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

For The Record  

FTR # 914 and FTR #915; Interviews with Gerrard Williams (#‘s 1 and 2), Co-Author of “Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler”

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 ear­ly win­ter of 2016. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more.)  (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012.)

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE.

FTR #914 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR #915 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Grey Wolf

Intro­duc­tion: Both inter­views with Ger­rard Williams, the co-author of Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, are cov­ered by this descrip­tion and the respec­tive audio files are embed­ded here as well. The broad­casts high­light some of the rela­tion­ships among pow­er­ful insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als that are fun­da­men­tal to the analy­sis of the flight of “Der Fuehrer.”

The book is a detailed, schol­ar­ly work­ing hypoth­e­sis by authors Simon Dun­stan and Ger­rard Williams con­cern­ing the pos­si­ble escape of Adolf Hitler at the end of World War II. (Note that the authors began this inves­ti­ga­tion as an explo­ration of some­thing they con­sid­ered to be no more than a “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry” and wound up being an in-depth analy­sis and inves­ti­ga­tion. They view the escape as a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty.)

A pre­vi­ous pro­gram deal­ing with the book is FTR #791. The mate­r­i­al in these pro­grams over­laps that pro­gram and descrip­tion.

The authors posit that the key play­ers in the real­iza­tion of Aktion Feurland–the code-name for the oper­a­tion facil­i­tat­ing Hitler’s escape to Patag­o­nia, Argenti­na (“Tier­ra del Fuego”)–were names well known to reg­u­lar lis­ten­ers and users of this web­site: Allen Dulles on the Allied side and Mar­tin Bor­mann for the Third Reich. (The authors give great cre­dence to Paul Man­ning’s work and ref­er­ence it heav­i­ly.)

Cen­tered on a quid pro quo arrange­ment, the authors hypoth­e­size that Aktion Feur­land involved the trans­fer of Nazi tech­nol­o­gy to the U.S. and the West (known as Project Paper­clip) and the sav­ing of price­less works of art from destruc­tion. In return, Dulles et al guar­an­teed the safe pas­sage of Hitler, Eva Braun, SS Gen­er­al Her­mann Fegelein (Braun’s broth­er in law), Gen­er­al Hein­rich Muller (head of the Gestapo) and Bor­mann him­self.

The deal at the core of Aktion Feuer­land is to be seen against the trans-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions that were cen­tral to the pros­e­cu­tion of the Axis war of aggres­sion. “. . . . The car­tels cre­at­ed in the after­maths of World War I and the Great Depres­sion were now more pow­er­ful than many gov­ern­ments, and these inter­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions were so deeply inter­twined that nation­al iden­ti­ty became increas­ing­ly opaque. This would be a major fac­tor in the lat­er Ger­man exe­cu­tion, under the direc­tion of Mar­tin Bor­mann, of Aktion Feuerland–Project Land of Fire. . . .”

As an attor­ney for Sul­li­van & Cromwell, Allen Dulles was deeply involved with the trea­son by Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, the imple­men­ta­tion of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven pro­pelled Dulles toward Bor­mann. Safe­haven was the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­men­t’s unsuc­cess­ful attempt to inter­dict the Nazi flight cap­i­tal pro­gram over­seen by Bor­mann.

As chief of the Berne (Switzer­land) sta­tion of the OSS (Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence ser­vice), he was in a unique posi­tion. Tar­get­ed by U.S. and British intel­li­gence and fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of indict­ment for vio­lat­ing the Trad­ing with the Ene­my Act, Dulles found com­mon cause with Bor­mann and the Third Reich:

“. . . . How­ev­er, this effort required the coop­er­a­tion of OSS agents already on the ground, and in Switzer­land this was problematical–since one of the sus­pects of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven was Allen Dulles him­self, because of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven was Allen Dulles him­self, because of his exten­sive cor­po­rate con­nec­tions and his links with var­i­ous Nazi groups. Despite this dif­fi­cul­ty, the inves­ti­ga­tion nec­es­sar­i­ly focused on the gold deal­ings under­tak­en by Swiss banks. This became of major con­cern to Swiss ambas­sador Brug­gmann once he learned of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven through his indis­creet broth­er-in-law, Vice Pres­i­dent Hen­ry Wal­lace. The expo­sure of the explic­it links between Swiss banks and Nazi Ger­many would be a major poten­tial embar­rass­ment to the Swiss gov­ern­ment once the war was over; accord­ing­ly, the Swiss Secret Ser­vice alert­ed Allen Dulles about the Safe­haven inves­ti­ga­tion into his affairs. . . .

. . . . Dulles was also tar­get­ed by Ger­man intel­li­gence, includ­ing an elite Luft­waffe code-break­ing unit des­ig­nat­ed Luft­fahrt­forschungsamt (Luft­waffe radio inter­cept unit). When Abwehr agents learned of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven through their agent Habakuk, they set about frus­trat­ing its efforts, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Switzer­land, where it was poten­tial­ly most dan­ger­ous to the ongo­ing Ger­man cap­i­tal trans­fers. The Abwehr agents passed the word to Dulles that both the British and the Amer­i­cans were inter­cept­ing his communications–as they them­selves had been, but would now no longer be able to, thanks to their reveal­ing their hand in this way. They, too, told Dulles that he was a sub­ject of inves­ti­ga­tion by the Trea­sury Depart­ment through Oper­a­tion Safe­haven. He imme­di­ate­ly changed his encryp­tion meth­ods to the more secure “one-time pad” sys­tem and from then on his mes­sage traf­fic remained secure. Tran­scrib­ing the mes­sages from the Ver­nam cipher is a labo­ri­ous hand­writ­ten process, hence Dulles’s need for the cipher is a labo­ri­ous hand­writ­ten process, hence Dulles’s need for the ser­vices of interned USAAF per­son­nel for encryp­tion.

Dulles also exposed Hen­ry Wal­lace as the source of the rev­e­la­tion of both the Mor­gen­thau Plan and Oper­a­tion Safe­haven to Ambas­sador Brug­gman and ulti­mate­ly to the Ger­mans. Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt had no choice but to ditch Wal­lace and nom­i­nate the sen­a­tor from Mis­souri, Har­ry S. Tru­man, as his can­di­date for vice pres­i­dent in the upcom­ing Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. As a com­mit­ted oppo­nent of com­mu­nism, Tru­man was far more accept­able to Dulles. . . .”

By stag­ing a diver­sion in which a U‑boat wolf pack was alleged­ly going to bom­bard New York and the Amer­i­can East Coast with V‑1 rock­ets filled with Sarin nerve gas, Amer­i­can anti-sub­ma­rine naval forces were drawn to the north, facil­i­tat­ing the escape of the Hitler par­ty via a south­ern route.

The trans­fer of Hitler to Latin Amer­i­ca was pred­i­cat­ed on the estab­lish­ment of an exten­sive Ger­man-friend­ly infra­struc­ture in Argenti­na and else­where. In addi­tion to Ger­man com­mer­cial inter­ests in Argenti­na, there was a vibrant Nazi par­ty in Argenti­na, which was ruled for much of the peri­od in ques­tion, by Juan Domin­go Per­on, a fas­cist and Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er.

His wife, Eva “Evi­ta” Per­on, had  been a Nazi spy pri­or to mar­ry­ing Per­on and became a key ele­ment of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work after the war. “. . . . Mar­tin Bor­mann, as always, was entire­ly clear-sight­ed, and dur­ing that year he put in hand his plan to pre­pare and fund that refuge–Aktion Feur­land. The Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers in Argenti­na enjoyed a vir­tu­al­ly free rein, con­tin­u­ing to oper­ate schools with Nazi sym­bols and ide­ol­o­gy and meet­ing reg­u­lar­ly (although by 1943, not as pub­licly as before), but the key con­spir­a­tors were few–a group lim­it­ed to peo­ple Bor­mann had rea­son to trust. These includ­ed a clique of pow­er­ful, venal bankers and indus­tri­al­ists such as Lud­wig Freude; a charis­mat­ic ambi­tious army offi­cer, Juan Domin­go Per­on; and a beau­ti­ful, intel­li­gent acress, Eva Duarte. . . . . . . . Lud­wig Freude’s and Eva Duar­te’s involve­ment in the smug­gling oper­a­tion was made clear in an Argen­tine police doc­u­ment of April 18, 1945. This detailed the oper­a­tions of Freude, “agent of the Third Reich,” and his deal­ings with an Argen­tine agent, “Natalio.” This infor­mant report­ed that Freude had made very sub­stan­tial deposits in var­i­ous Buenos Aires banks in the name of the “well-known radio-the­atri­cal actress Maria Eva Duarte.” Freude told Natalio that on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1945, a U‑boat had brought huge funds to help in the recon­struc­tion of the Nazi empire. Sub­se­quent police inves­ti­ga­tions revealed that cas­es from the U‑boat with the woreds Geheime Reichssache (“Reich Top Secret”) sten­ciled on them, had been tak­en to a Lahusen ranch run by two “Nazi broth­ers, just out­side Buenos Aires.” Deposits of gold and var­i­ous cur­ren­cies were lat­er made in Eva’s name at the Ban­co Ale­man Transat­lanti­co, Ban­co Ger­man­i­co, and Ban­co Torn­quist. . . .

In fol­low-up dis­cus­sion in FTR #915, the car­rots and sticks mul­ti­ply: the inclu­sion of the Gehlen spy orga­ni­za­tion into West­ern intel­li­gence was a dif­fer­ent “car­rot,” while the poten­tial of the Were­wolf gueril­la orga­ni­za­tion was anoth­er poten­tial “stick,” which–had it been acti­vat­ed beyond the lim­it­ed scope that it was–could have been a major thorn in the Allies’ occu­pa­tion forces.

One of the ele­ments of dis­cus­sion in FTR #915 con­cerns the re-insti­tu­tion of Nazi ele­ments in Ger­many after the war, who remained under the direc­tion of Mar­tin Bor­mann and a Third Reich gone under­ground. The pri­ma­ry posi­tion of Hans Globke in the “new” Ger­man gov­ern­ment, the role of the Vat­i­can in estab­lish­ing the Rat­lines through which so many Nazis escaped and the Nau­mann coup of 1953 are reviewed and expand­ed.

In par­tic­u­lar, FTR #915 high­lights the role of the cap­i­tal suc­cess­ful­ly secret­ed abroad by Bor­mann in the Ger­man eco­nom­ic “mir­a­cle” after the war.

Of para­mount impor­tance is the authors’ belief that the Nazis ran the Cold War, a the­sis we have been advanc­ing for some time. The Nazi and SS com­po­si­tion of the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion is a major fea­ture of this analy­sis.

In con­clu­sion, there are a num­ber of ele­ments of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence point­ing toward Hitler’s suc­cess­ful escape. Note that doc­u­ments from the late 1940’s on Hitler and his pos­si­ble escape and where­abouts at that time are STILL clas­si­fied, the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry after the end of World War II.

Stal­in and Gen­er­al Zhukov (the Red Army’s top gen­er­al) did­n’t believe that Hitler was dead. Gen­er­al Dwight D. Eisen­how­er was deeply skep­ti­cal, as well.

Some of Ger­rard Williams’s asso­ciates involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion have received death threats. WHY would any­one receive death threats for involve­ment in a friv­o­lous dis­sem­i­na­tion of “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry”? Note that an ear­li­er post about the threats con­tained an error. Nei­ther Simon Dun­stan nor Ger­rard Williams received the threats–associates of theirs in Ger­many and Latin Amer­i­ca were the tar­gets of the hos­til­i­ty.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

  • The roles of Admi­ral Wil­helm Canaris and Gen­er­al Wil­helm von Fau­pel in cre­at­ing the Ger­man infra­struc­ture in Latin Amer­i­ca that proved so vital to Aktion Feuer­land and the oth­er oper­a­tions of the Bor­mann net­work and the Under­ground Reich.
  • In dis­cus­sion of the Nau­mann coup attempt of 1953, Ger­rard notes that Bor­mann did not feel that an above-ground, ban­ner-wav­ing “Fourth Reich” as envi­sioned by the con­spir­a­tors was the most intel­li­gent course of action. Bor­mann felt it best that the Reich remain “Under­ground” and behind the scenes, rather than flaunt­ing its pres­ence so soon after the end of hos­til­i­ties. Bor­mann, him­self, may well have betrayed the Nau­mann con­spir­a­tors to the British.
  • The order by Juan Per­on to dis­con­tin­ue all coastal patrols off Argenti­na when Hitler’s arrival via sub­ma­rine was antic­i­pat­ed.
  • The bru­tal elim­i­na­tion of some of Per­on’s asso­ciates, who had been attempt­ing to extort the Bor­mann net­work for a larg­er “slice of the pie.” “. . . . How­ev­er, the Bor­man “Orga­ni­za­tion” had a keen mem­o­ry. After the spring of 1948, when Muller based him­self in Cor­do­ba and became direct­ly respon­si­ble for the secu­ri­ty of the Orga­ni­za­tion, the bankers who had betrayed Bor­mann would begin to suf­fer a string of untime­ly deaths. Hein­rich Doerge died mys­te­ri­ous­ly in 1949; in Decem­ber 1950, Ricar­do von Leute was found dead in a Buenos Aires street, and Ricar­do Staudt would sur­vive him by only a few months. Lud­wig Freude him­self, the king­pin of Aktion Feur­land in Argenti­na, died in 1952 from drink­ing a poi­soned cup of cof­fee, and Evi­ta’s younger broth­er Juan Duarte met his end in 1954 with a gun­shot to the head. Offi­cial­ly, he was said to have com­mit­ted sui­cide. . . . .”
  • Dis­cus­sion of the Eich­horns, who were cen­tral to Hitler’s activ­i­ties in Patag­o­nia after the war and had been sup­port­ing Hitler finan­cial­ly since the ear­ly 1920’s.
  • Dis­cus­sion of Che Gue­vara’s father, an anti-Nazi activist.
  • The fact that Hitler’s name “Adolf” was from Old Ger­man for “noble wolf.”
  • The Nazi sym­pa­thies of Eleanor Dulles, the sis­ter of Allen and John Fos­ter Dulles.
  • Numer­ous accounts in the main­stream press of Hitler pos­si­bly hav­ing escaped to Latin Amer­i­ca.
  • The role of British intel­li­gence offi­cer Ian Flem­ing (lat­er author of the James Bond nov­els) in secur­ing both art works and advanced mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy involved in the deal under­ly­ing Aktion Feuer­land.
  • The role of design­er cloth­ing man­u­fac­tur­er Hugo Boss in mak­ing uni­forms for the SS and oth­er branch­es of the Nazi gov­ern­ment.
  • The role of Spain as a stag­ing place for the U‑boat escape of Hitler.
  • Oper­a­tion Bern­hard, the Nazi forg­ing of pound notes and dol­lars and the role of the coun­ter­feit cur­ren­cy in the post­war Nazi oper­a­tions.
  • Pres­sure from right-wing Ger­man sources on the authors to sup­press their inves­ti­ga­tion.
  • The fak­ing of the “DNA test” sup­pos­ed­ly con­firm­ing Bor­man­n’s death at the end of the war: The DNA sam­ple was tak­en from a then 86-year-old alleged­ly dis­tant rel­a­tive of Bor­man­n’s, who his chil­dren (still alive at the time) had nev­er heard of; the fact that the orig­i­nal 1972 “dis­cov­ery” of Bor­man­n’s remains was over­seen by a vet­er­an of the Nazi par­ty; the fact that the “Bor­mann remains” were destroyed after the test, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to ver­i­fy the results.

1a. In high Ger­man, “Adolf” is the word for “wolf.”

Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by Simon Dun­stan and Ger­rard Williams; Ster­ling [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by Simon Dun­stan, Ger­rard Williams and Spit­fire Recov­ery Ltd.; ISBN 978–1‑4027–8139‑1; p. xxx1.

. . . The name Adolf derives from the Old High Ger­man for “noble wolf.” From ear­ly on, Adolf Hitler used the nom de guerre of Wolf. It was a title he used through­out his life. His first mis­tress, Mitzi Reit­er, called him Wolf and it was as Herr Wolf that he was intro­duced to Eva Braun. To inti­mates such as the Wag­n­er fam­i­ly, heirs of com­pos­er Richard Wag­n­er, he was known as Uncle Wolf. As Hitler became more famous, he had the sur-name of his younger sis­ter Paula changed to Wolf so that she could live qui­et­ly in Vien­na while run­ning an arts and crafts shop; she was buried as Paula Wolf at Bercht­es­gaden when she died in 1960. Hitler’s yache was called See­wolf (Sea Wolf) and his per­son­al plane Fliegende Wolf (Fly­ing Wolf). His field head­quar­ters in East Prus­sia was the Wolf­schanze (Wolf’s Lair): in the Ukraine it was Wehrwolf (Were­wolf), while for the bat­tle for France, it was the Wolf­ss­chlucht (Wolf’s Gorge). Among the most potent of Hitler’s weapons dur­ing World War II were the wolf packs of U‑boats that preyed on Allied ship­ping. U‑boats them­selves were known as grey wolves and it was in one of them from a wolf pack code-named Gruppe See­wolf that Hitler escaped to Argenti­na, where he spent his declin­ing years as the prover­bial Grey Wolf. . . .

1b. The authors posit that the key play­ers in the real­iza­tion of Aktion Feurland–the code-name for the oper­a­tion facil­i­tat­ing Hitler’s escape to Patag­o­nia, Argenti­na (“Tier­ra del Fuego”)–were names well known to reg­u­lar lis­ten­ers and users of this web­site: Allen Dulles on the Allied side and Mar­tin Bor­mann for the Third Reich. (The authors give great cre­dence to Paul Man­ning’s work and ref­er­ence it heav­i­ly.)

Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by Simon Dun­stan and Ger­rard Williams; Ster­ling [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by Simon Dun­stan, Ger­rard Williams and Spit­fire Recov­ery Ltd.; ISBN 978–1‑4027–8139‑1; p. xxx.

. . . . To the end, Bor­mann was deter­mined to save the loot­ed wealth of Ger­many for his own nefar­i­ous ends and to sus­tain a select band of Nazis fol­low­ing mil­i­tary defeat and the fall of Berlin. Mas­sive funds were chan­neled abroad, while large stash­es of bul­lion and stolen art­works were hid­den under­ground in deep mines across the Third Reich. These were primed with explo­sives for demo­li­tion, which Bor­mann con­sid­ered prefer­able to allow­ing them to fall into the hands of the Bol­she­vik hordes. But to Bor­mann, the art­works were also a bar­gain­ing tool. It seems evi­dent that Bor­mann offered the OSS a Faus­t­ian pact: the fruits of one thou­sand years of West­ern art, togeth­er with the secrets of Nazi Ger­many’s advanced mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy in exchange for the escape of one man–Adolf Hitler. The alter­na­tive was the total destruc­tion of the jew­els of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. This was the key to Aktion Feur­land. The deal was done and on the night of April 28, 1945, the plan was put into place. The Grey Wolf was on the run. . . .

2. Cen­tered on a quid pro quo arrange­ment, the authors hypoth­e­size that Aktion Feur­land involved the trans­fer of Nazi tech­nol­o­gy to the U.S. and the West (known as Project Paper­clip) and the sav­ing of price­less works of art from destruc­tion. In return, Dulles et al guar­an­teed the safe pas­sage of Hitler, Eva Braun, SS Gen­er­al Her­mann Fegelein (Braun’s broth­er in law), Gen­er­al Hein­rich Muller (head of the Gestapo) and Bor­mann him­self.

Ibid. pp. 133–134.

. . . . In Bor­man­n’s char­ac­ter­is­tic style–the car­rot and the stick–Kaltenbrunner and [SS Lt. Col. Hans Hel­mut von] Hum­mel indi­cat­ed to Dulles that Bor­mann was will­ing to pro­vide the Allies, as an induce­ment or “car­rot,” with infor­ma­tion as to the where­abouts of all the Nazi loot­ed art. It would be hand­ed over intact, togeth­er with the nation­al trea­sure of Ger­many, includ­ing its gold deposits, cur­ren­cy reserves, bear­er bonds, and indus­tri­al patents–except, of course, for the sub­stan­tial part of this trea­sure that Bor­mann had already secret­ed abroad. An addi­tion­al and supreme­ly attrac­tive car­rot was Bor­man­n’s under­tak­ing to deliv­er to the Allies exam­ples of the most mod­ern weapons tech­nol­o­gy togeth­er with the where­abouts of the design­ers, such as Wern­er von Braun and his V‑2 team, and the nuclear sci­en­tists [and ura­ni­um ore] of the Ura­ni­um Club. Fur­ther­more, the cease­fire in Italy would be rat­i­fied imme­di­ate­ly. But what was the desired price for such trea­sures? A blind eye turned to the escape of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, Mar­tin Bor­mann, Hein­rich “Gestapo” Muller, Her­mann Fegelein, and Ernest Kaltenbrun­ner. The rest of the Nazi hier­ar­chy was to be aban­doned to their fate.

The “stick” was sim­ple. Ger­many now claimed to be capa­ble of bom­bard­ing the east­ern seaboard of the Unit­ed States with weapons of mass destruc­tion: con­sid­er­able effort had been invest­ed in sell­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion to U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies, with some suc­cess. (See Chap­ter 16). These weapons incor­po­rat­ed war­heads armed with the most tox­ic nerve agents ever devised, sarin and tabun. In addi­tion, many repos­i­to­ries of the great­est works of art pro­duced dur­ing cen­turies of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion was now held hostage, and this threat was entire­ly cred­i­ble, fol­low­ing Hitler’s “Nero Decree” of March 19. Offi­cial­ly titled “Demo­li­tions on Reich Ter­ri­to­ry,” this decree ordered the utter destruc­tion of all Ger­man indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy; although not includ­ed in the offi­cial order, it also implied the destruc­tion of cul­tur­al assets and the elim­i­na­tion of any key per­son­nel who might be use­ful to the Allied pow­ers. . . .

3. In order to under­stand the Bormann/Dulles deal, it is impor­tant to revis­it a sub­ject we have spo­ken about many times–the car­tels that enfold­ed both Amer­i­can and Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions in a com­mer­cial rela­tion­ship that tran­scend­ed nation­al, ide­o­log­i­cal and even moral bounds.

Ibid.; pp. 10–11.

. . . . The car­tels cre­at­ed in the after­maths of World War I and the Great Depres­sion were now more pow­er­ful than many gov­ern­ments, and these inter­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions were so deeply inter­twined that nation­al iden­ti­ty became increas­ing­ly opaque. This would be a major fac­tor in the lat­er Ger­man exe­cu­tion, under the direc­tion of Mar­tin Bor­mann, of Aktion Feuerland–Project Land of Fire. . . .

4. More about the U.S. cor­po­ra­tions that helped arm Ger­many:

Ibid.; pp. 6–7.

. . . . Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions such as the Alu­minum Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca (Alcoa), DuPont, Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Machines (IBM), Gen­er­al Motors, Inter­na­tion­al Tele­phone & Tele­graph (ITT), the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny and Gen­er­al Elec­tric made sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in Ger­many. Joint enter­pris­es were cre­at­ed to exchange tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions and to divide mar­ket shares around the world. This led to the merg­ing of exist­ing Ger­man com­pa­nies into pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial con­glom­er­ates, such as Inter­essen-Gemein­schaft Far­benin­dus­trie (IG Far­ben), which was found­ed in 1925. IG Far­ben was a mar­ket leader in the man­u­fac­ture of chem­i­cals, dyes, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, explo­sives, rub­ber, and a host of oth­er products–indeed, IG Far­ben was the pro­toyp­i­cal “mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex.” In April 1929, Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey joined Forces with IG Far­ben to devel­op a hydro­gena­tion process for con­vert­ing coal to oil. Again, Amer­i­can mon­ey fund­ed the research and devel­op­ment in Ger­many while the world mar­kets were to be shared between the two com­pa­nies. In return, IG Far­ben promised to pro­vide the tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions for its new “buna” process for the pro­duc­tion of syn­thet­ic rub­ber, a vital strate­gic resource for both coun­tries. As Amer­i­ca’s stake in Ger­many expand­ed, so U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials were less inclined to sup­port the repeat­ed for demands for repa­ra­tions by France and Britain, for fear of jeop­ar­diz­ing Amer­i­can invest­ments. . . .

5. The Dulles/Bormann deal at the core of Aktion Feuer­land must be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven--the attempt at inter­dict­ing the Nazi flight cap­i­tal pro­gram.

Ibid.; pp. 99–100.

. . . . Oper­a­tion Safe­haven was imple­ment­ed on Decem­ber 6, 1944, with the aim of track­ing the move­ment of Nazi loot and assets around the world and locat­ing those hid­den in neu­tral coun­tries. How­ev­er, for Roo­sevelt and Mor­gen­thau this plan had a wider pur­pose. They need­ed con­crete evi­dence of ille­gal­i­ty to bring against the major Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions that had trad­ed with Nazi Ger­many and those mem­bers of the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment who were sym­pa­thet­ic to the Nazis: men such as the cryp­to-Nazi Hen­ry Ford: Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., for­mer U.S. ambas­sador to Lon­don; and John D. Rock­e­feller Jr., son of John D. Rock­e­feller Sr., the founder of Stan­dard Oil and advo­cate of eugen­ics. Some of these cor­po­ra­tions and indi­vid­u­als had tried to under­mine the New Deal and desta­bi­lize Roo­sevelt’s admin­is­tra­tion dur­ing the 1930s.

This ambi­tious oper­a­tion sought the pros­e­cu­tion as war crim­i­nals of all those who ran the Nazi war machine and the indus­tri­al con­cerns that sus­tained it. Bankers and indus­tri­al­ists such as Abs, Schacht, Schroder, Krupp, Flick, Schmitz and a legion of oth­ers were to stand in the dock of an inter­na­tion­al tri­bunal and be judged for their actions. Once they were in open court, [Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Hen­ry] Mor­gen­thau would reveal years of inter­cept­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion, wire­tap evi­dence, and decrypts of Swiss bank codes and cables, cour­tesy of Ultra intel­li­gence via MI6. In order to redeem them­selves, the defen­dants would have to reveal their deal­ings with Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions such as Ford Motor Com­pa­ny, Gen­er­al Motors, and Stan­dard Oil. All the com­pa­nies and banks found to have trad­ed with the ene­my would then face the full rig­or of the law in the Unit­ed States. It was an ele­gant plan for revenge, legit­imized by the vic­to­ry of good over evil on the bat­tle­field. . . .

6a. As an attor­ney for Sul­li­van & Cromwell, Allen Dulles was deeply involved with the trea­son by Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions. As chief of the Berne (Switzer­land) sta­tion of the OSS (Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence ser­vice), he was in a unique posi­tion.

Ibid.; pp. 100–101.

. . . . How­ev­er, this effort required the coop­er­a­tion of OSS agents already on the ground, and in Switzer­land this was problematical–since one of the sus­pects of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven was Allen Dulles him­self, because of his exten­sive cor­po­rate con­nec­tions and his links with var­i­ous Nazi groups. Despite this dif­fi­cul­ty, the inves­ti­ga­tion nec­es­sar­i­ly focused on the gold deal­ings under­tak­en by Swiss banks. This became of major con­cern to Swiss ambas­sador Brug­gmann once he learned of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven through his indis­creet broth­er-in-law, Vice Pres­i­dent Hen­ry Wal­lace. The expo­sure of the explic­it links between Swiss banks and Nazi Ger­many would be a major poten­tial embar­rass­ment to the Swiss gov­ern­ment once the war was over; accord­ing­ly, the Swiss Secret Ser­vice alert­ed Allen Dulles about the Safe­haven inves­ti­ga­tion into his affairs. . . .

6b. We have spo­ken at length about the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work in numer­ous pro­grams. The Thyssen-owned Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion was used for the Bor­mann cap­i­tal trans­fers to the U.S. Prescott Bush,Sr. and George Her­bert Walk­er were head of the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion at this time.

Ibid.; p. 85.

. . . . With exquis­ite hypocrisy, Bor­mann made use of the Thyssen fam­i­ly’s pri­vate bank in Rot­ter­dam, Bank Voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart N.V., which had orig­i­nal­ly been found­ed by August Thyssen in 1918 in order to send illic­it funds out of the Kaiser’s Ger­many as defeat in World War I approached. Mon­ey was chan­neled to the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion of New York, which was whol­ly owned by Fritz Thyssen’s Ver­eignigte Stahlw­erke AG (Unit­ed Steel­works). From there it was dis­bursed to accounts in oth­er Amer­i­can banks, includ­ing Nation­al City Bank, Chase Nation­al Bank, and Irv­ing Trust, and used to buy stocks in U.S. com­pa­nies and cor­po­ra­tions. . . . .

7. In what might be termed “asso­ci­a­tion by guilt,” Dulles and Bor­man­n’s peo­ple con­nect­ed.

Ibid.; p. 102.

. . . . Dulles was also tar­get­ed by Ger­man intel­li­gence, includ­ing an elite Luft­waffe code-break­ing unit des­ig­nat­ed Luft­fahrt­forschungsamt (Luft­waffe radio inter­cept unit). When Abwehr agents learned of Oper­a­tion Safe­haven through their agent Habakuk, they set about frus­trat­ing its efforts, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Switzer­land, where it was poten­tial­ly most dan­ger­ous to the ongo­ing Ger­man cap­i­tal trans­fers. The Abwehr agents passed the word to Dulles that both the British and the Amer­i­cans were inter­cept­ing his communications–as they them­selves had been, but would now no longer be able to, thanks to their reveal­ing their hand in this way. They, too, told Dulles that he was a sub­ject of inves­ti­ga­tion by the Trea­sury Depart­ment through Oper­a­tion Safe­haven. He imme­di­ate­ly changed his encryp­tion meth­ods to the more secure “one-time pad” sys­tem and from then on his mes­sage traf­fic remained secure. Tran­scrib­ing the mes­sages from the Ver­nam cipher is a labo­ri­ous hand­writ­ten process, hence Dulles’s need for the ser­vices of interned USAAF per­son­nel for encryp­tion.

Dulles also exposed Hen­ry Wal­lace as the source of the rev­e­la­tion of both the Mor­gen­thau Plan and Oper­a­tion Safe­haven to Ambas­sador Brug­gman and ulti­mate­ly to the Ger­mans. Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt had no choice but to ditch Wal­lace and nom­i­nate the sen­a­tor from Mis­souri, Har­ry S. Tru­man, as his can­di­date for vice pres­i­dent in the upcom­ing Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. As a com­mit­ted oppo­nent of com­mu­nism, Tru­man was far more accept­able to Dulles. . . .

8a. A key to the clan­des­tine han­dling of Hitler and Eva Braun was the use of dou­bles, a Hitler dou­ble named Gus­tav Weber, in par­tic­u­lar.

Ibid.; pp. 156–157.

. . . . Gus­tav Weber had been stand­ing in for Hitler since July 20, 1944, when the Fuhrer had been wound­ed in the bomb attempt on his life at his Wolf’s Lair field head­quar­ters near Ras­ten­burg in East Prus­sia. Hitler had suf­fered recur­rent after­ef­fects from his injuries; he tired eas­i­ly, and he was plagued by infect­ed wounds from splin­ters of the oak table that had pro­tect­ed him from the full force of the blast. (His use of peni­cillin, tak­en from Allied troops cap­tured or killed in the D‑Day land­ings, had prob­a­bly saved his life.)

Weber had imper­son­at­ed Hitler on his last offi­cial­ly pho­tographed appear­ance, when he hand­ed out medals to mem­bers of the Hitler Youth in the Chan­cellery gar­den on March 20, 1945. Weber’s uncan­ny resem­blance to Hitler deceived even those quite close to him, and on that occa­sion the Reich­sju­gend­fuhrer (Hitler Youth nation­al Leader) Artur Axmann was either tak­en in or warned to play along. The only thing liable to betray the impos­ture was that Weber’s left hand suf­fered from occa­sion­al bouts of uncon­trol­lable trem­bling. Bor­mann had tak­en Hitler’s per­son­al doc­tor into his con­fi­dence, and SS Lt. Col. Lud­wig Stumpfeg­ger had treat­ed Weber with some suc­cess. Weber was often kept sedat­ed, but his trem­bling became more notice­able when he was under extreme stress.

Eva Braun’s dou­ble was sim­ply per­fect. Her name is unknown, but she had been trawled from the “sta­ble” of young actress­es that Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels, the self-appoint­ed “patron of the Ger­man cin­e­ma,” main­tained for his own plea­sure. The phys­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ty was amaz­ing, and after film make­up and hair­dress­ing  experts had done their work it was very dif­fi­cult to tell the two young women apart. . . .

8b. As the Fuehrer and his par­ty were prepar­ing for their exit from Berlin, Bor­mann and Hein­rich Muller were dis­pos­ing of unnec­es­sary and/or strate­gi­cal­ly awk­ward indi­vid­u­als.

Ibid.; pp. 172–173.

. . . . In Berlin, Bor­mann and Muller were mean­while “tidy­ing up” with ruth­less effi­cien­cy. Dur­ing april 28–29, the two actors in the pri­vate quar­ters of the Fuhrerbunker played out a ghast­ly pan­tomime orches­trat­ed by the Nazi Par­ty’s grand pup­pet-mas­ter, Mar­tin Bor­mann. It end­ed on April 30 in a fatal finale that would have been exe­cut­ed by “Gestapo” Muller. At some time that after­noon Eva Braun’s dou­ble was poi­soned, and Hitler’s dou­ble, prob­a­bly Gus­tav Weber, was shot at close range by Muller in per­son. Shroud­ed in blan­kets, the two bod­ies were car­ried upstairs to be burned in the shell-torn chan­cellery gar­den, as described by Erich Kemp­ka, the head of the Chan­cellery motor pool. Although accounts by wit­ness­es are con­fused and some­times con­tra­dic­to­ry, this icon­ic scene has become an accept­ed his­tor­i­cal fact. Indeed, every­thing about it may be correct–apart from the true iden­ti­ties of the two burn­ing corpses. A pic­ture of an unburned Hitler “corpse” with a gun­shot wound to the fore­head cir­cu­lat­ed exten­sive­ly after the war. It is now believed to be pos­si­bly that of a cook in the bunker who bore a vague resem­blance to Adolf Hitler. It was just one of at least six “Hitler” bod­ies, none of them show­ing any signs of hav­ing been burnt, that were deliv­ered to the Sovi­ets in the days after the fall of Berlin. . . .

. . . . Bor­mann com­mu­ni­cat­ed the news of “Hitler’s” death to Adm. Karl Donitz, appoint­ed as the new Reich pres­i­dent in Hitler’s will. Before Bor­mann and Muller could fin­ish their “clean­ing,” there was one more poten­tial wit­ness to be silenced. SS Lt. Col. Peter Hogl, the last per­son to have seen Her­mann Fegelein, was also shot in the head, as the final groups of would-be escap­ers left the bunker on the night of May 1–2 (see Chap­ter 14, page 154). At this point, SS and Police Gen. Hein­rich Muller, Bor­man­n’s prin­ci­pal co-con­spir­a­tor and hit man, dis­ap­peared from the “offi­cial” his­to­ry record with­out a trace. A few days lat­er his fam­i­ly would bury a body in a Berlin ceme­tery; the cas­ket bore the touch­ing inscrip­tion “To Our Dad­dy,” but it would lat­er be deter­mined that it con­tained body parts from three unknown vic­tims. . . .

9b. The “stick” allud­ed to in para­graph #2 was a dis­in­for­ma­tion oper­a­tion, con­vinc­ing the Allies that Ger­many was going to attack the East­ern Seabord of the U.S. with sub­ma­rine-launched V‑1s filled with Sarin nerve gas. This had the effect of draw­ing off Allied naval forces, per­mit­ting the U‑boats car­ry­ing Hitler and com­pa­ny to safe­ly nav­i­gate the South Atlantic.

Ibid.; pp. 176–177.

. . . . In July 1944, news agen­cies report­ed that Hitler had approved a plan for an immi­nent attack on New York, with “robot bombs” launched from sub­marines in the Atlantic. On August 20, the Type IXC boat U‑1229 (Cdr. Armin Zinke) was attacked and forced to sur­face off New­found­land on the Cana­di­an east coast, and among the cap­tured sur­vivors was a Ger­man agent, Oskar Man­tel. Under inter­ro­ga­tion by the FBI, he revealed that a wave of U‑boats equipped with V‑1 fly­ing bombs was being read­ied to attack the Unit­ed States. In Novem­ber 1944, U‑1230 land­ed two agents off the Maine coast; they were spot­ted com­ing ashore and arrest­ed. Dur­ing their inter­ro­ga­tion, Erich Gim­pel and William Colepaugh (an Amer­i­can defec­tor) cor­rob­o­rat­ed Man­tel’s sto­ry. This also seemed to be sup­port­ed by the pre­dic­tion in a radio broad­cast by the Reich arma­ments min­is­ter, Albert Speer, that V‑missiles “would fall on New York by Feb­ru­ary 1, 1945.”

On Decem­ber 10, 1944, New York’s may­or Fiorel­lo La Guardia broke the sto­ry to an aston­ished Amer­i­can pub­lic. On Jan­u­ary 8, 1945, Adm. Jonas H. Ingram, com­man­der of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, announced that a new wave of U‑boats approach­ing the Unit­ed States might be fit­ted with V‑1 rock­ets to attack the east­ern seabord. The Nazis might launch “robots from sub­ma­rine, air­plane or sur­face ship” against tar­gets rang­ing from Maine to Flori­da, but the U.S. Navy was ful­ly pre­pared to meet the threat. Many Amer­i­cans took this V‑1 scare seri­ous­ly. The British dis­missed it as pro­pa­gan­da, and–with the grim expe­ri­ence of four years’ bom­bard­ment and some 60,000 civil­ian deaths behind them, about 10 per­cent caused by V‑1s–believed that even if such attacks occurred, they would not cause a great deal of dam­age. After all, Hitler’s Oper­a­tion Polar Bear had suc­ceed­ed in hit­ting Lon­don with 2,515 V‑1s (about one-quar­ter of those launched), so the hand­ful that might be fired by a few U‑boats seemed neg­li­gi­ble. On Feb­ru­ary 16, 1945, a British admi­ral­ty cable to the U.S. Navy chief of oper­a­tions, Adm. Ernest J. King, played down the threat, while con­ced­ing that it was pos­si­ble for U‑boats to store and launch V‑1 fly­ing bombs. (The Ger­mans had indeed test­ed a sub­ma­rine-towed launch plat­form with some suc­cess, but were nowhere near any oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ty. There was even an embryo project, Pruf­s­tand XII, to launch the much larg­er V‑2 bal­lis­tic mis­sile at sea from a sealed con­tain­er, which be flood­ed at the base to swing it upright.) How­ev­er the plant­ed mis­in­for­ma­tion achieved its pur­pose. It would focus Amer­i­can atten­tion toward any detect­ed pack of U‑boats, such as the major­i­ty of Gruppe See­wolf, thus draw­ing USN and USAAF assets in the Atlantic east­ward and northward–away from the lat­i­tudes between Spain’s south­ern ter­ri­to­ries and Argenti­na. . . .

10a. Two key fig­ures in lay­ing the ground work for the Hitler escape to Patag­o­nia were Admi­ral Wil­helm Canaris, head of the Abwehr (Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence) and Gen­er­al Wil­helm von Fau­pel.

Ibid.; pp. 195–196.

. . . . Dur­ing the Nazi era, the two key fig­ures in Ger­man pen­e­tra­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca were Adm. Wil­helm Canaris, from 1935 the head of the Abwehr, and Gen. Wil­helm von Fau­pel, head of the Ibero-Amer­i­can Insti­tute, the head­quar­ters for Ger­man espi­onage and con­spir­a­cy in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. . . .

. . . . His [Canaris’s] bril­liant tal­ents and unusu­al first­hand knowl­edge of the Patag­on­ian region would be invalu­able dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the Nazi intel­li­gence net­work in south­ern Argenti­na.

The pre­ex­ist­ing basis and prin­ci­pal cov­er for this activ­i­ty was the Lahusen com­pa­ny, a major enter­prise with offices and shops through­out Patag­o­nia since before World War I (now defunct). Cen­tral to its ear­ly prof­itabil­i­ty was the wool trade, sup­plied by the Ger­man sheep ranch­es of Patag­o­nia; before refrig­er­a­tion made meat ship­ments to Europe pos­si­ble, wool was Argenti­na’s largest export and its trade fueled the coun­try’s vibrant econ­o­my. The Lahusen orga­ni­za­tion facil­i­tat­ed the Ger­man espi­onage sys­tem through­out Argenti­na, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay in both world wars. . . .

. . . . From 1938 on, from a man­sion on Fueren­strasse in Berlin, Fau­pel orga­nized the train­ing of Ger­man and South Amer­i­can agents and sabo­teurs. He had con­tacts with the Falange Espanola–the Span­ish fas­cist polit­i­cal par­ty that under­pinned the Nation­al­ist upris­ing by rebel army offi­cers in July 1936–and was instru­men­tal in the cre­ation of the Con­dor Legion soon after­ward. This force com­bined cadres of Ger­man mil­i­tary instruc­tors and squadrons of com­bat air­men that assist­ed the Nation­al­ist forces–and acquired use­ful expe­ri­ence themselves–during the Span­ish Civ­il War, Wil­helm von Fau­pel’s activ­i­ties over three decades would bring him huge influ­ence in Spain after the Nation­al­ist leader, Gen. Fran­cis­co Fran­co, estab­lished his mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in 1939. In time this influ­ence would enable Mar­tin Bor­man­n’s plans for a “Fourth Reich in the South” to move toward real­i­ty. . . .

10b. In con­tem­plat­ing Aktion Feuer­land, it is impor­tant to remem­ber how sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed Patag­o­nia is and how big it is:

Ibid.; p. 194

. . . . It is dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend the scale of Patag­o­nia: one and a half times the size of Texas or near­ly four times that of Great Britain. Most telling­ly, its pop­u­la­tion in 1945 was min­i­mal. By com­par­i­son, if New York City had the same pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty, there would be jut thir­ty-five peo­ple liv­ing in Man­hat­tan. [As seen in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, much of the exist­ing pop­u­la­tion there was German.–D.E.]  . .

10c. Cen­tral to the real­iza­tion of Aktion Feur­land were the activ­i­ties of the Eich­horns, who had fund­ed Hitler from the 1920’s on.

Ibid.; p. 265.

. . . . The rela­tion­ship between Ida Eich­horn and her “cousin,” as she always called Hitler, went back much fur­ther than 1944, though there is some dis­pute over the date the Eic­chorns actu­al­ly joined the Nazi Par­ty. On May 11, 1935, Waler and Ida were award­ed the “hon­or ver­sion” of the Gold Par­ty Badge; few­er than half a dozen of the 905 such badges award­ed were giv­en to non-Reich cit­i­zens. The Fuhrer sent the Eich­horns a per­son­al con­grat­u­la­to­ry let­ter dat­ed May 15, an unusu­al extra com­pli­ment accom­pa­ny­ing the award. In the let­ter, which thanked Wal­ter Eich­horn for his ser­vices, the Fuhrer used the words “since join­ing in 1924 with your wife,” which seems to indi­cate that the Eich­horns were among the ear­li­est mem­bers of the par­ty. They were also per­son­al­ly giv­en No. 110 of the lim­it­ed edi­tion of 500 copies of Mein Kampf when they first met Hitler at his apart­ment in 1925–the year the book was pub­lished. The Eich­horns saw him again in 1927 and 1929, and there­after they began to trav­el more reg­u­lar­ly to Ger­many. . . .

10d. Among the reports about top Nazis flee­ing Europe by U‑boat, was Che Gue­vara’s father.

Ibid.; p. 232.

. . . . Che Gue­vara’s father, Ernesto Gue­vara Lynch, who was an active anti-Nazi “com­man­do” in Argenti­na through­out the 1930s and ’40s, was also con­vinced: “Not long after the Ger­man army was defeat­ed in Europe, many of the top Nazis arrived in our coun­try and entered through the sea­side resort of Vil­la Ges­sell, locat­ed south of Buenos Aires. They came in sev­er­al Ger­man sub­marines.” . . .

11a. Part of the car­rot allud­ed to above, was the trans­fer of Ger­man mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy to the West, under what was to become known as Project Paper­clip. Ian Flem­ing, lat­er well known as the author of the James Bond nov­els, was a key British offi­cer involved in locat­ing key Nazi mil­i­tary tech­no­log­i­cal tar­gets, both mechan­i­cal and human.

Ibid.; p. 63.

. . . . Among the British forces that land­ed in French North Africa dur­ing Oper­a­tion Torch in Novem­ber 1942 was a new unit on its first major operation–30 Com­man­do Unit (CU). Pri­mar­i­ly, 30 CU was tasked with gath­er­ing mil­i­tary intel­li­gence doc­u­ments and items of ene­my weapons tech­nol­o­gy before they could be hid­den or destroyed. The unit had been con­ceived in the British Admi­ral­ty, and the Roy­al Navy was par­tic­u­lar­ly anx­ious to gath­er any intel­li­gence con­cern­ing the sophis­ti­cat­ed Enig­ma encryp­tion machines that were used to com­mu­ni­cate with Adm. Donitz’s U‑boats at sea. The Naval Intel­li­gence Com­man­do Unit was the brain­child of Lt. Cdr. Ian Flem­ing of the Roy­al Naval Vol­un­teer Reserve (RNVR)–the future cre­ator of the quin­tes­sen­tial fic­tion­al spy James Bond. . . .

11b. More about Ian Flem­ing and his commando/intelligence unit:

Ibid.; p. 136.

. . . . Among the allied troops poised to deny the Nazis the chance to destroy their secrets were Cdr. Flem­ing’s Red Indi­ans of 30 Advance Unit. Intel­li­gence on where to search was now flood­ing in from the OSS office in Bern, thanks to the dia­logue between Dulles and Bor­mann. The unit’s Team 4, under Lt. Cdr. Patrick Dalzel-Job, began dri­ving north­ward between Bre­men on the Weser Riv­er and Ham­burg on the Elbe. . . .

13. Before the sub­marines car­ry­ing Hitler, Eva Braun and com­pa­ny land­ed, the chief of staff of the Argen­tine navy, Admi­ral hec­tor Lima, issued orders to “Call off all coastal patrols,” this on the direct order of Juan Per­on.

Ibid.; p. 231.

. . . . On July 21, just a week before the land­ing at Necochea that deliv­ered Hitler, the Argen­tine navy’s chief of staff, Adm. Hec­tor Lima, issued orders to “Call off all coastal patrols.” This order, from the high­est ech­e­lon of the mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment, effec­tive­ly opened up the coast of Argenti­na to the land­ings described by the Admi­ral Graf Spee men. . . .

14a. “Evi­ta” Duarte, lat­er Eva Per­on, was a Nazi spy, even before she mar­ried Juan Per­on.

Ibid.; p. 198.

. . . . Mar­tin Bor­mann, as always, was entire­ly clear-sight­ed, and dur­ing that year he put in hand his plan to pre­pare and fund that refuge–Aktion Feur­land. The Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers in Argenti­na enjoyed a vir­tu­al­ly free rein, con­tin­u­ing to oper­ate schools with Nazi sym­bols and ide­ol­o­gy and meet­ing reg­u­lar­ly (although by 1943, not as pub­licly as before), but the key con­spir­a­tors were few–a group lim­it­ed to peo­ple Bor­mann had rea­son to trust. These includ­ed a clique of pow­er­ful, venal bankers and indus­tri­al­ists such as Lud­wig Freude; a charis­mat­ic ambitouis army offi­cer, Juan Domin­go Per­on; and a beau­ti­ful, intel­li­gent acress, Eva Duarte. . . .

14b. More about Bor­mann and Eva Duarte (lat­er Eva Per­on):

Ibid.; p. 210.

. . . . Lud­wig Freude’s and Eva Duar­te’s involve­ment in the smug­gling oper­a­tion was made clear in an Argen­tine police doc­u­ment of April 18, 1945. This detailed the oper­a­tions of Freude, “agent of the Third Reich,” and his deal­ings with an Argen­tine agent, “Natalio.” This infor­mant report­ed that Freude had made very sub­stan­tial deposits in var­i­ous Buenos Aires banks in the name of the “well-known radio-the­atri­cal actress Maria Eva Duarte.” Freude told Natalio that on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1945, a U‑boat had brought huge funds to help in the recon­struc­tion of the Nazi empire. Sub­se­quent police inves­ti­ga­tions revealed that cas­es from the U‑boat with the woreds Geheime Reichssache (“Reich Top Secret”) sten­ciled on them, had been tak­en to a Lahusen ranch run by two “Nazi broth­ers, just out­side Buenos Aires.” Deposits of gold and var­i­ous cur­ren­cies were lat­er made in Eva’s name at the Ban­co Ale­man Transat­lanti­co, Ban­co Ger­man­i­co, and Ban­co Torn­quist. . . .

14c. After mar­ry­ing Juan Per­on, Evi­ta helped final­ize Bor­man­n’s decamp­ment to Argenti­na:

Ibid.; p. 258.

. . . .The all-con­quer­ing Evi­ta left Spain for Rome on June 25, 1947. Father Ben­itez would smooth her way in the Vat­i­can with the aid of Bish­op Alois Hudal [one of the key mem­bers of the Vatican/Nazi “Rat­line”]. Two days after she arrived she was giv­en an audi­ence with pope Pius XII, spend­ing twen­ty min­utes with the Holy Father–“a time usu­al­ly allot­ted by Vat­i­can pro­to­col to queens.” How­ev­er, there was a more sin­is­ter side to the Rome trip. Using Bish­op Hudal as an inter­me­di­ary, she arranged to meet Bor­mann in an Ital­ian vil­la at Rapal­lo pro­vid­ed for her use by [Argen­tine ship­ping bil­lion­aire Alber­to] Dodero. The shipown­er was also present at the meet­ing, as was Eva’s broth­er Juan Duarte. There, she and her for­mer pay­mas­ter cut the deal that guar­an­teed that his Fuhrer’s safe haven would con­tin­ue to remain safe, and allowed Bor­mann to leave Europe at last for a new life in South Amer­i­ca. How­ev­er, she and her team had one shock­ing dis­ap­point­ment for Bor­mann. . . .  

14d. The authors con­tend that Evi­ta, her hus­band and oth­ers of the Argen­tine end of the Nazi flight cap­i­tal pro­gram in Argenti­na dou­bled on Bor­mann and Mueller, with lethal results for the con­spir­a­tors. In 1952, Evi­ta died of can­cer at age 33. Much of her hus­band’s pop­u­lar­i­ty stemmed from her pub­lic per­sona. Deprived of it by her untime­ly death, he was over­thrown in a mil­i­tary coup.

Ibid.; pp. 258, 259, 260.

. . . . Prov­ing that there is no hon­or among thieves, the Per­ons pre­sent­ed Bor­mann with a rad­i­cal rene­go­ti­a­tion of their ear­li­er under­stand­ing. Evi­ta had brought with her to Europe some $800 mil­lion worth of the trea­sure that he had placed in sup­posed safe­keep­ing in Argenti­na, and she would deposit this vast sum in Swiss banks for the Per­ons’ own use. . . .

. . . . How­ev­er, the Bor­man “Orga­ni­za­tion” had a keen mem­o­ry. After the spring of 1948, when Muller based him­self in Cor­do­ba and became direct­ly respon­si­ble for the secu­ri­ty of the Orga­ni­za­tion, the bankers who had betrayed Bor­mann would begin to suf­fer a string of untime­ly deaths. Hein­rich Doerge died mys­te­ri­ous­ly in 1949; in Decem­ber 1950, Ricar­do von Leute was found dead in a Buenos Aires street, and Ricar­do Staudt would sur­vive him by only a few months. Lud­wig Freude him­self, the king­pin of Aktion Feur­land in Argenti­na, died in 1952 from drink­ing a poi­soned cup of cof­fee, and Evi­ta’s younger broth­er Juan Duarte met his end in 1954 with a gun­shot to the head. Offi­cial­ly, he was said to have com­mit­ted sui­cide. . . . .

15. Note that doc­u­ments from the late 1940’s on Hitler and his pos­si­ble escape and where­abouts at that time are STILL clas­si­fied, the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry after the end of World War II. WHY?

Ibid.; p.242.

. . . . Dur­ing this peri­od [the late 1940’s], the FBI was tak­ing reports of Hitler being in Latin Amer­i­ca very seri­ous­ly. Thou­sands of doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to Hitler from these years are still clas­si­fied as Top Secret on both sides of the Atlantic; nev­er­the­less, and despite the very heavy cen­sor­ship of the few files released into the pub­lic domain, some infor­ma­tion can be gleaned. . . .

16. Stal­in and Gen­er­al Zhukov (the Red Army’s top gen­er­al) did­n’t believe that Hitler was dead. Gen­er­al Dwight D. Eisen­how­er was deeply skep­ti­cal, as well.

Ibid.; p. xxii.

. . . . Stal­in nev­er believed Hitler was dead, insist­ing at the Pots­dam Con­fer­ence on July17, 1945, that he had escaped–probably to “Spain or Argenti­na.” Stal­in’s top gen­er­al, Mar­shal Geor­gy Zhukov, said on August 6, 1945; “We found no corpse that could be Hitler’s.”

Gen. Dwight D. Eisen­how­er stat­ed pub­licly on Octo­ber 12, 1945, “There is every assump­tion that Hitler is dead, but not a bit of con­clu­sive proof that he is dead.” He told the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that “Russ­ian friends” had informed him that they had been “unable to unearth any tan­gi­ble evi­dence of his death.” One U.S. sen­a­tor went as far as offer­ing one mil­lion U.S. dol­lars for proof of Hitler’s death. It has nev­er been claimed. . . .

17. There were numer­ous reports of Hitler’s pos­si­ble escape in the main­stream press at the time. Syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist Drew Pear­son not­ed on July 24 and 26, 1945:

Ibid.; pp. 231, 236.

. . . . Along the coast of Patag­o­nia, many Ger­mans own land, which con­tains har­bors deep enough for sub­ma­rine land­ings. And if sub­marines could get to Argen­tine-Uruguayan waters from Ger­many, as they def­i­nite­ly did, there is no rea­son why they could not go a lit­tle fur­ther south to Patag­o­nia. Also, there is no rea­son to believe why Hitler could­n’t have been on one of them. . . .

. . . . It may take a long time to find out whether Hitler and his bride Eva Braun escaped to Patag­o­nia. The coun­try is a series of vast Nazi-owned ranch­es where Ger­man is spo­ken almost exclu­sive­ly and where Hitler could be hid­den eas­i­ly, and suc­cess­ful­ly for years. The ranch­es in this south­ern part of Argenti­na cov­er thou­sands of acres and have been under Nazi [note: there were Ger­mans in the area long before the Nazis dom­i­nat­ed] man­age­ment for gen­er­a­tions. It would have been impos­si­ble for any non-Ger­man to pen­e­trate the area to make a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion as to Hitler’s where­abouts. . . .

18. Some mem­bers of the research team employed by the authors received death threats. (Note: this arti­cle is slight­ly inac­cu­rate, in that the threats were not received by the authors them­selves.)

“Death Threats for Hitler Book Author Ger­ard Williams;” Wales Online; 3/21/2013.

A South Wales author who has sen­sa­tion­al­ly claimed Adolf Hitler escaped the bunker to live in Argenti­na says he and his research team have received death threats.

For­mer Brid­gend Gram­mar School pupil Ger­rard Williams, pic­tured, spent five years with mil­i­tary his­to­ri­an Simon Dun­stan research­ing Grey Wolf – The Escape of Adolf Hitler. It claims Hitler spent 17 years in the foothills of the Andes in Argenti­na until his death in 1962.

The book also claims Hitler’s escape was car­ried out with the bless­ing of the US author­i­ties who want­ed rock­et secrets and details of where price­less art trea­sures were hid­den.

Yes­ter­day, Swansea-born Williams, who grew up in Coy­church, Brid­gend, said: “We have ruf­fled some very big feath­ers.

“Tra­di­tion­al his­to­ri­ans don’t like it and cer­tain gov­ern­ments don’t like it. We have had some death threats already.”

Williams, who stud­ied jour­nal­ism in Cardiff and worked for the BBC and Sky News, said: “I dis­cov­ered the sto­ry while work­ing on a doc­u­men­tary about the Falk­lands War in Argenti­na.

”His­to­ry books say with Berlin’s Reich Chan­cellery vir­tu­al­ly sur­round­ed on April 30, 1945, Hitler shot him­self, while his new wife Eva Braun bit into a cyanide cap­sule to evade cap­ture. Their petrol-soaked bod­ies were then burned.

But Williams claims Hitler and Braun slipped out of the besieged Führerbunker via a secret tun­nel and were replaced by dou­bles cho­sen by Reichs­fuhrer Mar­tin Bormann.He says they were then whisked by plane to Spain and by sub­ma­rine to the Argen­tine coast at Necochea.

The body dou­bles were shot and burned. They lat­er had two daugh­ters. Williams said: “He and Braun sep­a­rat­ed in 1953, tak­ing the girls to live in the town of Nequen. In the ear­ly 2000s the women were still alive.“Hitler died on Feb­ru­ary 13, 1962 at 3pm.”

Williams spent five years with mil­i­tary his­to­ri­an Simon Dun­stan research­ing Grey Wolf – The Escape of Adolf Hitler.

It claims Hitler spent 17 years in the foothills of the Andes in Argenti­na until his death in 1962.

The book also claims Hitler’s escape was car­ried out with the bless­ing of the US author­i­ties who want­ed rock­et secrets and details of where price­less art trea­sures were hid­den.

 

Discussion

One comment for “FTR # 914 and FTR #915; Interviews with Gerrard Williams (#‘s 1 and 2), Co-Author of “Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler””

  1. These declas­si­fied FBI files raise ques­tions about Hitler’s death in the Führerbunker, Blake Stil­well, Busi­ness Insid­er, Jan. 21, 2016, (It also includes the declas­si­fied doc­u­ments)

    http://www.businessinsider.com/declassified-fbi-files-about-hitlers-death-2015–12

    A recent­ly declas­si­fied, heav­i­ly redact­ed FBI field report con­tains infor­ma­tion about Adolf Hitler’s alleged escape to Argenti­na via sub­ma­rine, which is note­wor­thy con­sid­er­ing that Hitler was report­ed to have com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1945 before the Red Army cap­tured Berlin.

    The FBI report, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 21, 1945 tells the sto­ry of a man who aid­ed six top Argen­tin­ian offi­cials in land­ing Hitler onto Argen­tine soil via sub­ma­rine and hid him in the foothills of the Andes moun­tains.

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the report wasn’t ver­i­fi­able at the time because some­thing impor­tant couldn’t be locat­ed.

    That’s not a teas­er, the item or per­son in ques­tion is redact­ed.

    The doc­u­ment relates the sto­ry told to the FBI by a reporter of The Los Ange­les Exam­in­er.

    In July 1945, the reporter’s friend “Jack” met with an indi­vid­ual from the Argen­tine gov­ern­ment who want­ed to relay a sto­ry, but only if he could be guar­an­teed he wouldn’t be sent back to Argenti­na, which had just expe­ri­enced a mil­i­tary coup.

    The infor­mant claimed to be one of four men who met Hitler on an Argen­tine shore about two weeks after the fall of Berlin in 1945, where Hitler and his new wife Eva Braun osten­si­bly com­mit­ted sui­cide.

    Sovi­et records claim the bod­ies of Hitler and Braun were burned and the remains buried and exhumed repeat­ed­ly, mak­ing ver­i­fi­ca­tion dif­fi­cult.

    Hitler sup­pos­ed­ly came ashore with 50 or so oth­ers and went into hid­ing in the towns of San Anto­nio, Vide­ma, Neuquen, Muster, Car­me­na, and Rason, stay­ing with Ger­man fam­i­lies. the infor­mant claimed to remem­ber all six offi­cials and the three oth­er men with him on the shore the night the Ger­man fugi­tive arrived, suf­fer­ing from asth­ma and ulcers. Hitler also shaved his sig­na­ture mus­tache, reveal­ing a dis­tinct “butt” on his upper lip.

    A per­son­al let­ter to J.Edgar Hoover, the FBI direc­tor, was also writ­ten by the infor­mant. It men­tioned specif­i­cal­ly that Hitler lived in an under­ground res­i­dence in Argenti­na 675 miles West of Flo­ri­a­nop­o­lis, 430 miles North­west of Buenos Aires. The for­mer dic­ta­tor lived with two body dou­bles in a secret area behind a pho­to­sen­si­tive wall that slid back to reveal the bunker entrance.

    Hitler and his inner cir­cle made use of a bank account pro­vid­ed by one “Mrs. Eichorn” who ran a large spa hotel in La Fal­da, Argenti­na, to the tune of 30,000 Reichs­marks (just over $2 two mil­lion dol­lars in 2015). Eichorn and her fam­i­ly made repeat­ed vis­its to Nazi Ger­many where they would stay with Hitler dur­ing their vis­its.

    The FBI even looked to world news pub­li­ca­tions, find­ing pho­tos with famous Argen­tines, which lends cred­i­bil­i­ty to the idea that high-placed Argen­tin­ian offi­cials might help Hitler enter Argenti­na.

    The infor­mant was paid $15,000 (almost $200,000 adjust­ed for infla­tion in 2015) for his help, but he said the mat­ter weighed on his mind too much just to let it go, so he approached the Amer­i­cans.

    He told the reporter’s friend to go to a hotel in San Anto­nio, Argenti­na and meet up with a man who would help locate the loca­tion of Hitler’s ranch, which was heav­i­ly guard­ed.

    The reporter was to put an ad in the local paper and then call “Hemp­stead 8458” (these were the days before all-num­ber dial­ing, which meant that Hemp­stead was the loca­tion of the net­work and the num­ber is the last four dig­its of the actu­al phone num­ber) to let the man know to make prop­er arrange­ments.

    The infor­mant was unable to shed any more light on the sto­ry for the reporter and despite attempts to set up a fur­ther meet­ing, the reporter was unable to con­tact the infor­mant direct­ly. The FBI watched the din­er where the reporter ate his meals to see if “Jack” or the infor­mant ever appeared, to no avail.

    Though the infor­mant also alleged Hitler may have entered the Unit­ed States, no records were found with the Immi­gra­tion and Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Ser­vice (INS) for the names of known alias­es for Hitler, Jack, or the infor­mant. The FBI deemed the sto­ry cred­i­ble but didn’t have enough infor­ma­tion to make a full inves­ti­ga­tion.

    An FBI mem­o­ran­dum to Hoover remarked that the agent in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion believed both Hitler and Braun sur­vived the Fall of Berlin. Both their bod­ies had not been found or iden­ti­fied at the time. He believed they both dis­ap­peared the day before the Rus­sians entered Berlin. He believed Hitler’s nor­mal rela­tion­ship with Switzer­land along with Hitler’s lack of any oth­er lan­guage would make Switzer­land, not Argenti­na, the ide­al place for the two to escape.

    Posted by Mary Benton | February 1, 2018, 4:30 pm

Post a comment