the Amer­i­can pay­roll. . . .