As indicated by the title, this program supplements Mr. Emory’s previous work on the control of the American publishing business by German corporations. He considers this body of work to be as important as anything he has done in the 20+ years that he has been on the air.
Beginning with discussion of the current dominant position of the Bertelsmann firm in the American music business, the broadcast sets forth Bertelsmann’s merging of its Literary Guild book-of-the-month club with the Book of the Month Club owned by Time-Warner Inc. This further solidifies Bertelsmann’s control of the American book business.
Next, the program details the role of Bertelsmann’s Stern magazine in disseminating the disinformation that Reichsleiter Martin Bormann died in the closing stages of World War II. (Bormann was Hitler’s most important aide and the Fuehrer of what Mr. Emory calls the Underground Reich.)
Bormann’s pivotal (albeit underground) role in the postwar world is well documented and beyond intelligent debate. Former Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller (director of security for the Bormann group) arranged for the planting of two corpses resembling Bormann to be planted in the ruins of Berlin shortly before the Red Army took the city. (An SS man employed by the Bormann group alerted Stern to the presence of the corpses.) The program then reviews the pro-Nazi views and activities of Dirk Bavendamm, Bertelsmann’s official in-house historian. 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, a Bertelsmann property. Bavendamm has written two books which blamed 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 Underground Reich intends to control 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.
Next, the broadcast highlights the experience of documentary film maker Errol Morris, who produced a film about Holocaust denier Fred Leuchter. When Morris first screened the film to a group of Harvard students, many of them believed Leuchter. Again, this suggests that the scenario presented in FTR-90 should not be too readily dismissed.
The second half of the program begins with a joint Microsoft and Barnes & Noble.Com venture accessing entire books online. (Barnes & Noble.Com is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, adding to Bertelsmann’s control of American publishing.)
The broadcast then turns to AOL’s recent purchase of Time-Warner Inc. AOL’s European venture is jointly undertaken with Bertelsmann. This enterprise, along with Bertelsmann’s above-mentioned merger with Time-Warner’s Book-of-the-Month Club gives Bertelsmann considerable influence in AOL’s newly-formed media giant.
Following the analysis of Bertelsmann’s influence in the AOL-Time Warner entity, the program reviews the SS background of company patron Heinrich Mohn.
After reviewing Heinrich’s son Reinhard’s World War II background in an elite Luftwaffe division (the Herrmann Goering division), the program reviews the Third Reich’s corporatist strategy for conquest and the SS utilization of corporations as vehicles for conquest. (The SS “corporatism” was the foundation for the Bormann organization.)
The program next features a look at a libel suit filed in the United Kingdom by Holocaust revisionist David Irving. This suit is indicative of a growing trend toward erasing historical memory of the Third Reich. (Recorded on 1/2/2000 & 1/16/2000.)
Discussion
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