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

Intro­duc­tion: In our recent dis­cus­sions with Peter Lev­en­da, we dis­cussed the pro­found Nazi pres­ence in Indone­sia, before, dur­ing and after World War II. This pro­gram is set against the back­ground of those dis­cus­sions.

We begin with dis­cus­sion of the bloody Indone­sian coup of 1965.

The bloody 1965 coup against Sukarno is known to have been large­ly engi­neered by the CIA. By some accounts, the death toll reached 1,000,000, with the vic­tims includ­ing many lib­er­als, jour­nal­ists, artists, writ­ers and oth­ers viewed with dis­taste by the army.

A recent issue of Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy (which feeds along the bot­tom of the front page of the web­site) dis­clos­es that the BND–the Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice and the final incar­na­tion of the Gehlen spy outfit–played a major role in the coup, as well.

The appar­ent BND point man for the Fed­er­al Repub­lic’s role in the coup was Rudolf Oeb­s­ger-Roder, like so many Gehlen org offi­cers, a vet­er­an of the SS.

The slaugh­ter in Indone­sia proved alto­geth­er pleas­ing to Gehlen. ” . . . Reflect­ing back, BND founder Gehlen was prais­ing these crimes almost effu­sive­ly. “The sig­nif­i­cance of the Indone­sian army’s suc­cess, which ... pur­sued the elim­i­na­tion of the entire Com­mu­nist Par­ty with all con­se­quences and sever­i­ty, can­not — in my opin­ion — be appraised high­ly enough,” Gehlen wrote in his 1971 “Mem­oirs.” . . .”

A recent issue of Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy (which feeds along the bot­tom of the front page of the web­site) dis­clos­es that the BND–the Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice and the final incar­na­tion of the Gehlen spy outfit–played a major role in the coup, as well.

The appar­ent BND point man for the Fed­er­al Repub­lic’s role in the coup was Rudolf Oeb­s­ger-Roder, like so many Gehlen org offi­cers, a vet­er­an of the SS.

The slaugh­ter in Indone­sia proved alto­geth­er pleas­ing to Gehlen. ” . . . Reflect­ing back, BND founder Gehlen was prais­ing these crimes almost effu­sive­ly. “The sig­nif­i­cance of the Indone­sian army’s suc­cess, which ... pur­sued the elim­i­na­tion of the entire Com­mu­nist Par­ty with all con­se­quences and sever­i­ty, can­not — in my opin­ion — be appraised high­ly enough,” Gehlen wrote in his 1971 “Mem­oirs.” . . .”

“Bonn and the Putsch;” german-foreign-policy.com; 10/15/2015.

Ger­many’s Fed­er­al Intel­li­gence Ser­vice (BND) has been heav­i­ly involved in the 1965 mur­der­ous putsch in Indone­sia — the guest nation of this year’s Frank­furt Book Fair. This was con­firmed in secret doc­u­ments from the Bun­destag, the Ger­man Par­lia­ment. Accord­ing to BND Pres­i­dent at the time, Ger­hard Wes­sel’s man­u­script for a talk he deliv­ered to a ses­sion of the Bun­destag’s “Con­fi­den­tial Com­mit­tee” in June 1968, the BND did more than mere­ly sup­port the Indone­sian mil­i­tary in their blood-soaked “liq­ui­da­tion of the CPI” (Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Indone­sia) — result­ing in the mur­der of hun­dreds of thou­sands, pos­si­bly even mil­lions — with advi­sors, equip­ment and finances. Suhar­to, who sub­se­quent­ly took pow­er, had even attrib­uted a “large part ... of the suc­cess” of the oper­a­tion to the BND. Up to now, main­ly the US-Amer­i­can assis­tance to the putsch has been known. The putsch, and the more than 30 year-long dic­ta­tor­ship that fol­lowed — which also had been reli­ably pro­mot­ed by West Ger­many — are impor­tant themes being pre­sent­ed by Indone­sian writ­ers at this year’s Frank­furt Book Fair. To this day, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment has refused to allow an inves­ti­ga­tion of the BND’s sup­port for the putsch and the Indone­sian mil­i­tary’s exces­sive bru­tal­i­ty.

Hun­dreds of Thou­sands Dead

The Indone­sian putsch, bring­ing Maj. Gen. Haji Mohamed Suhar­to to pow­er in Jakar­ta, began in Octo­ber 1965 as a reac­tion to an attempt­ed coup d’é­tat, killing sev­er­al offi­cers on Sep­tem­ber 30. Suhar­to’s dic­ta­to­r­i­al reign last­ed until 1998. The attempt­ed coup was false­ly attrib­uted to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Indone­sia (CPI). Sub­se­quent­ly, the mil­i­tary launched exces­sive­ly bru­tal oper­a­tions against all gen­uine and sus­pect­ed mem­bers and sym­pa­thiz­ers of the com­mu­nist par­ty. Hun­dreds of thou­sands, pos­si­bly even mil­lions, were mur­dered; mil­lions were impris­oned. The exact num­ber is still unknown. The crimes com­mit­ted at the time by the mil­i­tary have nev­er real­ly been brought to light.

50 to 100 Vic­tims Each Night

One of the things nev­er brought to light is what sup­port west­ern pow­ers had giv­en to the Suhar­to putsch. US com­plic­i­ty, hav­ing had the best rela­tions to the Indone­sian armed forces, has, to some extent, already been exposed. Accord­ing to experts, for exam­ple, by 1965, around 4,000 Indone­sian offi­cers had been trained in US mil­i­tary instal­la­tions as well as high-rank­ing offi­cers hav­ing been trained in counter-insur­gency on the basis of US field man­u­als at Indone­si­a’s elite mil­i­tary institutes.[1] Decem­ber 2, 1965, the US ambas­sador gave his con­sent to pro­vid­ing finan­cial sup­port to the “Kap-Gestapu” move­ment, a move­ment — as he put it — “inspired by the army, even though com­prised of civil­ian action groups,” which “shoul­dered the task of the ongo­ing repres­sive mea­sures against Indone­si­a’s Com­mu­nist Party.”[2] The ambas­sador must have known what this would mean. Novem­ber 13, his employ­ees had passed on infor­ma­tion from the Indone­sian police indi­cat­ing, “between 50 and 100 mem­bers of the CPI in East­ern and Cen­tral Java were being killed each night.” April 15, the embassy had admit­ted, “it did not know if the actu­al num­ber” of mur­dered CPI activists “was not clos­er to 100,000 or 1,000,000.” In spite of the mass mur­der, the US ambas­sador in Jakar­ta report­ed back to Wash­ing­ton (August 10, 1966) that the author­i­ties in Jakar­ta had been pro­vid­ed a list of the lead­ing CPI members.[3]

“Reli­able Friend of Ger­many”

Agen­cies of the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment had also been involved in the putsch. The BND had sup­port­ed “Indone­si­a’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vice’s 1965 defeat of a left-wing putsch in Jakar­ta, with sub­ma­chine guns, short­wave radios and mon­ey (with a total val­ue of 300,000 DM),” report­ed “Der Spiegel” in March 1971.[4] Twelve weeks lat­er, the mag­a­zine added that “a com­man­do of BND men” had “trained mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vice oper­a­tives in Indone­sia” and “relieved their CIA col­leagues, who were under the heavy pres­sure of anti-Amer­i­can propaganda.”[5] By “sup­ply­ing Sovi­et rifles and Finnish ammu­ni­tion, the BND instruc­tors” were even actu­al­ly inter­ven­ing in that “civ­il war.” If one can believe the BND’s founder, Rein­hard Gehlen, Bonn, at the time, had the best con­tacts to lead­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers. In his “Mem­oirs,” pub­lished in 1971, Gehlen wrote, “two of Ger­many’s reli­able friends” were among the Indone­sian offi­cers, mur­dered Sep­tem­ber 30, includ­ing “the long­time and high­ly revered mil­i­tary attaché in Bonn, Brig. Gen. Pand­jai­tan.” Dur­ing the putsch, the BND was “in the for­tu­nate posi­tion of being able to pro­vide the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment with time­ly and detailed reports — from excel­lent sources — ... on the progress of those days, which had been so cru­cial for Indonesia.”[6]

An Excel­lent Res­i­dent

Oth­er indi­ca­tions have emerged from the research pub­lished by the expert of intel­li­gence ser­vices, Erich Schmidt-Een­boom and the polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, Matthias Ritzi. Their find­ings con­firmed that there was close coor­di­na­tion between the BND and CIA. In April 1961, BND head­quar­ters in Pul­lach had informed the US Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency that it had “an excel­lent Chief of Sta­tion” in Jakar­ta, writes Schmidt-Een­boom. The CIA thought the BND was refer­ring to Rudolf Oeb­s­ger-Röder, a for­mer colonel of the SS work­ing in the Reich Secu­ri­ty Cen­tral Office (Reichssicher­heit­shaup­tamt) in Nazi Ger­many, who joined West Ger­many’s Orga­ni­za­tion Gehlen in 1948 and was lat­er on post in Indone­sia, as a cor­re­spon­dent for the Süd­deutsche Zeitung and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.[7] The BND had main­tained Oeb­s­ger-Röder on its staff until the mid-’60s. In mid-Jan­u­ary 1964, a high-rank­ing CIA rep­re­sen­ta­tive paid Gehlen a vis­it and asked him how the West Ger­mans were han­dling the devel­op­ments in Indone­sia, explain Schmidt-Een­boom and Ritzi. Gehlen told him that he is keep­ing Bonn up-to-date, but does not yet know how the chan­cellery intends to pro­ceed.

“A Large Part BND”

The man­u­script for a talk BND Pres­i­dent Ger­hard Wes­sel pre­sent­ed June 21 1968 to the Bun­destag’s Con­fi­den­tial Com­mit­tee pro­vides more details. In the form of notes, Wes­sel gave “details of BND activ­i­ties” in sup­port of its Indone­sian part­ner ser­vice, explained Schmidt-Een­boom and Ritzi. Explic­it­ly the man­u­script explains that “the close ties already in place to the Indone­sian strate­gic ND (intel­li­gence ser­vice) by Octo­ber 1965, had facil­i­tat­ed sup­port (advi­sors, equip­ment, mon­ey) to Indone­si­a’s ND and its spe­cial mil­i­tary organs dur­ing the elim­i­na­tion of the CPI (and Sukarno’s dis­em­pow­er­ment — con­trol and sup­port of demonstrations).”[8] The “CPI’s elim­i­na­tion” includ­ed the assas­si­na­tion of hun­dreds of thou­sands of gen­uine and sus­pect­ed mem­bers and sym­pa­thiz­ers of the Indone­sian CP. Accord­ing to the man­u­script, BND Pres­i­dent Wes­sel con­tin­ued his speech to the Con­fi­den­tial Com­mit­tee, “in the opin­ion of Indone­sian politi­cians and mil­i­tary offi­cers ((Suhar­to, Nasu­tion, Sul­tan) a large part thanks to the BND.”

Praise from Pul­lach

Reflect­ing back, BND founder Gehlen was prais­ing these crimes almost effu­sive­ly. “The sig­nif­i­cance of the Indone­sian army’s suc­cess, which ... pur­sued the elim­i­na­tion of the entire Com­mu­nist Par­ty with all con­se­quences and sever­i­ty, can­not — in my opin­ion — be appraised high­ly enough,” Gehlen wrote in his 1971 “Memoirs.”[9]

Berlin’s Pri­or­i­ties

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment is still refus­ing to shed light on Ger­many’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in these crimes. In a par­lia­men­tary inter­pel­la­tion, the gov­ern­ment was asked if it has knowl­edge of “for­eign gov­ern­ments, intel­li­gence ser­vices or oth­er orga­ni­za­tions’ direct or indi­rect sup­port of the mas­sacres.” In Mai 2014, it respond­ed, “after a thor­ough assess­ment, the gov­ern­ment con­cludes that it can­not give an open answer.” It is “imper­a­tive” to keep the “request­ed infor­ma­tion” secret. The “pro­tec­tion of sources” is a “prin­ci­ple of pri­ma­ry impor­tance to the work of intel­li­gence services.”[10] For the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, the Indone­sian civ­il soci­ety’s need to have infor­ma­tion on for­eign sup­port for the immense mass mur­der is of less impor­tance than its “pro­tec­tion of sources.”

[1] Rain­er Wern­ing: Putsch nach “Pütschchen”. junge Welt 01.10.2015.
[2], [3] Rain­er Wern­ing: Der Archipel Suhar­to. In: Kon­flik­te auf Dauer? Osnabrück­er Jahrbuch Frieden und Wis­senschaft, her­aus­gegeben vom Ober­bürg­er­meis­ter der Stadt Osnabrück und dem Präsi­den­ten der Uni­ver­sität Osnabrück. Osnabrück 2008, S. 183–199.
[4] Her­mann Zolling, Heinz Höhne: Pul­lach intern. Der Spiegel 11/1971.
[5] Her­mann Zolling, Heinz Höhne: Pul­lach intern. Der Spiegel 23/1971.
[6] Rein­hard Gehlen: Der Dienst. Erin­nerun­gen 1942–1971. Mainz/Wiesbaden 1971.
[7], [8] Matthias Ritzi, Erich Schmidt-Een­boom: Im Schat­ten des Drit­ten Reich­es. Der BND und sein Agent Richard Christ­mann. Berlin 2011. See Review: Im Schat­ten des Drit­ten Reich­es.
[9] Rein­hard Gehlen: Der Dienst. Erin­nerun­gen 1942–1971. Mainz/Wiesbaden 1971.
[10] Antwort der Bun­desregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Abge­ord­neten Andrej Hunko, Jan van Aken, Sevim Dağde­len, weit­er­er Abge­ord­neter und der Frak­tion DIE LINKE. Deutsch­er Bun­destag Druck­sache 18/1554, 27.05.2014.

2. Next, we turn to an inter­roga­to­ry ele­ment, pre­sent­ed by the late Ter­ence McKen­na, an inves­ti­ga­tor of hal­lu­cino­genic drugs. (McKen­na died some years ago, and his papers–stored at the Esalen Institute–were destroyed in a fire. There can be no way of cor­rob­o­rat­ing this sto­ry.)

In past posts and pro­grams, we high­light­ed the Max Planck Insti­tutes, for­mer­ly the Kaiser Wil­helm Institutes–an epi­cen­ter of sci­en­tif­ic research for the Third Reich.

Here, we embark on a high­ly spec­u­la­tive, undoubt­ed­ly “open-end­ed” inquiry.

In a (pos­si­bly apoc­ryphal) chap­ter from a book about his world trav­els while research­ing psy­chotrop­ic drugs, Ter­ence McKen­na alleged­ly came in con­tact with a “Dr. Karl Heintz” in Kopang, in Tim­or (Indone­sia).

Alleged to be with an appar­ent Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work com­pa­ny called “Far East­ern Min­ing and Min­er­als, Inc.” based in Sin­ga­pore, “Heintz” relat­ed that he was the son of an SS offi­cer.

Relat­ing that his com­pa­ny was formed in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II, “Heintz” con­tends that the Max Planck Insti­tute was the epi­cen­ter of his “group’s” efforts at build­ing for the future.

Using patents devel­oped dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, they were inti­mate­ly bound up in the group’s vision for the future, using the twin pow­ers of cap­i­tal and sci­ence.

“Heintz” lat­er offered to shep­herd McKen­na dur­ing a pro­posed trip to the Ama­zon to research psy­chotrop­ic sub­stances. That pro­pos­al fell through.

Sev­er­al years lat­er, McKen­na alleges that he met “Heintz” at a sym­po­sium at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado, con­duct­ed under the aus­pices of the Max Planck Insti­tute. “Heintz” pre­tend­ed not to know McKen­na, despite obvi­ous­ly rec­og­niz­ing him and denied that he had ever been in Kupang (Timor–the site of their alleged meet­ing.)

IF this is a “True Hal­lu­ci­na­tion” and not just a “hal­lu­ci­na­tion,” this implies that the Max Planck Insti­tute is twinned with the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work as a work­ing pil­lar of the Under­ground Reich.

There is no way of ver­i­fy­ing, or dis­prov­ing this.

Inter­net search­es revealed that there was, indeed, a cruise ship called the Rot­ter­dam, com­mis­sioned in 1959. We found noth­ing of a “Krosnopol­s­ki” hotel in Rio de Janeiro, although the name may well have been changed, if there was such an enti­ty. Krosnopol­s­ki MAY refer to Gali­cia, in the Ukraine. Does that have any link to the “Galician”-14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion?

There is a Krasnopol­s­ki Hotel in Ams­ter­dam. (We note, in pass­ing, that Indone­sia had been a colony of the Nether­lands before World War II.)

There do appear to be one or more peo­ple named “Max Bock­er­mann,” although it is unclear if any are old enough to have been the World War II-era men­tors of “Heintz’ ” and com­pa­ny.

One inter­est­ing detail struck us. “Heintz” alleged that the chef at the “Krosnopol­s­ki Hotel” was his “father’s old cook.” We won­der if that refers to his father’s alleged ser­vice in the SS.

Obvi­ous­ly, we have no way of con­firm­ing or dis­prov­ing what McKen­na relates, and, frankly, hal­lu­cino­genic drugs and the peo­ple who use them are a long way from home for us.

Nonethe­less, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate if McKen­na’s tale is accu­rate. IF so, then the Max Planck Insti­tute would appear to be an impor­tant ele­ment of the Under­ground Reich, along­side the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann net­work.

True Hal­lu­ci­na­tions by Ter­ence McKen­na; Copy­right 1993 by Ter­ence McKen­na; Harp­er San Fran­cis­co; ISBN 0–06-250545–9; Chap­ter Title; “Waltz­ing the Enig­ma”.

. . . . “The man­ag­er here has told me of your bio­log­i­cal research­es on Tim­or. Allow me to intro­duce myself. I am Dr. Karl Heintz of Far East­ern Min­ing and Min­er­als, Inc.”

My relief was imme­di­ate. Obvi­ous­ly this guy was­n’t some kind of Inter­pol pork­er come to track me down. But he had the look. He was pow­er­ful­ly built with swept-back, iron-grey hair and strik­ing­ly intense eyes of glacial blue. He sport­ed a schmiss on his left cheek, a long, thin scar. I had nev­er seen a schmiss before but the cross­word puz­zle term sprang into my mind unbid­den. I won­dered if he had received it in the tra­di­tion­al man­ner, in a sword duel that is part of the haz­ings that used to go on in the uni­ver­si­ty fra­ter­ni­ties of Prus­sia.

“As we are the only guests here at Rama Hotel, may I invite you to join my wife and me for some schnapps? I am keen to hear your per­cep­tions con­cern­ing Tim­or.”

The town was too small for me to refuse grace­ful­ly. Had I said no we would have end­ed up at sep­a­rate tables in the same five-table restau­rant. I hat­ed the idea of spend­ing time with straight peo­ple but there seemed no decent way to escape.

Hear­ing him speak brought his wife into the small foy­er to join us. She made the deci­sion eas­i­er, though I was care­ful to guard my reac­tion of amaze­ment. Only a year or two old­er than myself, maybe twen­ty five, she was stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful, dark, sari-clad with huge fawn-like eyes, a gold nose ring, and many bracelets. In that trop­i­cal back­wa­ter her appear­ance was as unlike­ly as a fly­ing saucer; she was a vision of over­dressed Brah­man­ic per­fec­tion. Her name was Rani, and when she spoke her voice was cul­ti­vat­ed and musi­cal. Though she rarely spoke, her Eng­lish was bet­ter than his. This was no girl from the vil­lages. I con­fess that I was intrigued. What could I do but accom­pa­ny this pair? It was­n’t as though I had some­thing bet­ter to do.

Once we were seat­ed at the restau­rant with our quart bot­tles of Bin­tang beer in front of us, the con­ver­sa­tion began to flow and I start­ed to form an impres­sion of my com­pan­ions.

Dr. Heintz was, he said, a geol­o­gist with an out­fit in Sin­ga­pore. The year before, a sur­vey team had found evi­dence of a large deposit of nick­el that strad­dled the bor­der between Indone­sian and Por­tuguese Tim­or. He was there to con­firm their find­ings and to esti­mate the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a min­ing oper­a­tion. That seemed straight­for­ward enough, although there were ref­er­ences to a set of instru­ments that could some­how deter­mine the true size of the deposit. I knew very lit­tle of prospect­ing tech­nol­o­gy, but a device that could see hun­dreds of feet into the ground sound­ed far­fetched to me.

I gen­tly inquired about the lan­guage that I had heard them both speak­ing, think­ing this would lead him on to dis­cussing his wife. It turned out to be a favorite sub­ject of his. She was, he told me while she mere­ly sat and watched us both, a grand­daugh­ter of the Maha­rani of Maha­rash­tra. It seemed that Heintz had been in the mar­ket for a few hun­dred acres of prime Maha­rash­tran agri­cul­tur­al land and the old Maha­rani had a par­cel that she was will­ing to cut loose. This had lead to Heintz meet­ing Rani. Before the deal was closed, it was clear that a wed­ding would soon fol­low. He waxed elo­quent over the joys of trac­tor farm­ing in India, how he was real­ly a very sim­ple man, the joys of watch­ing the growth of a new crop, and so on. He was quite a raver, and I was con­tent to let him spin it all out. It seemed that he was a kind of vice-pres­i­dent in charge of oper­a­tions for the min­ing con­cern, a kind of trou­ble shoot­er real­ly. He ordered anoth­er beer and told a sto­ry about being ambushed by guer­ril­las dur­ing the start up of a big tin extrac­tion oper­a­tion in north­ern Thai­land. At the sto­ry’s cli­max he stood and lift­ed his shirt to dis­play for my edi­fi­ca­tion three neat scars across his chest. From a machine gun, he said.

“Any one of them could have killed me out­right. But no! I was pre­served, and the tri­umph of our com­pa­ny’s project was com­plete.”

Describ­ing the start up of a tin mine as a tri­umph seemed a bit overblown to me, but it was clear that I was in the pres­ence of one intense dude.

Hard­ly paus­ing he moved on to the time in Tan­za­nia when he alone, bare chest­ed and unarmed except for an axe, had strode into a crowd of six thou­sand angry work­ers dur­ing a strike at a baux­ite oper­a­tion. Mod­est he was not, but the sto­ries were well told and com­pelling. And stan­dards for din­ner con­ver­sa­tion in the warm trop­ics leave room for the self-aggran­diz­ing trav­el­er’s tale.

Even­tu­al­ly he turned his atten­tion to the com­pa­ny that he worked for. “FEMMI is no ordi­nary com­pa­ny, Herr McKen­na, please be assured of that. No. We are like a fam­i­ly. This is the source of our strength. And we have plans for the future. Very big plans.” I only nod­ded, think­ing it best not to inform him that I con­sid­ered large min­ing cor­po­ra­tions the scourge of the earth. But this devo­tion to his cor­po­ra­tion was no casu­al mat­ter, and he seemed unable to leave the sub­ject alone.

“Nowhere on earth is there a more close­ly knit and ded­i­cat­ed group than are we. We are bound like com­rades in arms. Each mem­ber of the core man­age­ment group is a genius in his or her own right.” He pro­nounced genius like “tche­nius.” “And why is that you must won­der? Ach, I am telling you why. It is because we, each one of us, has known the hor­ror of pri­va­tion, the depths of despair, and the glo­ri­ous feel­ing that comes from over­com­ing these things. We are unit­ed in our tri­umph, Herr McKen­na, and the sense of inevitable con­quest of dif­fi­cul­ty has made us invin­ci­ble!” At this last word, his voice rose and his fist descend­ed to the flim­sy table with such force that our quart bot­tles of Bin­tang jumped in reply.

See­ing my uncer­tain response, he con­tin­ued. “You are amazed to hear this, I see. Maybe you are ask­ing what pri­va­tions, what dif­fi­cul­ties? It is like this: we all lived through the Hitler times and the war. Ger­many was noth­ing after the war. There was not one stone upon anoth­er in my Berlin. In the ruins of Europe we were like cock­roach­es. May I tell you that the bank accounts of all the SS fam­i­lies were frozen. My moth­er, my poor aris­to­crat­ic moth­er, was reduced to sell­ing paint­ings from our estate in order to buy pota­toes to feed her­self and my younger sis­ter. Imag­ine this!”

“Oh no,” I thought, “Not Nazis. Is this guy telling me he was a Nazi?” I fought to get my look of hor­ror under con­trol, but now he was on a roll and seemed to take no notice.

“My father was cap­tured by the Rus­sians dur­ing the bat­tle for Berlin. He was hung like a dog in Moscow for war crimes. Can you imag­ine?

Ver­dammen Russ­ian schweinen talk­ing about war crimes? For all the SS it was like that.”

This con­ver­sa­tion was like a bad dream or a B‑movie. I looked over at his com­pan­ion who returned my gaze with utter impas­siv­i­ty. It seemed impor­tant to deflect the con­ver­sa­tion if only even slight­ly. “And you, Herr Heintz, what of your role in all of this?”

He shrugged. “I was a mere noth­ing. A Messer­schmidt pilot in the Luft­waffe. A good Ger­man only.” This last was said with­out a trace of irony. “Before the war I was a young engi­neer­ing stu­dent. The war changed every­thing. After the war, a few of us, my fel­low, young schol­ars from the Max Planck Insti­tute, gath­ered in the ruins of Berlin. We were fin­ished with ide­ol­o­gy, with the grand polit­i­cal dreams.”

This was the first good news in a while. I grate­ful­ly sig­naled the Indone­sian wait­er for anoth­er round of beer while Heintz con­tin­ued: “We were a small group, piti­ful real­ly, but unit­ed by our revul­sion at the hor­ror all around us. We deter­mined to build a new world for our­selves, a world based on two prin­ci­ples, two great pow­ers, the pow­er of cap­i­tal and the pow­er of sci­ence. We began slow­ly, with patents, process­es that had been dis­cov­ered at the Planck Insti­tute dur­ing the war, trade secrets real­ly. Care­ful­ly we expand­ed on this, we estab­lished our­selves in Sin­ga­pore. There was not a shoe­mak­er among us. Each mem­ber of our small team was a genius. Our furher was a pro­fes­sor who had trained us all, a true genius. His name was Max Bock­er­mann. It was he who held us togeth­er; it was his faith and strength that made it all pos­si­ble.”

The schmiss on his cheek had turned bright red at this turn of the con­ver­sa­tion. I had hoped that there were no fur­ther depths of dis­com­fi­ture to be plumbed in this con­ver­sa­tion but I was wrong, for now I saw that he was mov­ing, per­haps under the influ­ence of the third quart of Bin­tang, from pas­sion­ate inten­si­ty to out­right maudlin sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. “No man has ever loved anoth­er as Bock­er­mann loved us. We are his kinder, his lit­tle birds, ja. When it seemed that there was no hope he inspired us; he made us believe in our­selves.”

Tears rose in his eyes at this, then he seemed to regain his self con­trol and con­tin­ued. “And what is the result? FEMMI, Herr McKen­na, Far East Min­ing and Min­er­als Incor­po­rat­ed. We have grown and pros­pered. From our offices in Sin­ga­pore we con­trol projects in eleven coun­tries.

Oil, nick­el, tin, baux­ite, uranium—we have it all. But we have more, we have love, com­pan­ion­ship, com­mu­ni­ty, and the pow­er to make our dreams come true.” At this he broke stride and reached over to put his hand on the thigh of the woman beside him. I looked away.

When I returned to his depth­less blue gaze his mood had changed. “But what about your­self, Herr McKen­na. It is clear that you are lead­ing the gyp­sy life.” He pro­nounced the word gyp­sy like chip­sy. “And we gyp­sies always have our sto­ries to tell. So what about you?”

I swal­lowed hard. He did­n’t look like the sort of per­son who would appre­ci­ate my sto­ries of fight­ing the police at the Berke­ley bar­ri­cades. . . .

. . . . “Last night you spoke of your ambi­tions to vis­it the Ama­zon. This is a com­mend­able dream. But believe me, I know the Ama­zon well, a jun­gle the size of a con­ti­nent; it is not like these islands here. Here you do well to stay with the priests and to make your expe­di­tions, one week, two weeks into the for­est. But in Ama­zon to do seri­ous work you will have to sus­tain your­self in the field for per­haps months. You will need a boat, equip­ment, bear­ers. Believe me, I know. It is not for shoe­mak­ers. There­fore I make you a pro­pos­al. You have said your work is near­ly com­plet­ed here, that you are going soon to Japan to earn mon­ey for South Amer­i­ca. Give up this plan and do instead the fol­low­ing.

FEMMI, as it turns out, has a deep inter­est in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon. Two years ago I was part of a resource assess­ment team that made some inter­est­ing dis­cov­er­ies. As it hap­pens we are send­ing our peo­ple back for a seri­ous sec­ond look. Our teams are thir­teen in num­ber and some of these are nat­ur­al sci­en­tists such as your­self. The new team is near­ly formed but Bock­er­mann, if he approves of you, would accept my rec­om­men­da­tion that you join the team as the thir­teenth mem­ber. You will be well paid, and our expec­ta­tions are only that you would com­plete the mono­graph that you have already planned. You see, by hav­ing sci­en­tists with us we can write off part of our tax lia­bil­i­ty, and any­how we are believ­ers in the worth of pure sci­ence. This plan must be cleared with Sin­ga­pore, but if they agree then you would go there near­ly imme­di­ate­ly.

You would meet Bock­er­mann. We give you den­tal check up, com­plete phys­i­cal, new eye­glass­es, two weeks of ten­nis to get you phys­i­cal­ly in shape. The cruise lin­er Rot­ter­dam will call in Sin­ga­pore in one month. We will ship three speed­boats spe­cial­ly out­fit­ted, all our equip­ment, and the team on the Rot­ter­dam. In Rio you will con­tin­ue train­ing two weeks at the Krosnopol­s­ki Hotel, where they have excel­lent ten­nis courts. And I tell you some­thing else, my father’s old cook is the chef there! We fat­ten you up some and then we give you your dream of the Ama­zon. Well, what do you say?” He sat back, evi­dent­ly very pleased with him­self. . . .

. . . . A full page had been reserved to announce that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado, in asso­ci­a­tion with the Max Planck Insti­tute for Neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy, would co-spon­sor the next meet­ing of the World Con­gress of the Neu­ro­sciences. . . .

. . . . As my eyes roved over the crowd, I sud­den­ly expe­ri­enced some­thing very close to a phys­i­cal jolt. There, less than fifty feet away from me and near­ly direct­ly across the inter­ven­ing open space, sat Dr. Karl Heintz! I felt absolute amaze­ment. Heintz! Here! Could it be? Some­how I must have betrayed my agi­ta­tion to him, for as I watched in near dis­be­lief I saw him move his hand to the pock­et of his jack­et and with a fault­less­ly smooth motion remove his name tag and drop it into his pock­et. He did not even inter­rupt the ani­mat­ed Ger­man con­ver­sa­tion he was car­ry­ing on with the per­son sit­ting to his right.

I looked away, try­ing to pre­tend that I was unaware of him, had noticed noth­ing. The house lights dimmed and Man­fred Eigen, mag­nif­i­cent with his swept back shock of white hair, began his lec­ture. My mind raced. Was it all true then? Here he was! This was a Planck Insti­tute event. It must all be true. . . .

. . . . As the applause died down and the lights went up, peo­ple began to move toward the exits. Heintz was about fifty feet away talk­ing ani­mat­ed­ly to a cou­ple of rather toad-like col­leagues. But I could see that he was watch­ing me, and as I began to approach he excused him­self and began to move toward me. It was trans­par­ent­ly clear to me that this maneu­ver was exe­cut­ed to make cer­tain that we would be alone and our con­ver­sa­tion unheard when we met. I moved direct­ly into his oncom­ing path.

“Dr. Heintz. I believe that we met on Tim­or.” I extend­ed my hand.

Ignor­ing my out­stretched hand, he smiled broad­ly, but the schmiss per­cep­ti­bly red­dened. “Heintz? Heintz? My name is not Heintz. And I have nev­er been in Kupang.”

Then he turned quick­ly and rejoined his depart­ing col­leagues, adding to their ani­mat­ed assess­ment of Eigen’s per­for­mance. The word “Kupang” rang in my ears. The bas­tard was rub­bing my nose in it! . . . .

3. In Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile, Paul Man­ning writes that SS offi­cers who had served after the war at “Kolonie Waldner”–the Bor­mann com­pound in the Three Bor­ders Area, were fed by for­mer SS mess chefs. Is this what “Heintz” was dis­cussing with McKen­na?

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile by Paul Man­ning; p. 214.

. . . . A bowl­ing alley down one side of the hangar pro­vid­ed about the only recre­ation, but the SS men I inter­viewed said that the best Ger­man cook­ing in the world was pro­vid­ed by for­mer SS mess sergeants, and that this was an incom­pa­ra­ble fea­ture of the din­ing room. . . .

4. More about the Max Planck Insti­tute: (It was orig­i­nal­ly called the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute and was fund­ed by the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion, in con­sid­er­able mea­sure.) A major epi­cen­ter of Nazi sci­ence, it was the aca­d­e­m­ic foun­da­tion for Josef Men­gele’s ghast­ly Auschwitz exper­i­ments on twins.

In the 1950 Madrid cir­cu­lar let­ter craft­ed by the Nazi gov­ern­ment in exile, we find rein­forc­ing argu­ment that the Max Planck Insti­tute remained an epi­cen­ter for sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment for the Under­ground Reich.

The entire text of the Madrid cir­cu­lar is avail­able on pp. 209–232 of Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin.

Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin by T.H. Tetens; Hen­ry Schu­man [HC]; 1953; p. 231.

 . . . . Though we are pow­er­less at present, we have nonethe­less nev­er per­mit­ted our­selves to be dis­armed spir­i­tu­al­ly and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly. Ger­man schol­ars are work­ing unremit­ting­ly in Ger­many as well as abroad on great sci­en­tif­ic plans for the future. Favor­able cir­cum­stances enabled us to keep alive the great research orga­ni­za­tion of the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute through a change of name. First-class sci­en­tists are work­ing in the fields of inter­plan­e­tary nav­i­ga­tion (“Raum­schiff fahrt”), chem­istry and on cos­mic rays. Our sci­en­tists, unham­pered in their work, have suf­fi­cient time and are plan­ning day and night for Ger­many’s future. It is the Ger­man spir­it (“Geist”) that cre­ates mod­ern weapons and that will bring sur­pris­ing changes in the present rela­tion­ship of forces. . . .