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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment [5]
[6]William “Wild Bill” Donovan
[7]Introduction: In recent programs, we examined complex interactions between a group of European politicians dubbed “The Hapsburg Group,” former Trump campaign manager/ former adviser to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovuyuch and probable U.S. intelligence officer Paul Manafort, and the Ukrainian government. In turn, members of the Habsburg family–the Royal House of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire–have been active throughout Europe and in their former principality of Ukraine.
In this program, we examine the deep politics manifesting in the Ukraine/Habsburg redux/Liechtenstein dynamic.
Before delving into the development of this power political relationship, we review the involvement of the Habsburgs in European integration and the incorporation of Ukraine into the Western orbit:
- Members of the Habsburg dynasty have been involved in the context in which Lee Harvey Manafort [8] and the Habsburg Group were operating–European integration in order to ease Ukraine into the Western, rather than the Russian orbit. ” . . . .The most striking example of the trend is the appointment this week of Georg von Habsburg, the 32-year-old-grandson of Emperor Karl I, to the position of Hungary’s ambassador for European Integration. In neighbouring Austria, the traditional heart of Habsburg power, Georg’s brother, Karl, 35, was recently elected to represent the country in the European parliament. In addition to this, he serves as the president of the Austrian branch of the Pan-European movement. . . . .”
- Jumping forward [9] some 14 years from our previous article, we see that a Habsburg princess was anointed as Georgia’s ambassador to Germany. Note that [now former] Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili endorsed her. Saakashvili became, for a time, the governor of the Ukrainian province of Odessa! Note, also, the role of the Habsburgs in the final phase of the Cold War: “. . . . The heirs to the Habsburg emperors helped speed the downfall of the Soviet empire, particularly by arranging the cross-border exodus from Hungary to Austria in the summer of 1989 that punched the first big hole in the iron curtain. . . .”
- Karl von Habsburg [10] has been active in Ukraine for some years before establishing a radio station. Karl von Habsburg is the head of the UNPO [11]. Note the Ukrainian orientation and influence of Wilhelm von Habsburg, in World War I through the World War II eras, as well as his anti-Soviet activism: ” . . . . A military officer by training, Wilhelm supported Ukraine’s independence struggle during World War I. He fought with Ukrainian troops against the Russians, and had schemed and cajoled a myriad of politicians to support his monarchial aspirations. Almost until his death at the hands of the Soviets in 1948 – he was snatched off the streets of Vienna and transported to a prison in Kyiv for working as an agent against the Soviet Union – Wilhelm believed this slice of the family’s empire could be his. . . .”
- Fast-forwarding again some five years from our previous two articles and one year after the EuroMaidan coup we see that actions speak louder than words, and Karl’s new Ukrainian radio station says a lot [12]: “Since 20 January, a truly European radio station [Note this–D.E.] is broadcasting in Ukraine, its main sponsor, Karl-Habsburg Lothringen, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview . . . . Karl Habsburg-Lothringen is an Austrian politician and head of the House of Habsburg. Since 1986, he has served as President of the Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union. . . .”
- As we noted, “Plan B” for Ukraine might be termed “Plan OUN/B.” Otto von Habsburg formed the European Freedom Council with Jaroslav Stetzko [13], the wartime head of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborationist government that implemented Third Reich ethnic cleansing programs in Ukraine. The EFC was closely aligned with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, headed by Stetzko. The ABN, as we have seen in the past, is a re-naming of the Committee of Subjugated Nations, a consortium of Eastern European fascist groups formed by Hitler in 1943.”. . . . The Hapsburg monarchy helped guide the leadership in their former possessions. The Freedom Council was formed by Otto von Hapsburg and Jaroslav Stetzko at a conference in Munich [14] on June 30-July 2 1967, as a coordinating body for organizations fighting communism in Europe [15]. EMP H.R.H. Otto von Hapsburg was honorary chairman of the European Freedom Council, based in Munich, during the 1980s and allied to the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). . . .”
[16]Allen Dulles
[17]Walter Schellenberg
The foundation [18] of the U.S. intelligence/Hapsburg/Underground Reich concatenation dates to the period immediately after World War I: ” . . . . . . . . The Hapsburgs would desert Germany in return for an American commitment. Subsidized by the United States—which brought over to Europe the President’s close adviser Professor George D. Herron to impart Wilson’s vital imprimatur—this updated Hapsburg sovereignty must commit in advance to eradicating the Bolsheviks. A revitalized Austro-Hungarian buffer zone to fend off Soviet penetration of the Balkans turned into a lifelong chimera for Dulles, and spurred his devotion over the many years to some manner of ‘Danubian Federation.’ . . . .”
This relationship gained momentum during the Second World War, with approaches by the Third Reich to Allied as a Nazi defeat began to take shape.
One of the concepts central to understanding an extension of the U.S. intelligence/Hapsburg anti-Communist alliance is the concept of “The Christian West”–explained in the description for AFA #37 [19]: ” . . . . When it became clear that the armies of the Third Reich were going to be defeated, it opened secret negotiations with representatives from the Western Allies. Representatives on both sides belonged to the transatlantic financial and industrial fraternity that had actively supported fascism. The thrust of these negotiations was the establishment of The Christian West. Viewed by the Nazis as a vehicle for surviving military defeat, ‘The Christian West’ involved a Hitler-less Reich joining with the U.S., Britain, France and other European nations in a transatlantic, pan-European anti-Soviet alliance. In fact, The Christian West became a reality only after the cessation of hostilities. The de-Nazification of Germany was aborted. Although a few of the more obvious and obnoxious elements of Nazism were removed, Nazis were returned to power at virtually every level and in almost every capacity in the Federal Republic of Germany. . . .”
Of paramount significance [18]for our purposes is a “Christian Wester” accomodation apparently involving Prince Egon Max von Hohenloe, who married into the Habsburg family. Operating out of Lichtenstein and traveling on a Lichtenstein passport, von Hohenloe served as an intermediary between U.S. intelligence and Walter Schellenberg, in charge of overseas intelligence for the SS. (Schellenberg was also on the board of directors of International Telephone and Telegraph and became a key operative for the postwar Gehlen organization.)
[20]The wedding of Prince Max Egon von Hohenloe-Langenburg
Allen Dulles’s strategic outlook embraced and shaped much of what appears to underlie the Habsburg/OUN/Western intelligence [18] activity with regard to Ukraine: ” . . . Pronouncements alternated with rich meals in a Liechtenstein chateau; Hohenlohe bit by bit exposed his quasi-official status as a spokesman for SS elements with in the German government who now looked beyond the ‘wild men’ in control. What casts a longer shadow is the outline of Allen’s geopolitical ideas. The peace he has in mind, Dulles indicates, must avoid the excesses of Versailles and permit the expanded German polity to survive, Austria included and possibly at least a section of Czechoslovakia, while excluding all thought of ‘victors and vanquished . . . . as a factor of order and progress.’ . . . . The resultant ‘Greater Germany’ would backstop the ‘formation of a cordon sanitaire against Bolshevism and pan-Slavism through the eastward enlargement of Poland and the preservation of a strong Hungary.’ This ‘Federal Greater Germany (similar to the United States), with an associated Danube Confederation, would be the best guarantee of order and progress in Central and Eastern Europe.’ . . . . ”
[21]Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
A former Abwehr officer alleges [18] that he attended a meeting in Spain between Abwehr head Wilhelm Canaris, Donovan and Stewart Menzies, chief of MI6–British Intelligence. ” . . . . . . . . An Abwehr officer, F. Justus von Einem, later claimed to have sat in on a carefully prepared meeting at Santander in Spain in the summer of 1943 during which both Menzies and Donovan agreed to Christian Wester terms as recapitulated by Canaris personally. If this exchange occurred, Donovan kept it quiet. . . .”
[22]Interesting perspective on why Donovan would have “kept it quiet” can be gleaned from the account of the frequently lethal attempts by four different authors to write the account of the OSS from the organization’s microfilmed files. We remind listeners, in this context, that major intelligence services have possessed toxins that will kill without leaving a trace for a very long time. ” . . . . Professor Conyers Read, the Harvard historian, produced many draft chapters before Donovan himself asked him to stop work, because he felt the director’s papers were still too sensitive. Read did not resume his work, for death intervened. [#1–D.E.] One of Donovan’s wartime majors, Corey Ford, then began work on the project in the mid-1950’s, producing a draft manuscript of what was really a biographical history of Donovan and the OSS, but again death intervened before Ford could complete his volume. [#2–D.E.]
After Donovan’s death in 1959, the project was taken over by Whitney Shepardson, Donovan’s chief of secret intelligence during World War II. For the third time, the author died before completing the work. [#3–D.E.] Then came the fourth attempt, this time by Cornelius Ryan, the author of The Longest Day. . . . the work was stopped before it really began; a middle-rank official at the CIA managed to stop the project because he believed the book contemplated by Ryan would be too controversial. When he found himself denied access to the director’s files, Ryan was compelled to abandon the project temporarily. Then he, too died before it was possible to resume work. [#4–D.E.]. . .”
Program Highlights Include:
- A 1923 business luncheon meeting between William Donovan and Adolf Hitler: ” . . . . As early as 1923, he [Donovan] materialized in Berchtesgaden to share a beer in the Gastzimmer of a modest pension with Adolf Hitler. The clammy young rabble-rouser ranted to the sympathetic attorney that he, unlike the family dog, could not be beaten by his miserable father until he wet the carpet. . . . .”
- Donovan’s role providing political and economic intelligence to J.P. Morgan to facilitate American investment bankers’ $2 billion investment in European infrastructure. [23] ” . . . . He was quietly approached by representatives of the preeminent firm of J.P. Morgan and Sons. The country’s most influential investment bankers were reconnoitering the market for a $2 billion package of securities around Central and Eastern Europe. . . .”
- Comparison between the functional role of key Wall Street lawyers who “graduated” to assuming decisive posts in U.S. intelligence and their subsequent espionage activities. ” . . . . Donovan’s profession was relevant, and it is equally no accident that all three load-bearing protagonists throughout this work—Bill Donovan, Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner—achieved status in America by way of important Wall Street partnerships. In many ways, a trusted corporate attorney accomplishes substantially for his clients what today’s one-stop national intelligence factory goes after for its patron: he puts the deals together, he damps down crises and flaps, he keeps the process as confidential as possible. He finds out everything he an and resorts to every means imaginable to shape the outcome. He proceeds by the case system, and preferably one emergency at a time. Furthermore, an intelligence service concocted by lawyers—men accustomed not merely to spotting the problems but also to defining them to their clients and recommending appropriate action—is far more likely than a traditional military intelligence staff to reach in and condition policy. Attorneys have a seductive way of subordinating their clients, of insinuating their legerdemain until they become the strategic entanglements. And thus it develops that in many strategic entanglements the lawyers have at least as much control over the outcome as elected officials. . . .”
1a. In his introduction to The Old Boys, author Burton Hersh notes the Wall Street legal backgrounds of William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner, and opines that the methodology of an intelligence service is like that of a Wall Street law firm.
. . . . Donovan’s profession was relevant, and it is equally no accident that all three load-bearing protagonists throughout this work—Bill Donovan, Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner—achieved status in America by way of important Wall Street partnerships. In many ways, a trusted corporate attorney accomplishes substantially for his clients what today’s one-stop national intelligence factory goes after for its patron: he puts the deals together, he damps down crises and flaps, he keeps the process as confidential as possible. He finds out everything he can and resorts to every means imaginable to shape the outcome. He proceeds by the case system, and preferably one emergency at a time.
Furthermore, an intelligence service concocted by lawyers—men accustomed not merely to spotting the problems but also to defining them to their clients and recommending appropriate action—is far more likely than a traditional military intelligence staff to reach in and condition policy. Attorneys have a seductive way of subordinating their clients, of insinuating their legerdemain until they become the strategic entanglements. And thus it develops that in many strategic entanglements the lawyers have at least as much control over the outcome as elected officials. . . .
1b. Carrying his observations further, Hersh analyzes the findings of the Church Committee investigating CIA abuses, seeing those abuses as stemming from the opaque machinations of a Wall Street law firm acting on behalf of a corporate client.
. . . . “Policy direction,” the Church Committee experts concluded, “took the form of condoning and fostering activity without providing scrutiny and control” or “establishing firm guidelines for approval.” Wisner built his covert-action factory around procedures analogous to those which prevailed in the important law firms, where high-powered business getters easily cornered the lucrative partnerships, brought in preferred clients, raked off contingency fees and skirted the more controversial details when delineating touchy cases in front of staid senior figures. The key was breadth, internal velocity, compounding billable hours. The impact on society, like the ethics of the client, appeared beside the point. . . .
2. In numerous programs, we noted the American investments in Weimar and Nazi Germany and the decisive effect that capital had on German society. Donovan went to Europe and an obviously politically-tinged mission to obtain intelligence on developments there. J.P. Morgan enlisted Donovan to develop information ahead of investing $2 billion in Europe. (A $ billion was worth far more in the early 1920’s than today.)
. . . . Barely returned from Siberia, Ruth Donovan was disheartened in February 1920 to hear that her husband had picked up yet another excuse to travel. He was quietly approached by representatives of the preeminent firm of J.P. Morgan and Sons. The country’s most influential investment bankers were reconnoitering the market for a $2 billion package of securities around Central and Eastern Europe. . . .
. . . . This junket in and of itself amounted to a kind of one-man intelligence sweep, an effort to assimilate, interpret, and ultimately project as a finished report information on which both judgments and predictions might reasonably be based. Donovan’s notes would amount to a rudimentary version of what later espionage services would title a national intelligence estimate. . . .
3. A “sympathetic” Donovan met with Adolf Hitler in 1923. This must have been earlier than November 9th of 1923, the date of the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler would have been in Landsberg Prison after that.
. . . . These early fact-finding missions had left the agile, energetic attorney eager to track events. Months at a time—and normally without Ruth—would find him popping up abroad, frequently near some political trouble-spot. As early as 1923, he materialized in Berchtesgaden to share a beer in the Gastzimmer of a modest pension with Adolf Hitler. The clammy young rabble-rouser ranted to the sympathetic attorney that he, unlike the family dog, could not be beaten by his miserable father until he wet the carpet. . . . .
4. The foundation of the U.S. intelligence/Hapsburg/Underground Reich dates to the period immediately after World War I: ” . . . . . . . . The Hapsburgs would desert Germany in return for an American commitment. Subsidized by the United States—which brought over to Europe the President’s close adviser Professor George D. Herron to impart Wilson’s vital imprimatur—this updated Hapsburg sovereignty must commit in advance to eradicating the Bolsheviks. A revitalized Austro-Hungarian buffer zone to fend off Soviet penetration of the Balkans turned into a lifelong chimera for Dulles, and spurred his devotion over the many years to some manner of “Danubian Federation.” . . . .”
. . . . The Hapsburgs would desert Germany in return for an American commitment. Subsidized by the United States—which brought over to Europe the President’s close adviser Professor George D. Herron to impart Wilson’s vital imprimatur—this updated Hapsburg sovereignty must commit in advance to eradicating the Bolsheviks. A revitalized Austro-Hungarian buffer zone to fend off Soviet penetration of the Balkans turned into a lifelong chimera for Dulles, and spurred his devotion over the many years to some manner of “Danubian Federation.” . . .
[17]Walter Schellenberg
5. One of the concepts central to understanding an extension of the U.S. intelligence/Hapsburg anti-Communist alliance is the concept of “The Christian West”–explained in the description for AFA #37 [19]: ” . . . . When it became clear that the armies of the Third Reich were going to be defeated, it opened secret negotiations with representatives from the Western Allies. Representatives on both sides belonged to the transatlantic financial and industrial fraternity that had actively supported fascism. The thrust of these negotiations was the establishment of The Christian West. Viewed by the Nazis as a vehicle for surviving military defeat, ‘The Christian West’ involved a Hitler-less Reich joining with the U.S., Britain, France and other European nations in a transatlantic, pan-European anti-Soviet alliance. In fact, The Christian West became a reality only after the cessation of hostilities.
The de-Nazification of Germany was aborted. Although a few of the more obvious and obnoxious elements of Nazism were removed, Nazis were returned to power at virtually every level and in almost every capacity in the Federal Republic of Germany. . . .”
Of paramount significance for our purposes is a “Christian Wester” accomodation apparently involving Prince Egon Max von Hohenloe, who married into the Habsburg family. Operating out of Lichtenstein and traveling on a Lichtenstein passport, von Hohenloe served as an intermediary between U.S. intelligence and Walter Schellenberg, in charge of overseas intelligence for the SS. (Schellenberg was also on the board of directors of International Telephone and Telegraph and became a key operative for the postwar Gehlen organization.)
Chief among the American negotiators was Allen Dulles. Donovan also appears to have played a significant part.
. . . . As early as winter of 1942, Schellenberg hinted to the uneasy Himmler that he now intended to launch discreet soundings. These ranged from Abram Stevens Hewitt in Stockholm to Theodore Morde, a Reader’s Digest correspondent in Ankara. Inevitably, Schellenberg discovered a go-between with lines to Allen Dulles, and early in 1943 a series of discussions ensued.
Thus opened the contested exchanges between “Mr. Bull” (Dulles) and “Mr. Pauls” (prince Egon zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg). Max Hohenlohe had long been an international-set acquaintance of Dulles, a bustling, polished socialite from the Sudetenland whose status as a minor royal drew customers for munitions from the Skoda works, a concession Schellenberg helped him snag. Hohenlohe already bestowed over vast landed properties in Spain after marrying into the Hapsburg family; he was currently hedging his political future by traveling on a Lichtenstein passport.
A Canaris familiar, Prince Hohenlohe caught Schellenberg’s attention early in 1942 by sending the rising SD official his own jaundiced appraisal of prospects in Europe. With the all-seeing SD Commander Reinhard Heydrich assassinated at the end of May, possibilities had obviously widened for the opportunistic Schellenberg. Barely thirty, scarcely beyond his baby fat, the Amt VI chieftain resembled an SS doll decked out in death’s-head campaign hat and tailored parade uniform.
The wedding of Prince Max Egon von Hohenloe-Langenburg
With Schellenberg’s cautious sponsorship, Max Hohenlohe trotted out a line of provisional peace proposals, first with the British Ambassador Sir Samuel Hoare—always a soft touch—and the sympathetic American Counselor of Embassy Wlliam Walton Butterworth (an intimate of George Kennan’s since Princeton), with Vatican sympathizers, with Fritz Klein, (a friend of both the Dulles brothers), and—evidently at the recommendation of American negotiators in Lisbon, where Kennan and Colonel Solborg were stationed—with Allen Dulles himself toward the middle of February 1943.
Exactly what was agreed upon has become a matter of dispute, largely because the SS summations of the exchanges appear to have passed through Russian hands on their way to the archives, after which the USSR News Services waited until 1948 and the upheavals of the Cold War to put them out as dispatches. Nevertheless, much of their thrust is borne out by related RSHA paperwork, private journals, and intelligence files from a variety of sources.
What seemed most scandalous at the time was Dulles’s reported pique with “outdated politicians, emigres, and prejudiced Jews.” The hope in America was that these malcontents could be resettled, perhaps in “Africa.” As one in close touch with Vatican circles, Dulles maintained, he strongly urged the “German bishops” to “plead Germany’s cause” in America, keeping in mind that “it had been the American Catholics who forced the Jewish-America papers to stop their baiting of Franco Spain.”
This has the look of crumbs spread upon the water. Pronouncements alternated with rich meals in a Liechtenstein chateau; Hohenlohe bit by bit exposed his quasi-official status as a spokesman for SS elements within the German government who now looked beyond the “wild men” in control.
What casts a longer shadow is the outline of Allen’s geopolitical ideas. The peace he has in mind, Dulles indicates, must avoid the excesses of Versailles and permit the expanded German polity to survive, Austria included and possibly at least a section of Czechoslovakia, while excluding all thought of “victors and vanquished . . . . as a factor of order and progress.” Within this decentralized nation, the importance of Prussia must be reduced, to ward off for the future—Dulles is quoted directly here—the “inwardly unbalanced, inferiority-complex-ridden Prussian militarism.”
The resultant “Greater Germany” would backstop the “formation of a cordon sanitaire against Bolshevism and pan-Slavism through the eastward enlargement of Poland and the preservation of a strong Hungary.” This “Federal Greater Germany (similar to the United States), with an associated Danube Confederation, would be the best guarantee of order and progress in Central and Eastern Europe.” . . . .
. . . . An Abwehr officer, F. Justus von Einem, later claimed to have sat in on a carefully prepared meeting at Santander in Spain in the summer of 1943 during which both Menzies and Donovan agreed to Christian Wester terms as recapitulated by Canaris personally. If this exchange occurred, Donovan kept it quiet.
Such exploratory talks pointed well beyond the uproar of the moment. “I have known Max Hohenlohe since the days of the war,” Dulles assured a lawyer at Sullivan and Cromwell in 1965, apropos a legal favor requested by the aging prince, “when he worked with me on some rather difficult and delicate problems.” The exchanges in Liechtenstein amounted to a reconnoitering. . . .
6. Interesting perspective on the Hapsburg/U.S./Underground Reich alliance and the sensitive nature of the dealings of OSS/Wall Street operatives like Donovan and Dulles can be gleaned by the account of the frequently lethal attempts by four different authors to write the account of the OSS from the organization’s microfilmed files.
When former Lieutenant Edwin J. Putzell fell seriously ill, he destroyed his copy of the microfilmed files.
We remind listeners, in this context, that major intelligence services have possessed toxins that will kill without leaving a trace for a very long time.
In what was his last act of World War II, Major General William J. Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services, the first American secret intelligence and special operations service and the organization from which sprang the CIA, spent several nights at OSS headquarters in Washington, D.C., with his executive officer, Lieutenant Edwin J. Putzell, Jr., microfilming the director’s files. Doing the work themselves because of the political sensitivity of the documentation, they produced two copies; Donovan took possession of one, Putzell the other. The purpose of this large operation was to provide the basis of history of Donovan’s incumbency when that became politically possible.
Several starts were made on the work. Professor Conyers Read, the Harvard historian, produced many draft chapters before Donovan himself asked him to stop work, because he felt the director’s papers were still too sensitive. Read did not resume his work, for death intervened. One of Donovan’s wartime majors, Corey Ford, then began work on the project in the mid-1950’s, producing a draft manuscript of what was really a biographical history of Donovan and the OSS, but again death intervened before Ford could complete his volume.
After Donovan’s death in 1959, the project was taken over by Whitney Shepardson, Donovan’s chief of secret intelligence during World War II. For the third time, the author died before completing the work. Then came the fourth attempt, this time by Cornelius Ryan, the author of The Longest Day. However, although Ryan had the support of Donovan’s friends President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Allen W. Dulles, then director of central intelligence, the work was stopped before it really began; a middle-rank official at the CIA managed to stop the project because he believed the book contemplated by Ryan would be too controversial. When he found himself denied access to the director’s files, Ryan was compelled to abandon the project temporarily. Then he, too died before it was possible to resume work.
In all these attempt none of the authors saw the microfilm, except Read, who saw two or three reels having to do with the OSS’s formation. During this time Putzell had been taken so seriously ill that he burned his copy of microfilm rather than leave it unguarded in his estate should die. Happily, Putzell did not die; nonetheless, the only copy of the microfilm outside the CIA (where in 1982 it was still classified) was Donovan’s. . . .