Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #865 Interview with Peter Levenda about “Ratline” and “Unholy Alliance”

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by late spring of 2015. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #850.  

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: With Pope Fran­cis head­ed to the U.S. for the first time, we begin by relat­ing the sto­ry of Father Draganovic and the Rat­line. It is the pres­ence of Father Draganovic’s name in Georg Anton Poch’s jour­nal at a time when that cler­ic’s name and activ­i­ties were unknown the the gen­er­al pub­lic that lends grav­i­tas to the the­o­ry that the mys­te­ri­ous Dr. Anton Poch might be Hitler. (Draganovic was one of the main fig­ures in the Rat­line net­works.) The Rat­line escape net­work is dis­cussed at length in AFA #17 and FTR #532, among oth­er pro­grams.

Although the Pope has been a rel­a­tive breath of fresh air com­pared to his reac­tionary pre­de­ces­sors, he became the focus of con­tro­ver­sy by can­on­iz­ing Father Junipero Ser­ra, whom Native Amer­i­cans [right­ly] accuse of admin­is­ter­ing bes­tial treat­ment to those sub­ject­ed to the excess­es of his “Mis­sions.”

No such con­tro­ver­sy has been vis­i­ble with regard to the beat­i­fi­ca­tion of Arch­bish­op Alois Stepinac.

Before explor­ing the spe­cif­ic case of Arch­bish­op Stepinac (a mem­ber of the Ustachi par­lia­ment and beat­i­fied by Pope John Paul II), we review our dis­cus­sion of the bar­bar­ic Croa­t­ian fas­cists who admin­is­tered the Nazi satel­lite state in Croa­t­ia. Oper­at­ing with the bless­ing of, and in coop­er­a­tion with the Catholic church, the Ustachi were so grotesque­ly bru­tal that they hor­ri­fied the SS.

Along those lines, we high­light sev­er­al details about the “weaponized Catholi­cism” that man­i­fest­ed itself under the Ustachi regime. The largest Ustachi con­cen­tra­tion camp was a con­vert­ed brick­yard called Jasen­o­vac, com­mand­ed by a Fran­cis­can priest, Fr. Fil­ipovic. Fil­ipovic and his col­league Fr. Breka­lo engaged in con­tests, see­ing who could mur­der the most Ser­bian chil­dren with their bare hands.

Return­ing to the oper­a­tions of the Rat­line, we set forth the rela­tion­ship of Oper­a­tion Bern­hard to the Rat­line and, beyond that, the CV of SS offi­cer Friedrich Schwend who over­saw Bern­hard. Oper­a­tion Bern­hard was a Third Reich coun­ter­feit­ing oper­a­tion, using expert­ly-craft­ed for­eign cur­ren­cy notes to finance numer­ous projects, includ­ing the Rat­line. (The Bernhard/Ratline con­nec­tion is dis­cussed at length in AFA #17.)

Schwend was involved with the machi­na­tions of the Rat­line, as well as Oper­a­tion Sun­rise in Italy. His oper­a­tions spanned the Nazi and CIA links to the Vat­i­can, the Nazi dias­po­ra’s activ­i­ties in post­war Latin Amer­i­ca, the gen­e­sis and devel­op­ment of the Gehlen spy out­fit and the myr­i­ad con­spir­a­cies over­seen by the P‑2 Lodge.

The Rat­line was financed in large mea­sure by stolen Nazi loot. We note the pres­ence of stolen Nazi wealth in Arch­bish­op Stepinac’s cathe­dral in Yugoslavia.

Next, the broad­cast high­lights a high school in the New York met­ro­pol­i­tan area named after Arch­bish­op Stepinac. A remark­able aspect of Stepinac High School. The ros­ter of the school’s grad­u­ates is secret, avail­able only to alum­ni, who must prove that they attend­ed the school. Was the high school used to “mint” sec­ond or third gen­er­a­tion Ustache for the real­iza­tion of “The Pavel­ic Lega­cy,” to coin a term?

We con­clude with a piece of infor­ma­tion from Unholy Alliance about Ger­ald Pos­ner hav­ing led the media charge to dis­cred­it Ladis­las Fara­go with regard to his work on Bor­mann in “After­math.”

This was dis­cussed at greater length in FTR #134. Pos­ner, of course, is best known for being the media shill who rein­forced the War­ren Report’s find­ings after Oliv­er Stone’s “JFK” movie came out, as well as rein­forc­ing the sim­i­lar­ly unten­able “lone nut” hypoth­e­sis with regard to the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King.

Pro­gram and Descrip­tion High­lights Include: 

  • Dis­cus­sion of the rela­tion­ship between pow­er­ful Wall Street law firms, such as Carter Led­yard & Mill­burn and the CIA.
  • Review of Frank Wis­ner’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in CIA and Carter, Led­yard & Mill­burn (gen­er­al coun­sel for the Dow Jones Cor­po­ra­tion.)
  • Dis­cus­sion of Mar­tin Bor­man­n’s post-World War II bank­ing activ­i­ties.
  • Review of the delib­er­ate col­laps­ing of the New York Stock Exchange on the morn­ing of Novem­ber 22nd, 1963,

1.  We begin by estab­lish­ing ele­ments of con­ti­nu­ity with FTR #864, briefly review­ing the sub­ject of the mys­te­ri­ous Georg Anton Poch (who MAY have been Hitler), the cer­tain­ty that Hitler escaped and the “offi­cial ver­sion” of Hitler’s death, an intel­l­li­gence oper­a­tion named “Oper­a­tion Nurs­ery.”

2. With Pope Fran­cis head­ed to the U.S. for the first time, we relate the sto­ry of a Croa­t­ian priest, Father Draganovic and the Rat­line he helped to over­see. It is the pres­ence of Father Draganovic’s name in Poch’s jour­nal at a time when that cler­ic’s name and activ­i­ties were unknown the the gen­er­al pub­lic that lends grav­i­tas to the the­o­ry that the Poch might be Hitler. (Draganovic was one of the main fig­ures in the Rat­line net­works.) The Rat­line escape net­work is dis­cussed at length in AFA #17 and FTR #532, among oth­er pro­grams.

3a. Before explor­ing the spe­cif­ic case of Arch­bish­op Stepinac (a mem­ber of the Ustachi par­lia­ment and beat­i­fied by Pope John Paul II), we review the bar­bar­ic Croa­t­ian fas­cists who admin­is­tered the Nazi satel­lite state in Croa­t­ia. Oper­at­ing with the bless­ing of, and in coop­er­a­tion with the Catholic church, the Ustachi were so grotesque­ly bru­tal that they hor­ri­fied the SS.

3b. Next, we high­light sev­er­al details about the “weaponized Catholi­cism” that man­i­fest­ed itself under the Ustachi regime. The largest Ustachi con­cen­tra­tion camp was a con­vert­ed brick­yard called Jasen­o­vac, com­mand­ed by a Fran­cis­can priest, Fr. Fil­ipovic. Fil­ipovic and his col­league Fr. Breka­lo mur­dered Ser­bian chil­dren with their bare hands.

Rat­line: Sovi­et Spies, Nazi Priests and the Dis­ap­pear­ance of Adolf Hitler by Peter Lev­en­da; Ibis Press [HC]; Copy­right 2012 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–170‑6; pp. 77–78.

. . . Jasen­o­vac had been cre­at­ed as a forced labor and death camp by the Ustashe for most­ly Ser­bian pris­on­ers as well as Jews and Gyp­sies. There is con­tro­ver­sy over the total num­ber of Vic­tims slaugh­tered at Jasen­o­vac, but most author­i­ties agree that between 65,000 and 100,000 Serbs and oth­ers met their fate at that camp, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of oth­ers sent from Jasen­o­vac to the death camps at Auschwitz and else­where. Dur­ing most of the peri­od of Ustashe rule over Jasen­o­vac, the camp was run by a Fran­cis­can priest, Fr. Miroslv Fil­ipovic (1915–1946).

Fil­ipovic, like his col­league Draganovic, was inter­est­ed in the con­ver­sion of Ser­bian Ortho­dox Chris­tians to Roman Catholi­cism . . . . by force. In addi­tion, he sub­scribed to Ante Pavelic’s dic­tum that one third of all Serbs should be deport­ed, one third forcibly con­vert­ed, and one third killed. He par­tic­i­pat­ed in mas­sacres of the Ser­bian population–men, women and children–along with his close asso­ciate, Fr. Zvon­imir Breka­lo, anoth­er priest. He and Breka­lo would engage in con­tests of killing Ser­bian chil­dren with their bare hands. . . . the same hands with which they would con­se­crate bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. They saw them­selves as Cru­saders, with all the impi­ous slaugh­ter that term has acquired over the cen­turies. . . .

4. Return­ing to the oper­a­tions of the Rat­line, we set forth the rela­tion­ship of Oper­a­tion Bern­hard to the Rat­line and, beyond that, the CV of SS offi­cer Friedrich Schwend who over­saw Bern­hard. Oper­a­tion Bern­hard was a Third Reich coun­ter­feit­ing oper­a­tion, using expert­ly-craft­ed for­eign cur­ren­cy notes to finance numer­ous projects, includ­ing the Rat­line. (The Bernhard/Ratline con­nec­tion is dis­cussed at length in AFA #17.

Schwend was involved with the machi­na­tions of the Rat­line, as well as Oper­a­tion Sun­rise in Italy. His oper­a­tions spanned the Nazi and CIA links to the Vat­i­can, the Nazi dias­po­ra’s activ­i­ties in post­war Latin Amer­i­ca, Oper­a­tion Con­dor and the gen­e­sis and devel­op­ment of the Gehlen spy out­fit and the myr­i­ad con­spir­a­cies over­seen by the P‑2 Lodge.

We also note in pass­ing that Pope Pius XII has been beat­i­fied as well. His involve­ment with fas­cism is chron­i­cled at length in AFA #17.

Friedrich “Fred­dy” Schwend (1906–1980) claimed the rank of SS-Sturm­ban­n­fuhrer (although he was prob­a­bly not a gen­uine offi­cer and held the rank as a kind of cov­er) but his real job was as the man­ag­er of some­thing called Oper­a­tion Bern­hard. Bern­hard was the ambi­tious cur­ren­cy-forg­ing project of the SS that man­aged to cre­ate beau­ti­ful­ly-craft­ed British pound noes as well as oth­er cur­ren­cies. The orig­i­nal mis­sion of Oper­a­tion Bern­hard was the desta­bi­liz­ing of the world’s cur­ren­cies as part of the over­all war effort, but in the end it func­tioned as a kind of slush fund for secret oper­a­tions, using the forged cur­ren­cies rather than gen­uine mon­ey to pay off spies and bribe offi­cials. The forged cur­ren­cies were also used to buy much need­ed raw mate­r­i­al for the war effort from neu­tral coun­tries. Schwend con­duct­ed this oper­a­tion from a vil­la in the Tyrol that was sur­round­ed by SS men, and which over­saw trans­port of the forged cur­ren­cies by the truck­load and train­load to oth­er coun­tries in Europe. The forg­ers them­selves were Jews: con­cen­tra­tion camp pris­on­ers cho­sen for their abil­i­ty as print­ers and engravers.

By all accounts, this was a very suc­cess­ful oper­a­tion, and at the end of the war, Schwend gave him­self up to the CIC which “turned” him and used him as a dou­ble agent: first, in the loca­tion of stolen gold, cur­ren­cies and art­work in a series of hid­ing places, mine shafts and safe hous­es through­out Aus­tria and oth­er parts of Europe, and then for counter-intel­li­gence work under the code name “Major Klemp,” and as code name “Flush” (for an oper­a­tion cre­at­ed to “flush out” oth­ers like him in Italy). There is also evi­dence that Schwend was involved in Dulles’s Oper­a­tion Sun­rise, which ensured the peace­ful sur­ren­der of SS and Wehrma­cht forces in Italy.

Schwend’s net­work of wartime safe hous­es was then used for the Rat­line. The same agents he had used to pass forged pounds ster­ling he now used to move SS men out of Europe. Oper­a­tion Sun­rise had pre­sent­ed the OSS with a con­sid­er­able num­ber of SS offi­cers who had coop­er­at­ed with them in the order­ly sur­ren­der, and who now expect­ed spe­cial treat­ment in return. Dulles him­self was noto­ri­ous­ly anti-Com­mu­nist and rel­a­tive­ly relaxed when it came to Nazism; like the Vat­i­can and espe­cial­ly Pope Pius XII and his Sec­re­tary of State and future Pope Paul VI–Cardinal Mon­ti­ni– he saw the Nazis as a poten­tial bul­wark, against the Rus­sians.

An under­ground net­work of SS offi­cers, work­ing for the Allies rather than against them, would pro­vide Amer­i­can intel­li­gence with a ready-made spy net­work in East­ern Europe. This would even­tu­al­ly become the infa­mous Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion, run by Rein­hard Gehlen, who had seduced his cap­tors with promis­es of being able to pen­e­trate Sovi­et intel­li­gence and run oper­a­tions behind Russ­ian lines. . . .

. . . . Schwend was even­tu­al­ly released from cus­tody and spent the remain­ing months of his life in Peru, where he died in 1980 . . . tak­ing many secrets with him to the grave. Report­ed­ly, Schwend was deeply involved with Klaus Bar­bie and with Barbie’s net­work of fas­cist mur­der­ers and arms deal­ers in South Amer­i­ca and Europe who con­duct­ed assas­si­na­tions as part of Oper­a­tion Con­dor: the qua­si-offi­cial agree­ment between the gov­ern­ments of Chile, Argenti­na, Bolivia, and Paraguay to seek out left­ists and com­mu­nist lead­ers and neu­tral­ize them “with extreme prej­u­dice.” Agents of Oper­a­tion Con­dor were respon­si­ble for assas­si­na­tions and assas­si­na­tion attempts in Italy and Spain as well as in South Amer­i­ca, and in addi­tion, there were con­nec­tions to the Ital­ian Mason­ic lodge, Pro­pa­gan­da Due or P2: the heav­i­ly-con­nect­ed rene­gade Mason­ic asso­ci­a­tion with mem­bers in the mil­i­tary, gov­ern­ment, finance, media and the Church that was involved in assas­si­na­tions and mon­ey laun­der­ing in Europe with a view towards res­ur­rect­ing a Catholic, fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship a la the Ustashe of Croa­t­ia. . . .”

5. Con­tin­u­ing with dis­cus­sion of the Rat­line and the Ustachi, we note the pres­ence of stolen Nazi wealth in Arch­bish­op Stepinac’s cathe­dral in Yugoslavia.

Rat­line: Sovi­et Spies, Nazi Priests and the Dis­ap­pear­ance of Adolf Hitler by Peter Lev­en­da; Ibis Press [HC]; Copy­right 2012 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–170‑6; p. 129.

. . . . Often, these funds were in the form of gold bars, var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al cur­ren­cies, dia­monds, and artwork–paintings, man­u­scripts, rare books, fur­ni­ture, and sculpture–stolen from muse­ums and pri­vate col­lec­tions all over Europe. A con­sid­er­able amount of these resources was stored at var­i­ous church­es and monas­ter­ies along the escape route. Some of them were even stored at the cathe­dral of Arch­bish­op Stepinac, as well as in church­es and monas­ter­ies in Italy, Aus­tria, Ger­many and Spain. . . .

6. We then recount a remark­able aspect of Stepinac High School. The ros­ter of the school’s grad­u­ates is secret, avail­able only to alum­ni, who must prove that they attend­ed the school. Was the high school used to “mint” sec­ond or third gen­er­a­tion Ustache for the real­iza­tion of “The Pavel­ic Lega­cy,” to coin a term?

Rat­line: Sovi­et Spies, Nazi Priests and the Dis­ap­pear­ance of Adolf Hitler by Peter Lev­en­da; Ibis Press [HC]; Copy­right 2012 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–170‑6; p. 76.

. . . .There is even an Arch­bish­op Stepinac High School in New York, cre­at­ed in 1948 with the bless­ings of Car­di­nal Spell­man. The author attempt­ed to obtain a list of its alum­ni from the school’s web­site but that infor­ma­tion is locked to out­siders. One has to be an alum­nus one­self, and prove it, before being admit­ted to what is sure­ly an inno­cent ros­ter in any oth­er school. For com­par­i­son pur­pos­es, the author vis­it­ed the web­site of his high school alma mater–Christopher Colum­bus HS in the Bronx–and was able to access the list of alum­ni freely and with­out a pass­word. . . .

7a. We con­clude with a piece of infor­ma­tion from Unholy Alliance about Ger­ald Pos­ner hav­ing led the media charge to dis­cred­it Ladis­las Fara­go with regard to his work on Bor­mann in “After­math.”

This was dis­cussed at greater length in FTR #134. Pos­ner, of course, is best known for being the media shill who rein­forced the War­ren Report’s find­ings after Oliv­er Stone’s “JFK” movie came out, as well as rein­forc­ing the sim­i­lar­ly unten­able “lone nut” hypoth­e­sis with regard to the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King.

7b. Bor­man­n’s FBI file revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name in New York for some time.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 205.

“The file revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name from his office in Ger­many in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argen­tin­ian dic­ta­tor Juan Per­on, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had writ­ten checks on demand accounts in first Nation­al City Bank (Over­seas Divi­sion) of New York, The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, and Man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires.”

7c. The pro­gram descrip­tion con­cludes with some rumi­na­tion about Bor­mann and the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. Author Dick Rus­sell dis­cussed CIA offi­cial Frank Wis­ner’s (pos­si­bly fatal) anx­i­ety about Mar­tin Bor­mann in the wake the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy.

Recall that, on the morn­ing of 11/22/1963, the stock mar­ket was delib­er­ate­ly col­lapsed through a com­pli­cat­ed gam­bit involv­ing the German/Argentine Bunge Cor­po­ra­tion and, there­by and inevitably, the Bor­mann group.

Wis­ner (like anoth­er Deputy Direc­tor of CIA named Hard­ing Jack­son) had worked for Carter, Led­yard & Mill­burn, the gen­er­al coun­sel (at the time) for the Dow Jones Cor­por­tion (the par­ent com­pa­ny of the New York Stock Exchange).

Wis­ner was a ded­i­cat­ed anti-com­mu­nist who did­n’t hes­i­tate to employ Nazis to achieve his ends. How­ev­er, he may not have been able to stom­ach the Under­ground Reich/Bormann Group’s tam­per­ing with the Stock Exchange.

We sus­pect that he was not, in fact, crazy, but was attempt­ing to against the very polit­i­cal tide he helped to craft.

We should also note in this regard that a com­mon method of assas­si­na­tion involves shoot­ing the vic­tim in the back of the head with a silenced small-cal­iber hand­gun. A shot­gun is then placed in the vic­tim’s mouth and fired, oblit­er­at­ing all trace of the actu­al fatal wound and mak­ing the death appear to be sui­cide.

Is that what hap­pened to Wis­ner? Was he unwill­ing to coun­te­nance the sub­ver­sion of the NYSE, rep­re­sent­ed by his old law firm?

The Man Who Knew Too Much; by Dick Rus­sell; Car­roll & Graf; Copy­right 1992 [HC]; ISBN 0–88184-900–6; p. 682.

 . . . . Anoth­er fig­ure who end­ed up deeply tor­ment­ed was Frank Wis­ner, the CIA’s orig­i­nal man in charge of bring­ing over the Nazi sci­en­tists under ‘Paper­clip,’ and with estab­lish­ing the Gehlen, Ukrain­ian, and White Russ­ian under­ground move­ments in Europe. In 1961, after suf­fer­ing two ner­vous break­downs in recent years, Wis­ner left the CIA but kept his inter­est in agency affairs.

Appar­ent­ly some­time not long after the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, as Wis­ner’s daugh­ter Wendy recalled to author Bur­ton Hersh, her father became obsessed with the world he had been so enmeshed in cre­at­ing. Wis­ner began talk­ing about his belief that Mar­tin Bor­mann, Hitler’s lead­ing hench­man, had escaped Berlin at the end of the war and reset­tled in Latin Amer­i­ca. ‘He was on a thing about this,’ Hersh quotes Wendy Wis­ner in his 1992 book The Old Boys, ‘that we should pool our sources and resources and get Bor­mann. He talked about the ‘mys­te­ri­ous and sin­is­ter fig­ure of Mar­tin Bor­mann.’ He wrote mil­lions of let­ters. If there real­ly was a CIA con­nec­tion to Bor­mann in South Amer­i­ca, who knows if he was­n’t feel­ing ter­ri­ble about it? If he’s start­ing to yell and scream about these Nazis, who in the CIA is start­ing to get wor­ried about it?” . . .

 

 

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