Lis­ten: One seg­ment

For years, Mr. Emory has spo­ken of “the Under­ground Reich,” which he describes as (lit­er­al­ly) a clan­des­tine Third Reich. In this broad­cast, he doc­u­ments some of the key fea­tures of this Under­ground Reich, draw­ing large­ly on excerpts from past taped pro­grams. Begin­ning with a 1953 coup attempt in Ger­many by for­mer Goebbels aide Wern­er Nau­mann, the pro­gram high­lights what author T.H. Tetens described as a “Fuehringsring,” a sys­tem of Mafia-like con­trol per­mit­ting Nazi admin­is­tra­tion of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. Real­ized by virtue of a net­work of small, under­ground cells, this con­trol mech­a­nism afford­ed a Nazi gov­ern­ment-in-exile in Madrid and in Latin Amer­i­ca and effec­tive gov­er­nance of the “new” Ger­many through the many “for­mer” Nazi offi­cials who held posi­tions in its gov­ern­ment.

The pro­gram includes a read­ing of a cir­cu­lar let­ter gen­er­at­ed by the Nazi gov­ern­ing coun­cil in 1950, which eval­u­ates the world sit­u­a­tion at that peri­od in time. Next, the pro­gram reviews mate­r­i­al about the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion — the eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of the Under­ground Reich.

The Bor­mann group con­trols cor­po­rate Ger­many, the economies of Europe, South Amer­i­ca and much of the rest of the world. It also wields deci­sive polit­i­cal con­trol over the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. This pro­gram high­lights Reich­sleit­er Mar­tin Bor­man­n’s con­sum­mate exer­cise of polit­i­cal clout in the then-West Ger­many of 1971. Bor­mann sum­moned West Ger­man Pres­i­dent Wal­ter Scheel (him­self a for­mer Nazi par­ty mem­ber) and his wife to Bolivia, so that they could take charge of a boy named Simon Mar­tin (almost cer­tain­ly a child of Bor­man­n’s old age) to be raised as part of Ger­man elite soci­ety.

The pro­gram also sets forth the crit­i­cal role in world affairs played by SS Gen­er­al Hein­rich Muelil­er (the war-time head of the Gestapo and the feared secu­ri­ty direc­tor of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion.) In addi­tion to han­dling the secu­ri­ty of the Reich-in-exile, Mueller worked with Rein­hard Gehlen’s intel­li­gence ser­vice. (The direc­tor of intel­li­gence for the East­ern Front dur­ing World War II, Gehlen jumped to the CIA, NATO and, final­ly, the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many with his orga­ni­za­tion. That orga­ni­za­tion (accord­ing to Colonel William Cor­son, forme­ly of U.S. Army Intel­li­gence and an advis­er to the Church Com­mit­tee in the 1970’s) was sim­ply “a front for ODESSA Nazis”. Indeed, the pro­gram doc­u­ments the fact that, even after he went to work for the Unit­ed States, Gehlen was clear­ing his actions with Admi­ral Von Doenitz (who, nom­i­nal­ly, suc­ceed­ed Hitler), as well as Gen­er­al Franz Halder (his for­mer chief-of-staff). As not­ed by author Carl Ogles­by, this indi­cat­ed that the Ger­man chain of com­mand was still in effect, even when Gehlen was offi­cial­ly work­ing for the U.S.

The broad­cast also doc­u­ments the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the CIA and the Bor­mann group. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at con­nec­tions between the Gehlen ODESSA milieu and Helene Von Damm, the woman who com­piled the lists from which Ronald Rea­gan made his cab­i­net appoint­ments. Von Damme was a pro­tege of SS offi­cer Otto Von Bolschwing, Adolf Eich­man­n’s supe­ri­or in admin­is­ter­ing the exter­mi­na­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ry. Von Bolschwing became a key oper­a­tive of U.S. intel­li­gence in the post-war peri­od. Von Damm’s rela­tion­ship to Von Bolschwing sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion was, in effect, a front for the Under­ground Reich! (Record­ed on 11/7/99.)