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NB: This description contains material not included in the original broadcast.
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Introduction: Newer listeners may well be confounded by the frequent references to “The Underground Reich,” an understandable reaction, under the circumstances. T. H. Tetens’ The New Germany and the Old Nazis details the coup attempt of 1953, in which SS officer Werner Naumann (propaganda minister Goebbels’ hand-picked successor) tried to seize power, with the assistance of other Third Reich alumni.
Of consummate significance in this context is the executive force behind Naumann’s attempt–a fuehrungsring that administered the “new” Germany on behalf of a Nazi government in exile in Spain.
Taken in conjunction with the material in Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile, the disclosure that Reinhard Gehlen’s relocation of his spy outfit to U.S. intelligence was cleared with a German chain of command that had been preserved intact, as well as the relationship between Helene Von Damm, Otto von Bolschwing and the Nazi faction of the GOP, the Tetens discussion of the Naumann coup permits us to view much of the structure of this Underground Reich.
We also note that BND, the successor organization to the Gehlen outfit, destroyed the files of 250 executives of the organization, who had held significant positions in the SS, SD (the SS intelligence service) or Gestapo. Furthermore, BND has deliberately recruited from the families of BND personnel, thereby enabling the perpetuation of the Nazi ethos down through the generations.
Program Highlights Include:
- Once Naumann and his fellow conspirators were released into the custody of the Adenauer government and the postwar judiciary, all charges were dismissed.
- The lawyers for the defendants threatened to disclose the full measure of the conspiracy and its backers–knowledge that would have been devastating to the West. That information would have played directly into the hands of the former Soviet Union and its propaganda arm. In addition, many in the non-communist world would have been genuinely appalled at the degree of collaboration.
- The fuehrungsring was charged with initiating conspiracies in foreign countries on behalf of German cartels.
- The Nazi underground (including the Nazi Party itself) had penetrated diverse entities, including communist organizations.
- This information dovetails perfectly with content of The Nazis Go Underground and Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile, the latter distilled into FTR #305. Note that provisions were made for the Nazi party to go underground, with German corporations embedding war criminals and other important operatives in their overseas staffs. A recent article in Der Spiegel reinforces many of the points in this post and the T.H. Tetens text.
1. As the Third Reich was preparing to go from its above-ground phase into its underground phase, provisions were made for German industrialists to fund the underground Nazi party.
. . . A smaller conference in the afternoon was presided over by Dr. Bosse of the German Armaments Ministry. It was attended only by representatives of Hecko, Krupp, and Rochling. Dr. Bosse restated Bormann’s belief that the war was all but lost, but that it would be continued by Germany until certain goals to insure the economic resurgence of Germany after the war had been achieved. He added that German industrialists must be prepared to finance the continuation of the Nazi Party, which would be forced to go underground, just as had the Maquis in France. . . .
2. In addition, German corporations were preparing to “embed” prominent Nazi war criminals in their staffs abroad.
. . . . Dr. Bosse closed the meeting, observing that ‘after the defeat of Germany, the Nazi Party recognizes that certain of its best known leaders will be condemned as war criminals. However, in cooperation with the industrialists, it is arranging to place its less conspicuous but most important members with various German factories as technical experts or members of its research and designing offices. . . .
3. We set forth the outline of the Naumann coup attempt. Note, again, that the greatest significance of this event is the fact that “team Naumann” was being run by the Nazi government in exile in Madrid.
In the text read during the actual program, note that Naumann associate Eugen Dollman spent much time in Lugano, Switzerland. Bank al-Taqwa head Youssef Nada resides in Lugano, which was also the home of Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Another of the Naumann circle was Johann von Leers, who was a mentor to al-Taqwa’s director Achmed Huber.
The New Germany and the Old Nazis; pp. 24–33.
. . . . The next morning shortly after seven, the head of the press division of the Foreign Office, Sir William Ridsdale, distributed a communique which stated that a group of seven former high Nazi officials had been arrested in Duesseldorf and Hamburg for having plotted the overthrow of the Bonn Republic. The official announcement said that the British authorities had been aware for some time that the seven men had been involved in a plot and that the arrest had been made under the authority of Foreign Minister Eden. The ringleader of the group was a Dr. Werner Naumann, who, until the German collapse, had served as State Secretary in Dr. Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. Dr. Naumann had been with Hitler during the very last days in the bunker of the Chancellery in Berlin, and he was the one designated by the Fuehrer in his testament to succeed Dr. Goebbels as Propaganda Minister. . . .
. . . The British reply was polite but determined. It pointed out that the occupation authorities had been profoundly disturbed when they had found evidence of an advanced plot, instigated by a vast Nazi network spreading from Dusseldorf to Cairo, Madrid, Buenos AIres, and Malmo, Sweden. They stated furthermore that they had had to proceed with the utmost secrecy, since the plotters had close contacts with high government circles in Bonn. According to the New York Times) the British submitted evidence to the Chancellor which “revealed a wide-spread plot with ramifications into many political parties and other influential organizations of West Germany.” Faced with the grave implications of the Naumann conspiracy, Dr. Adenauer and his Minister of Justice, Dr. Thomas Dehler, had to confirm the seriousness of the case. . . .
. . . After taking over the investigation, Dr. Adenauer admitted at a press conference “the existence of a far-flung plot” and that Naumann’s activities “had been financed with considerable sums by Nazi groups in foreign countries.” Minister of Justice Dehler told reporters that the Naumann group had developed “a most cunning and diabolic system of infiltration” and that the conspiracy represented “an acute threat to the democratic institutions in the Federal Republic.” The captured Naumann documents, he said, “gave clear proof that the aim of the group had been to fill key positions m all Rightist parties with hard-core Nazis and thereby create propaganda vehicles which later could be used for a broad neo-Nazi mass movement.” According to the Wiesbadener Kurier of May 6, 1953, Dr. Dehler quoted from one document in which Naumann expressed the hope that, if his scheme succeeded, “the coming election might be the last of its kind.”
Soon after the British had transferred the prosecution of the case to the German authorities, the lawyers of the arrested plotters began to put pressure on the federal government to suppress the case and release their clients. The Bremer Nachrichten reported on June 15, 1953, that the Naumann lawyers had even threatened to discuss “the true background of the case openly” if their clients were not released soon.
By the end of June 1953 Dr. Naumann and his co-plotters were suddenly released, in violation of the most rigid stipulations of German law and court procedure. A year and a half later, in December 1954, in spite of the fact that the prosecutor had brought an indictment against Naumann charging conspiracy against the constitution of the Federal Republic, the highest court quietly dismissed the case without any trial or hearing. Even before the plotters were released, the British became suspicious about the handling of the Naumann case and leaked some of the incriminating material to a staunchly democratic German newspaper which had gained quite a reputation for its revealing articles on the infiltration of former Nazis into the Adenauer administration. During the early part of June 1953 the Frankfurter Rundschau published five articles dealing with Naumann’s tapped telephone conversations, notes from his appointment calendar, correspondence between the plotters, and significant excerpts from his diary. The published material gave a full inside view of the scope and character of the conspiracy. The description of the intricate structure of the plot and the background of the many people involved filled whole pages in the Frankfurter Rundschau. Here it is sufficient to state the main objectives as they emerged from the confiscated material:
1] Use the democratic constitution as a facade behind which a new Nazi movement could be organized, designed to take over the apparatus of the state when time and circumstances would make such a step necessary and profitable.
2] Let Chancellor Adenauer serve as a front, exactly as Gustav Stresemann did during the twenties, behind which a new German power could develop undisturbed without arousing premature suspicions.
3] Apply a new method of infiltration (Unterwanderung) in order to conquer the existing parties and the administrative machinery of the state from within. Avoid noisy nationalistic demonstrations, flag-waving and incidents; use the more efficient and unsuspicious procedure of working in small cells, which some day, at an opportune moment, might consolidate themselves into a broad mass organization.
The detailed plan, which the Germans soon called the “Nau-Nau” strategy, instructed former well-known Nazi leaders to stay discreetly in the background until the time was ripe for action. In the meantime the leaders were to use all their connections to bring bright and capable young Nazis, especially those trained in the Hitler Youth, into influential positions, not only in the Adenauer coalition parties but also into all other political organizations.
The Naumann documents revealed much more than a mere strategic blueprint of how to subvert a state apparatus or the existing parties from within. There was a detailed record of how Dr. Naumann had used his contacts with top industrialists and leading politicians to fill well-paid positions in the Free Democratic party with scores of young, able Nazis who once had learned the tricks of the trade in the Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. Dr. Naumann’s most devoted collaborator in this enterprise was his intimate friend, Dr. Ernst Achenbach, a former Ribbentrop diplomat who, after the war, had become a prominent lawyer in the Ruhr district. It was reported that Achenbach and Naumann had been close friends during the war when they served together in important positions under Ambassador Otto Abetz in the German Embassy in occupied Paris. It was Dr. Achenbach who, in 1943, recommended to the Foreign Office that two thousand Jews be shipped to the East as reprisal for an attack on two Nazi officers. . . .
. . . A lengthy British white paper on the Naumann-Achenbach plot was ready to be released in August 1953, when it was suddenly “withdrawn at the last moment on Cabinet instructions, for reasons which never have been made quite clear.” There were rumors that the British had yielded under the combined pressure of Washington and Bonn. The confiscated material disclosed that the Achenbach/Naumann group represented a so-called Fuehrungsring‑a Nazi high command‑a kind of political Mafia, with headquarters in Madrid, which operated by remote control through clever organizational schemes on different levels, serving various purposes. This Gauleiter group met periodically in the strictest secrecy, mainly in Duesseldorf or Hamburg.
Up to thirty former Nazi top officials assembled under false names as “old friends” in hotels, where they carried on their political scheming. Among them were the ex-Gauleiters Kaufmann, Grohe, Florian, Wegener, Frauenfeld, and Scheel, a number of high officials from the Propaganda Ministry, some Ribbentrop diplomats, and top-ranking SS officers. According to the British correspondent Alistair Horne, the “roll calls of the ex-Gauleiters and high SS officials present read like a page from some nightmare Who’s Who of the Third Reich.” These Nazi leaders had either escaped the dragnet of the victorious Allies by false identification papers or had been released from internment after a year or two without any substantial penalty. The aim of the group was “to form the general staff of the ‘National Opposition’ ” and build “a new political party out of the existing parties of the right.”
Besides the infiltration of co-conspirators into positions of command within the existing parties and into government departments and party organizations on the middle and lower levels, another task of the Fuehrungsring was to organize and direct mass organizations, such as veterans’ and refugee associations, which one day could easily be used as instruments for political action. Other fields of activities for the group were political propaganda in foreign countries, carried out in close contact with the Nazi headquarters in Madrid, and the initiation of conspiracies in foreign countries on behalf of German industrial cartels. . . .
. . . Long before, they had captured numerous key positions in the Adenauer administration, in political parties, and in the Laender (state) parliaments. They were exuberant about their successes in one of their secret directives circulated by the Nazi headquarters in Madrid. This lengthy document, issued in September 1950, spoke of the total failure of the Western occupation policy and pointed gleefully to the success of the “flexible and smoothly-working organization which, at the end of the war, provided the precondition for all the gains that by necessity emerged for Germany out of the chaos of the postwar period .
“. . . Five years after Potsdam, we can look back with pride at our accomplishments .... Nothing happened by chance; everything was carefully planned.” There is considerable material available which gives conclusive proof that the Nazis had made preparations long before their collapse to train an army of agents, often skillfully camouflaged as “resistance fighters.” About the successful continuation of the Nazi subversive activities, the Madrid Circular Letter had this to say: “Even after the collapse, the National Socialist party continued to work in a camouflaged way [getarnt] in dozens of seemingly innocuous societies and groups, in order to keep the national outlook of the German people alive and undiluted. Just as many small brooks go toward making a mighty stream, the various nationalistic and radical groups in the Zonen-Reich carried out, almost without exception, worthwhile and powerful propaganda. Each of these groups had its special task and had to adjust its work to certain situations and circumstances. However, it was of chief importance to direct the underlying trend of the patriotic propaganda toward the same goal. The more diverse and disconnected these groups appeared on the surface, the less they were apt to arouse suspicion that they were directed and influenced by a central organization. We have placed our confidential agents, observers, and representatives for special assignments in all parties, even among Communist organizations and their fronts. The greater the number of organizations controlled and influenced by us, the more effective will be the results of our work.” . . . .
4. The entire text of the 1950 Madrid circular letter can be found in: Germany Plots with the Kremlin by T.H. Tetens; Henry Schuman [HC]; 1953; pp. 209–232. The same text contains numerous other documents that provide remarkable insight into the Third Reich’s remarkably successful plans for going underground.
5a. Note that the Gehlen spy organization operated as an extension of the German general staff, with the German chain of command having remained intact.
“The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt” by Carl Oglesby; Covert Action Information Bulletin; Fall 1990.
. . . . Gehlen met with Admiral Karl Doenitz, who had been appointed by Hitler as his successor during the last days of the Third Reich. Gehlen and the Admiral were now in a U.S. Army VIP prison camp in Wiesbaden; Gehlen sought and received approval from Doenitz too!44
In other words, the German chain of command was still in effect, and it approved of what Gehlen was doing with the Americans. . . .
Note 47. . . . As Gehlen was about to leave for the United States, he left a message for Baun with another of his top aides, Gerhard Wessel: “I am to tell you from Gehlen that he has discussed with [Hitler’s successor Admiral Karl] Doenitz and [Gehlen’s superior and chief of staff General Franz] Halder the question of continuing his work with the Americans. Both were in agreement.” Hohne and Zolling, op. cit., n. 14, p. 61.
5b. We review the curriculum vitae of Ernst Uhrlau.
. . . . From 1996–98, Ernst Uhrlau was the Chief of Hamburg Police. In 1998, Uhrlau was appointed a Coordinator of the Intelligence Community in the office of the Chancellor. [This was during the period in which German intelligence had the Hamburg cell of 9/11 plotters under surveillance.
On 1 December 2005, he was appointed to the post of the head of the BND. . . .
6. In FTR #761, we noted that Ernst Uhlrau had an interesting curriculum vitae. Chief of the Hamburg police during a period in which German intelligence had members of the Hamburg cell of 9/11 hijackers under surveillance, Uhrlau was appointed special adviser to the Chancellor on intelligence matters in 1998. He became head of the BND in 2005.
During Uhrlau’s tenure as BND director, files on BND officials with SS and Gestapo backgrounds were shredded. Note that the individuals whose files were destroyed were BND executives, not field agents, and that they has held “significant intelligence positions in the SS, the SD (the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party) or the Gestapo.”
According to Der Spiegel, BND officers were recruited from the families of BND operatives, permitting a perpetuation of Nazi ideology and methodology from the original Gehlen SS and Gestapo recruits!
Historians conducting an internal study of ties between employees of the German foreign intelligence agency and the Third Reich have made a shocking discovery. In 2007, the BND destroyed personnel files of employees who had once been members of the SS and the Gestapo. . . .
. . . . Now, only one week before Uhrlau’s retirement, the commission has uncovered what is a true historical scandal. The researchers have found that the BND destroyed the personnel files of around 250 BND officials in 2007. The agency has confirmed that this happened.
The commission claims that the destroyed documents include papers on people who were “in significant intelligence positions in the SS, the SD (the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party) or the Gestapo.” They added that some of the individuals had even been investigated after 1945 for possible war crimes. Historian Klaus-Dietmar Henke, spokesman for the commission, told SPIEGEL ONLINE he was “somewhat stunned” by the occurrence.
Did Agency Employees Seek to Sabotage Investigation? . . .
. . . . It is no secret that some people within the BND are unhappy about Uhrlau’s project. Some employees are fundamentally opposed to the agency shedding light on its own past. Others are worried about the reputations of their own families — for many years, the BND deliberately recruited new staff from among the relatives of existing BND employees. . . .
This should probably fall under the “horrific if late, but way better late than never” category of historical “whoopsies”:
“Too many who bore guilt covered for each othe...Even at the start of the 1960s, 80 percent of the judges at the Federal Court of Justice had been judges under the Nazis. That illustrates the extent to which the German justice system failed.”