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NB: This stream com­bines a 30 minute broad­cast of FTR #141 and the first 30 min­utes of FTR #152: Update on Ger­many, orig­i­nal­ly aired May, 1999.

Car­ry­ing for­ward Mr. Emory’s cov­er­age of the evo­lu­tion of Ger­man fas­cism and impe­ri­al­ism, this pro­gram fea­tures two impor­tant arti­cles by hero­ic jour­nal­ist and author Paul Man­ning, author of the vital­ly impor­tant 1981 book Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile (Lyle-Stu­art, copy­right 1981).

Writ­ten in 1982, these arti­cles detail the sup­pres­sion of Man­ning’s book, as well as telling the sto­ry of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion. (As indi­cat­ed in pre­vi­ous broad­casts, Mr. Emory believes the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion will prove to be the deci­sive ele­ment in human affairs.) Con­trol­ling all the liq­uid wealth of Europe at the end of World War II, the Bor­mann group con­trols the economies of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and Europe. As one banker put it, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion is the great­est con­cen­tra­tion of mon­ey pow­er under one con­trol­ling author­i­ty in his­to­ry. Through its con­nec­tions with major Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions, the Bor­mann group was able to suc­cess­ful­ly pres­sure pub­lish­er after pub­lish­er to decline Man­ning’s man­u­script, as well as pre­vail­ing on major pub­li­ca­tions to avoid review­ing it. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance in the sup­pres­sion of Man­ning’s superb book was the Thyssen fam­i­ly (patri­arch Fritz Thyssen was Hitler’s ear­li­est and most promi­nent backer among Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists.) His grand­son, Count Zichy-Thyssen put the word out that it would be very much appre­ci­at­ed if Amer­i­can pub­lish­ers stayed away from the Man­ning text. (In FTRs 122 and 123, Ger­man Cor­po­rate Con­trol of Amer­i­can Pub­lish­ing, Mr. Emory high­lights the pro­found con­nec­tions between the Bor­mann group, the Thyssen inter­ests and the Ber­tels­man Cor­po­ra­tion. The lat­ter dom­i­nates Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing, along with the Ger­man Von Holzbrinck firm.)

The sec­ond half of the pro­gram sets forth Ger­man cor­po­rate maneu­ver­ing on the inter­na­tion­al stage. Begin­ning with Ber­tels­man­’s joint pub­lish­ing ven­ture with the British Pear­son Cor­po­ra­tion (the pub­lish­er of the vital­ly impor­tant Finan­cial Times of Lon­don), the pro­gram high­lights the pro­posed merg­er of Deutsche Tele­com and Tele­com Italia. This merg­er would cre­ate the largest telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny in the world and might set the stage for Deutsche Tele­com to pur­chase the Sprint net­work (in which it already owns a 10% share.) Deutsche Tele­com is con­trolled by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment (which owns a 72% share in the com­pa­ny.) The dis­cus­sion illu­mi­nates fric­tion between Deutsche Tele­com and Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies, the Siemens cor­po­ra­tion’s pur­chase of Amer­i­can data net­work­ing assets and the pro­found dis­sat­is­fac­tion of Chrysler exec­u­tives with the takeover of Chrysler by Daim­ler-Benz. One of the most impor­tant ele­ments of dis­cus­sion con­cerns the deci­sion by Siemens to close a semi­con­duc­tor plant in Eng­land, whose con­struc­tion was viewed by many observers as an essen­tial ele­ment in get­ting Tony Blair elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter. The clo­sure was in retal­i­a­tion for Britain’s deci­sion to delay entry into the Euro­pean Mon­e­tary Union.

The pro­gram con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of con­tin­ued Ger­man pres­sure on the con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency instal­la­tion in Men­with Hill (York­shire). Scape­goat­ing U.S. indus­tri­al espi­onage for Ger­many’s eco­nom­ic prob­lems, Ger­many is call­ing for a response. Mr. Emory views the Men­with Hill facil­i­ty as absolute­ly essen­tial to Amer­i­can nation­al secu­ri­ty and con­sid­ers the Ger­man pres­sure on it to be an act of war — in the “infor­ma­tion age,” the equiv­a­lent of the Japan­ese attack on Pearl har­bor. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at an ad by Volk­swa­gen in the largest Czech news­pa­per that makes light of the Ger­man inva­sion of Czecho­slo­va­kia in World War II. (Record­ed Decem­ber, 1998)