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In a supplement to a body of work that Mr. Emory believes to be as incisive and important as any he has done, this broadcast fleshes out alarming indications that German corporations controlling American publishing are moving in the direction of fulfilling a Nazi agenda.
Like all major German corporations, the Bertelsmann and Von Holtzbrinck firms ultimately report to, and are controlled by, the deadly Bormann organization. The Bormann organization is an institution that Mr. Emory believes will prove to be the decisive element in human affairs (barring a significant change in the political landscape).
The program begins with discussion of the many prestigious recording artists and record labels controlled by Bertelsmann. (In addition to publishing, this outfit is heavily involved with the music business, as well as computer software and computer games.
Bertelsmann is the third largest media corporation in the world.) Guided during the Hitler period by Heinrich Mohn (who was SS), the Bertelsmann firm controls Arista, RCA and Windham Hill records, among other labels. Their publishing arm (BMG) is a major factor in the American music business. Next, the broadcast turns to indications that Bertelsmann has not shed its Nazi heritage. Much of Bertelsmann’s official history has been crafted by an unabashed Nazi sympathizer, Dirk Bavendamm. Bavendamm secured forged diaries and sketches attributed to Hitler (which painted a relatively positive picture of the Fuehrer). These forgeries were published by the German magazine Stern, which is published by Bertelsmann. Bavendamm has written two books which blame Franklin Delano Roosevelt for World War II and claimed that Hitler was blameless for the war. His works also claim that Hitler’s actions toward the Jews were merely a reaction to Roosevelt’s plotting against Germany. (The most recent of these titles was published in 1993, and re-released in 1998. Despite this, Bertelsmann hired Bavendamm as its house historian in 1984, the year after he wrote the first of his books blaming the war on Roosevelt.) Not surprisingly, Bavendamm’s history of Bertelsmann falsely claimed that the company had been at loggerheads with Hitler.
As discussed in FTR-90, there are indications that the world-wide Nazi agenda involves controlling the American opinion forming media, in order to gradually change the world’s opinion of Hitler (preparatory to resurrecting the Reich, sometime in the next century). Bavendamm’s efforts suggest very strongly that people should not be complacent about that possibility. In spite of Bertelsmann’s record of historical revisionism with regard to the Third Reich, the Anti Defamation League chose to honor the Bertelsmann Foundation in 1999.
The program concludes with analysis of the aborted title Fortunate Son, a book that charged George W. Bush with cocaine use and claimed he had been arrested, with his record having been expunged through his family connections. This book was pulled from the market after it was disclosed that its author had a serious criminal record. The editor-in-chief of St. Martin’s Press resigned over the book, on which he apparently had little or no input. The book project was highly secretive, being referred to in house by the code-word “M.J.” St. Martin’s Press is owned by Von Holtzbrinck (the other Nazi-linked firm which, with Bertelsmann, controls American publishing.) With the Bush family’s long history of involvement with Naziism, Mr. Emory speculates that the Fortunate Son project may have been deliberately undertaken to negatively stigmatize the George W cocaine story. With allegations surfacing about W’s alleged involvement in an on-camera DEA sting operation in 1985 (in which both W and Jeb Bush allegedly picked up a kilo of cocaine each), Mr. Emory wonders if the Von Holtzbrinck firm was clearing the way for the Underground Reich’s candidate by rendering the story untouchable. (Recorded on 10/31/99.)
Martin Borman, Nazi in Exile
The below link is to a 10/30/12 NY Times Story on Bertelmann’s Random House merging with Penguin in what will be a mega-publisher. It also mentions “Macmillan, owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck of Germany” as being one of the top 6 biggest publishing houses. The elder Georg recovered from the war rather well. His son must be a chip off the old block too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/business/global/random-house-and-penguin-to-be-combined.html?pagewanted=all
Dave,
Have you covered Georg von Holtzbrinck in depth in any programs?
The reason I ask is I read a October 14, 2002 New York Times Story by Mark Landler headlined “Another German Publisher Mulls Its Wartime Past”
Mark writes The Von Holtzbrinck Group “... has disclosed that it has hired a writer to research the company’s history from 1933 to 1945.
Stefan von Holtzbrinck, the company’s president and the younger son of its late founder, Georg von Holtzbrinck, said in an interview last week that the author, whom he declined to name, would complete his research within a year.”
The writer also quotes Mr. Holtzbrinck “”It is our company’s, and my family’s, responsibility to explain the past,” said Mr. von Holtzbrinck, who was born in 1963. ”For me, the worst thing would be if everything did not come out.” ”
Well Dave its been 10 years and the history of the company website which I just checked is at present starting in 1948 and I searched the times and the web and couldn’t find a follow up to the story.
Here is the url to the whole article
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/14/business/another-german-publisher-mulls-its-wartime-past.html
Any light you could shed on this company’s history I would greatly appreciate, since they are huge and influential.
Deepest thanks,
GK
Here is a good article on von Holtzbrinck from Suddeutsche.de via Google translate
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sueddeutsche.de%2Fkultur%2Fholtzbrinck-ns-vergangenheit-ein-onkel-in-der-ss‑1.480800
Here is a small portion of it...
Holtzbrinck had stood well with the party. The approval was also on his entry into the Nazi Party, in 1933 or 1935 was (because the sources are contradictory) due, as Holtzbrinck told later. He received 2,126,353 membership number. Holtzbrinck was therefore occurred at an early stage, his party’s commitment, however, he had “minimized” (Garke-Rothbart). To receive orders, he had against Wehrmacht, state and party repeatedly argued with the party affiliation. To negotiations, he took with his Uncle Eric, a major, highly decorated veterans of World War I and Standartenführer of the SS Main Office. Who impressed with his uniform and received commissions. Towards the end of the war Holtzbrinck should have said: “If it goes well with the outcome of the war, I is an uncle who SS leader when it comes differently, a close relative in America.” There lived another uncle.
Vanfield
Thanks for sharing that. I found a version of the same article in English from Feb. 2009, The Atlantic Times, a newspaper from Germany.
http://www.atlantic-times.com/archive_detail.php?recordID=1646
“Journalist” of ten years, Thomas Garke-Rothbart, who was picked by the company to do an “independent” history, as far as I can tell from my web searches hasn’t done any thing else. Who he is a mystery to me.
The Holtzbrinck Profile it seems fits perfectly the Bormmelian Profile Paul Manning described in Matin Bormann, Nazi in Exile.
The private nature of the Holtzbrink and Bertelmann enterprises fits in with the information Dave broacasted many years ago from “Professor Wilhelm Stauffer”. Are these firms an engine for and, backed by the powerful Bormann Organizaton? Is their massive post war success part of the economic conquests of the covert Nazis; as put forth by Paul Manning and Dave Emory? The way things are going it seems the spitfirelist forcast from more than 10 years ago is pretty darn accurate.
Press release from Monday
Bertellsmann “...an undeniable commercial and cultural force in Spain and Latin America, and internationally.”
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Gütersloh / Barcelona, 11/05/2012
Bertelsmann Acquires 100% Ownership of Random House Mondadori
• Focus on growth in the Spanish-language book markets
Bertelsmann’s leading trade book publishing group Random House will now own 100 percent of the shares in Random House Mondadori, its trade book publisher in Spain and Latin America. Random House Mondadori was formed as a 50/50 joint venture in 2001 by Random House and Mondadori. In a transaction signed today, Bertelsmann has agreed to purchase Mondadori’s equity stake in the Barcelona-based publisher on behalf of Random House. The agreement, which is subject to approval by Spanish Anti-Trust authorities, is expected to close before year-end. The corporate name of Random House Mondadori will be retained for the present, and will be changed in the near future to reflect its new ownership structure.
Thomas Rabe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bertelsmann, said, “Bertelsmann believes in the creative and commercial potential of the book business and, by maximizing its holding in Random House Mondadori, is embracing an opportunity to significantly improve both its position in the Spanish book market and its access to the growing Spanish-language markets of Latin America. We are very grateful to Mondadori for our longstanding and very successful partnership.”
Núria Cabutí, who has been with Random House Mondadori and its predecessor company Plaza & Janés for the past two decades in publishing, marketing, and publicity capacities, continues as Chief Executive Officer, the position she has held since January 2010. The local organizational structures in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay under Cabutí, and the editorial identities of the respective publishing programs will be maintained, with a renewed commitment to bring its authors’ books to the widest possible readership around the world.
Random House Mondadori’s divisions publish adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction in print hardcover, trade and mass market paperback, and e‑book formats with such imprints as Plaza & Janés, Grijalbo, Lumen, Mondadori, Debate, Sudamericana, Montena, Beascoa and Rosa dels vents, among others. Spanish and international literary authors will continue to be published under the Mondadori imprint.
The company’s biggest-selling titles of 2012 have been the “Fifty Shades” trilogy by E L James; Ken Follett’s “Invierno del Mundo;” “Las leyes de la frontera” by Javier Cercas; “Pensar rápido, pensar despacio” by Daniel Kahneman; and “La tabla esmeralda” by Carla Montero. Among its unrivalled roster of Spanish-language and international authors are Ildefonso Falcones, Julia Navarro, Albert Espinosa, Isabel Allende, John Grisham, Quino, Umberto Eco, Paul Preston, and many Nobel laureates such as Gabriel García Márquez, J.M. Coetzee, Orhan Pamuk, V.S. Naipaul, and Doris Lessing.
Markus Dohle, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Random House worldwide, observed, “Mondadori is one of the world’s great publishers, and I thank Maurizio Costa and his team for their enormously productive partnership these past eleven years. Together we have helped our Spanish colleagues build Random House Mondadori as a publisher that has become an undeniable commercial and cultural force in Spain and Latin America, and internationally. Now, Random House will continue to provide our Spanish company with the creative, financial, and technological resources to grow as a print publisher and become a leading Spanish-language e‑book publisher. Núria Cabutí has instilled a corporate culture and standard of excellence at Random House Mondadori that created a perfect foundation for achieving this.”
Núria Cabutí said, “I want to thank Maurizio Costa and my predecessor Riccardo Cavallero for helping make the company a powerful force in Spanish publishing in Spain and Latin America, and for their tremendous support of the local management teams. It has been a privilege to draw upon Mondadori’s expertise and deep knowledge of the publishing market.” Cabutí added, “As part of Random House worldwide and with the group’s unwavering commitment to Spanish-language publishing, our company will continue as the publisher of choice in Spain and Latin America.”
Also continuing as a priority under Random House’s full ownership will be the joint venture between Random House Mondadori and the Knopf Doubleday Group division of Random House, Inc., which has helped the latter’s Vintage Español imprint grow to become the leading publisher of Spanish-language trade books in the U.S.
Random House Mondadori will become part of the future new partnership announced by Bertelsmann and Pearson on October 29, which will combine the English- and Spanish-language trade publishing divisions and imprints of Random House and Penguin worldwide. The new company, whose corporate name will be Penguin Random House and who is subject to regulatory approvals from a number of authorities around the world, including in North America and Europe, is expected to take place in the second half of 2013.
About Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann is an international media company whose core divisions encompass television (RTL Group), book publishing (Random House), magazine publishing (Gruner + Jahr), services (Arvato), and printing (Be Printers) in some 50 countries. In 2011, the company’s businesses, with their more than 100,000 employees, generated revenues of €15.3 billion. Bertelsmann stands for a combination of creativity and entrepreneurship that empowers the creation of first-rate media, communications, and service offerings to inspire people around the world and to provide innovative solutions for customers.