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“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

Intro­duc­tion: An impor­tant book about the JFK assas­si­na­tion has been pub­lished. The late Hank Albarel­li, Jr. has authored a lengthy tome, which draws togeth­er var­i­ous, dis­parate ele­ments involved in the Dal­las coup in an impor­tant, time­ly man­ner.

Inte­grat­ing oper­a­tional ele­ments of the domes­tic fas­cist polit­i­cal milieu, active and retired mil­i­tary pro­fes­sion­als, the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty (CIA in par­tic­u­lar), the defense indus­try, the Texas and inter­na­tion­al petro­le­um com­pa­nies, as well as dom­i­nant polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions with the forces of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism, Albarel­li and his assis­tants have opened a win­dow onto what Mr. Emory believes are in the forces destroy­ing our civ­i­liza­tion.

Para­mount, here, is the deci­sive role and posi­tion of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism in the events of 11/22/1963.

Fas­cism is gen­er­al­ly rep­re­sent­ed as some­thing of an antiq­ui­ty and an aberration–an out­lier in the devel­op­ment of our civ­i­liza­tion.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.

Con­tem­po­rary pre­sen­ta­tions of fas­cism are atten­u­at­ed and super­fi­cial, cov­er­ing nei­ther the evo­lu­tion of fas­cist net­works through the decades, nor those net­works’ inex­tri­ca­ble rela­tion­ships with past and present intel­li­gence agen­cies and dom­i­nant cor­po­rate and allied polit­i­cal inter­ests around the world.

In the first of these pro­grams, we explore the account in the book of the role of French fas­cists in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. 

In the sec­ond, we chron­i­cle the deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions of the French steel and iron mak­ers, and their coun­ter­parts in the Ger­man steel and coal com­bines. Unit­ed in their cor­po­ratist strat­e­gy, they saw anti-labor and anti-com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy as sur­mount­ing  any nation­al­ist con­sid­er­a­tions.

For many years, we have set forth the pow­er­ful French fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions that attempt­ed to over­throw the French gov­ern­ment of Leon Blum and, final­ly, act­ed in con­cert with like-mind­ed mil­i­tary offi­cers, aris­to­crats and cor­po­rate indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions to sub­vert resis­tance to the Nazi inva­sion.

With the estab­lish­ment of the Vichy col­lab­o­ra­tionist regime, ele­ments such as La Cagoule con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the gov­ern­ing and enforc­ing appa­ra­tus of the fas­cist admin­is­tra­tion.

We have cov­ered La Cagoule for many years, includ­ing an in-depth explo­ration of the method­ol­o­gy and his­to­ry of La Cagoule and relat­ed groups in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show 61 (record­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1994.) Rel­e­vant sides of this lengthy pro­gram are: Side “c”; Side “d”; Side “e”. (These seg­ments, in turn, draw on doc­u­men­ta­tion pre­sent­ed in Armies of Spies by Joseph Gol­lomb and Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot. For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of these top­ics and books, use the search func­tion on this web­site.)

Fur­ther­more, fig­ures such as Mon­sieurs Fil­li­ol and Pierre Lafitte also served with the Nazis SS, the most promi­nent French ele­ment of which was the Charle­magne Divi­sion.

(In addi­tion to Lafit­te’s Nazi/SS/fascist col­lab­o­ra­tion, this “Man of a Thou­sand Faces” worked for a myr­i­ad of orga­ni­za­tions: intel­li­gence agen­cies, law enforce­ment agen­cies, and crim­i­nal net­works, often over­lap­ping those activ­i­ties. The authors of Coup in Dal­las posit that Lafitte may very well have been the “man­ag­er” for the JFK assas­si­na­tion oper­a­tion in the U.S.)

Net­work­ing with, among oth­ers, Otto Sko­rzeny dur­ing the war, French fas­cists sought and found refuge and con­tin­ued post­war employ­ment in Spain under the fas­cist gov­ern­ment of dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co. Their rela­tion­ship with Sko­rzeny con­tin­ued after the war, and Sko­rzeny may well have been the “exec­u­tive” plan­ner of the assas­si­na­tion under whom Lafitte oper­at­ed.

“. . . . And per­haps equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant is Filliol’s his­to­ry with Nazi SS Sturm­ban­n­fuhrer Otto Sko­rzeny. . . We now know that Sko­rzeny played the cru­cial role of logis­ti­cal mas­ter­mind of the hit in Dealey Plaza. . . .”

(We have detailed Skorzeny’s vital­ly impor­tant role in post­war inter­na­tion­al fas­cism in numer­ous broad­casts, includ­ing AFA#22.)

Albarel­li devel­ops infor­ma­tion about Sko­rzeny and Lafitte as cen­tral to the plan­ning of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, and mas­ter assas­sin Fil­li­ol as being present in Dal­las on 11/22/1963.

Man­i­fest­ing grasp of both the “sweep” of fas­cism and its insti­tu­tion­al con­nec­tions, Albarel­li high­lights the fas­cist gen­e­sis of the French cos­met­ic giant L’O­re­al, employ­er of Jean Fil­li­ol in Spain and his fel­low French fas­cist Jacques Cor­reze in both Spain and the U.S. 

” . . . Once in Spain, Fil­li­ol soon estab­lished con­tact with Nazi Otto Sko­rzeny, who had been ‘reset­tled’ for the ben­e­fit of U.S. intel­li­gence inter­ests in the nation’s capi­tol. . . .

“. . . . There, Fil­li­ol quick­ly land­ed a secure and well-paid exec­u­tive job with the inter­na­tion­al divi­sion of L’Oreal, a cos­met­ic and beau­ty prod­ucts com­pa­ny. Today a very well-known com­pa­ny, L’Oreal was found­ed and oper­at­ed by Eugene Schueller, a pas­sion­ate anti-Semi­te and ultra­right-winger. Schueller, dur­ing the 1930’s and the war years, finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed La Cagoule . . . .”

 “. . . . While in Spain, nat­u­ral­ly, Cor­reze became friends with Otto Sko­rzeny after being intro­duced to his fel­low SS offi­cer by for­mer La Cagoule assas­sin Jean Fil­li­ol, by now the vice pres­i­dent of inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing for L’Oreal. . . .”

When the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions began look­ing into Cor­reze’s fas­cist and Nazi his­to­ry, the probe quick­ly unearthed sub­stan­tive alle­ga­tions about Cor­reze’s rela­tion­ship to Fil­li­ol and his fel­low fas­cist Ger­ard Litt and the lat­ter pair’s pres­ence in Dal­las at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

“. . . . Accord­ing to two for­mer employ­ees of the department’s Office of Spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tions, both of whom declined to be iden­ti­fied in this book, the exam­i­na­tion of Correze’s past quick­ly unearthed unex­pect­ed details about his links to Jean Fil­li­ol, Ger­ard Litt, and Otto Sko­rzeny, inclu­sive of detailed sus­pi­cions about Filliol’s and Litt’s pres­ence in Dal­las, Texas, at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. . . .”

(We note in pass­ing that John Lof­tus, the hero­ic author of The Belarus Secret, Amer­i­ca’s Nazi Secret, Unholy Trin­i­ty and The Secret War Against the Jews worked for the Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions.)

The broad­er con­text of the Cagoulard ele­ments in Dal­las con­cerns the OAS attempts on the life of Charles De Gaulle, which over­lap the JFK assas­si­na­tion. (We dis­cussed those areas of over­lap in, among oth­er broad­casts, FTR#1162.)

One of the appar­ent areas of over­lap between the OAS attempts to kill De Gaulle (with assis­tance from ele­ments of CIA) and the Dal­las coup is Jean Sou­e­tre, a skilled OAS assas­sin who, like Fil­li­ol and Lafitte, was net­worked with Otto Sko­rzeny.

” . . . . Skorzeny’s aide explained to Her­bert that his supe­ri­or was absent because he had ‘oth­er things going on.’ The arrange­ments that were made for [Army Ranger offi­cer Antho­ny] Her­bert to meet with Sko­rzeny con­firm Capt. Souetre’s com­man­dos were ful­ly aware of the nature of Skorzeny’s train­ing schools, which they also attend­ed. . . .”

Sou­e­tre was in Dal­las on 11/22/1063 and was expelled from the coun­try.

One of the impor­tant strengths of the Albarel­li text is the inte­gra­tion of many of the strate­gic and oper­a­tional ele­ments involved with the JFK hit.

Numer­ous writ­ers have set forth the role in the Dal­las coup of ele­ments of what Tex­ans refer to as “The Ahl Bid­ness.”

In addi­tion to despis­ing JFK for his advo­ca­cy of Alger­ian inde­pen­dence from colo­nial mas­ter France, explorato­ry infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ed to Texas-con­nect­ed petro­le­um inter­ests that Alge­ria con­tained sig­nif­i­cant petro­le­um reserves on its ter­ri­to­ry and beneath its ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fas­cist con­nec­tions in the JFK assas­si­na­tion high­light­ed in this book is the fact that Robert Schacht–a blood rel­a­tive of Hjal­mar  Horace Gree­ley Schacht, Hitler’s finance min­is­ter who was deeply involved with Clay Shaw and Permindex–was the admis­sions direc­tor for Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, the first des­ti­na­tion of Lee Har­vey Oswald when he “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union.

We also include a pas­sage from Jim DiEu­ge­nio’s clas­sic work on the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion–Des­tiny Betrayed.

This pas­sage places the Schacht fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in greater depth.

Per­min­dex was involved with, among oth­er things, attempts on the life of French pres­i­dent Charles De Gaulle in con­junc­tion with ele­ments of CIA and the OAS. (We will dis­cuss more about this in future pro­grams.

Much of the sec­ond pro­gram dis­cuss­es the actions of the Fifth Col­umn in France pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. (For more about this Fifth Col­umn, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M61.) It is impor­tant to note in this con­text, that Mr. Emory stress­es that the anal­o­gy between the Fifth Col­umn in France and its coun­ter­part in the Unit­ed States is not an exact one. There are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between the sit­u­a­tion in France before World War II and that in the U.S. today. Nonethe­less there are sim­i­lar­i­ties worth exam­in­ing.

One should note that France was gov­erned by a demo­c­ra­t­ic coali­tion gov­ern­ment under Leon Blum (the Social Front or Pop­u­lar Front), which includ­ed the French com­mu­nist par­ty. Under the social pres­sures brought about by the Great Depres­sion and the inabil­i­ty of lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments to deal ade­quate­ly with the social fall­out from it, many coun­tries expe­ri­enced pow­er­ful fas­cist move­ments. Such was the case in France. Indus­tri­al­ists, financiers, aris­to­crats and mem­bers of the armed forces were among the fas­cist plot­ters that saw the elim­i­na­tion of the Blum gov­ern­ment as a neces­si­ty. After ini­tial fail­ure in the plot by the fas­cist Cagoulards in 1938, many of the fas­cists acced­ed to pow­er in the Vichy gov­ern­ment after the Ger­man con­quest.

The pro­grams also chron­i­cle mate­r­i­al from an ear­li­er Albarel­li text con­cern­ing Lafit­te’s activ­i­ties in New Orleans at the time of the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion: His employ­ment at the World Trade Mart and at the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny, as well as his role in an alleged bur­glary of Jim Gar­rison’s office.

1. Exem­pli­fy­ing the Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments in the JFK assas­si­na­tion “op” is Robert Schacht, a rel­a­tive of Third Reich finance min­is­ter Hjal­mar “Horace Gree­ley Schacht.” “ . . . . Oswald had applied for admit­tance to the Albert Schweitzer Col­lege locat­ed in Switzer­land via cor­re­spon­dence with Robert Schacht, the college’s NY-based admis­sions. . . .”

 Coup In Dal­las: The Deci­sive Inves­ti­ga­tion into Who Killed JFK by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. (For­ward by Dick Rus­sell); Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. and Lin­da O’Hara; ISBN 978–1‑5107–4031‑0; p. 24.

. . . . Of note, three months ear­li­er, Oswald had applied for admit­tance to the Albert Schweitzer Col­lege locat­ed in Switzer­land via cor­re­spon­dence with Robert Schacht, the college’s NY-based admis­sions direc­tor. By coin­ci­dence, Robert was a blood rel­a­tive of . . . . Hjal­mar Schacht. . . .

2.  Revis­it­ing mate­r­i­al from our land­mark series on Jim DiEugenio’s Des­tiny Betrayed, we note the rela­tion­ship between: Clay Shaw, his friend Hjal­mar Schacht, the Schroed­er Bank, the Third Reich, Allen Dulles, the mys­te­ri­ous Per­min­dex intel­li­gence front and the OAS attempts on the life of Charles DeGaulle (assist­ed by the CIA).

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 385–386.

. . . . The next step in the CIA lad­der after his high-lev­el over­seas infor­mant ser­vice was his work with the strange com­pa­ny called Per­min­dex. When the announce­ment for Per­min­dex was first made in Switzer­land in late 1956, its prin­ci­pal back­ing was to come from a  local banker named  Hans Selig­man. But as more inves­ti­ga­tion by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Hen­ry Schroed­er Cor­po­ra­tion. This infor­ma­tion was quite reveal­ing. Schroed­er’s had been close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s con­nec­tions to the Schroder bank­ing fam­i­ly went back to the thir­ties when his law firm, Sul­li­van and Cromwell, first began rep­re­sent­ing them through him. Lat­er, Dulles was the bank’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA direc­tor, Schroed­er’s was a repos­i­to­ry for a fifty mil­lion dol­lar con­tin­gency fund that Dulles per­son­al­ly con­trolled. Schroder’s was a wel­come con­duit because the bank ben­e­fit­ed from pre­vi­ous CIA over­throws in Guatemala and Iran. Anoth­er rea­son that there began to be a furor over Per­min­dex in Switzer­land was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was asso­ci­at­ed with the Third Reich, specif­i­cal­ly Hein­rich Himm­ler. The project now became stalled in Switzer­land. It now moved to Rome. In a Sep­tem­ber 1969 inter­view Shaw did for Pent­house Mag­a­zine, he told James Phe­lan that he only grew inter­est­ed in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in Octo­ber 1958. Yet a State Depart­ment cable dat­ed April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great inter­est in Per­min­dex from the out­set.

One can see why. The board of direc­tors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fas­cist gov­ern­ments, peo­ple who worked the Jew­ish refugee rack­et dur­ing World War II, a for­mer mem­ber of Mus­solin­i’s cab­i­net, and the son-in-law of Hjal­mar Schacht, the eco­nom­ic wiz­ard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These peo­ple would all appeal to the con­ser­v­a­tive Shaw. There were at least four inter­na­tion­al news­pa­pers that exposed the bizarre activ­i­ties of Per­min­dex when it was in Rome. One prob­lem was the mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing: no one knew where it was com­ing from. Anoth­er was that its activ­i­ties report­ed­ly includ­ed assas­si­na­tion attempts on French Pre­mier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the found­ing mem­ber of Per­min­dex, Fer­enc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of for­mer French offi­cers who broke with De Gaulle over his Alger­ian pol­i­cy. They lat­er made sev­er­al attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing, plus the rightwing, neo-Fas­cist direc­tors cre­at­ed anoth­er wave of con­tro­ver­sy. One news­pa­per wrote that the orga­ni­za­tion may have been “a crea­ture of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the trans­fer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal polit­i­cal-espi­onage activ­i­ties.” The Schroder con­nec­tion would cer­tain­ly sug­gest that. . . .

3. Before delv­ing into the French fas­cists dis­cussed in Coup in Dal­las, we note Pierre Lafitte’s involve­ment with the JFK assas­si­na­tion land­scape in New Orleans: ” . . . . It is worth not­ing that Lafitte turned up in yet anoth­er tan­gle of major, his­toric pro­por­tions dur­ing the 1960s. Around the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Lafitte worked for the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny and then as a chef for the World Trade Mart, both in New Orleans. . . . Lafitte and Allan Hugh­es col­lab­o­rat­ed on anoth­er occa­sion in a very bizarre and reveal­ing episode hav­ing to do with accused JFK assas­si­na­tion co-con­spir­a­tor Clay Shaw... Hugh­es, Lafitte and inves­tiga­tive writer James Phe­lan –who some main­tain was in league with both Maheu and the CIA –lit­er­al­ly crawled into New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s office to pur­loin doc­u­ments hav­ing to do with Clay Shaw. . . .”

A Ter­ri­ble Mis­take: The Mur­der of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Exper­i­ments by Hank Albarel­li, Jr.; Trine Day [SC]; Copy­right 2010 by Hank Albarel­li, Jr.; p. 428.

…It is worth not­ing that Lafitte turned up in yet anoth­er tan­gle of major, his­toric pro­por­tions dur­ing the 1960s. Around the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Lafitte worked for the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny and then as a chef for the World Trade Mart, both in New Orleans. William B. Reily, an avid anti-Com­mu­nist, owned the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny and was close­ly con­nect­ed to McCarthyite and rabid anti-Com­mu­nist Edward Scan­nell But­ler, who were both close to CIA assis­tant direc­tor Charles Cabell, CIA SRS chief Paul Gaynor, and Agency ARTICHOKE offi­cial Morse Allen. Read­ers may recall that alleged JFK assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald also worked as a main­te­nance man for the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny in the sum­mer of 1963…”

4. A Ter­ri­ble Mis­take: The Mur­der of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Exper­i­ments by Hank Albarel­li, Jr.; Trine Day [SC]; Copy­right 2010 by Hank Albarel­li, Jr.; p. 663.

 …Lafitte and Allan Hugh­es col­lab­o­rat­ed on anoth­er occa­sion in a very bizarre and reveal­ing episode hav­ing to do with accused JFK assas­si­na­tion co-con­spir­a­tor Clay Shaw... Hugh­es, Lafitte and inves­tiga­tive writer James Phe­lan –who some main­tain was in league with both Maheu and the CIA –lit­er­al­ly crawled into New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s office to pur­loin doc­u­ments hav­ing to do with Clay Shaw. Lafitte would lat­er tell George Hunter White that the Gar­ri­son office break-in was ‘maybe one of the only jobs I ever did that made me wor­ry any at all . . .

5. Next, we set forth the 1930’s machi­na­tions of Cagoule assas­sin Jean Paul Robert Fil­li­ol and his fel­low French fas­cist Pierre Lafitte:

Coup In Dal­las: The Deci­sive Inves­ti­ga­tion into Who Killed JFK by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. (For­ward by Dick Rus­sell); Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. and Lin­da O’Hara; ISBN 978–1‑5107–4031‑0; pp. 10–11.

. . . . One of La Cagoule’s most noto­ri­ous assas­sins, who often dealt with [OSS col­lab­o­ra­tor and dou­ble agent Hen­ri] d’Astier, was Jean Paul Robert Fil­li­ol, spelled con­sis­tent­ly with a sin­gle l by LaFitte. With the Vichy gov­ern­ment formed in France, Fil­li­ol became the Cagoule’s chief and most trust­ed assas­sin, an infa­mous killer known through­out Europe. . . .

. . . . With­in months of La Cagoule’s for­ma­tion, Fil­li­ol became head of the group’s Sec­tion Ter­ror­iste, and many of his fledg­ling assas­sins were in their late teens or ear­ly twen­ties. . . .

. . . . And per­haps equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant is Filliol’s his­to­ry with Nazi SS Sturm­ban­n­fuhrer Otto Sko­rzeny. . . We now know that Sko­rzeny played the cru­cial role of logis­ti­cal mas­ter­mind of the hit in Dealey Plaza.

Through­out the 1930’s, “Pierre Lafitte” often went by the alias­es Jean Pierre Mornard and Jean Monard, as well as by Pierre Jean Mar­tin  dur­ing the time that he was close­ly aligned with the French Gestapo-like group called the Mil­ice. Lafitte’s sur­viv­ing per­son­al effects act to sup­port the claim and con­tain a few French SS badges as well as two Mil­ice iden­ti­ty cards under the name of Mar­tin. . . .

6. More about Filliol’s WWII net­work­ing with Lafitte and the SS: “ . . . . . . . . Pierre Lafitte would also cross paths with Filliol—who like Lafitte would use at least twen­ty aliases—when in 1944 he was asso­ci­at­ed with the SS Waf­fen Charle­magne Divi­sion, a French unit aid­ing the Nazis in their occu­pa­tion of France. . . .”

This excerpt also high­lights the post­war career of con­vict­ed French war crim­i­nal Fil­li­ol, net­work­ing in Spain with Otto Sko­rzeny, as well as with the famous cos­met­ics firm L’Oreal, found­ed by fel­low French fas­cist Eugene Schueller.

Coup In Dal­las: The Deci­sive Inves­ti­ga­tion into Who Killed JFK by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. (For­ward by Dick Rus­sell); Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. and Lin­da O’Hara; ISBN 978–1‑5107–4031‑0; pp. 13–14.

. . . . Pierre Lafitte would also cross paths with Filliol—who like Lafitte would use at least twen­ty aliases—when in 1944 he was asso­ci­at­ed with the SS Waf­fen Charle­magne Divi­sion, a French unit aid­ing the Nazis in their occu­pa­tion of France. It is report­ed by sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Lafitte’s fam­i­ly that he was with the SS Brigade­fuhrer Kruke­nen­berg in April 1945, just pri­or to its being moved to Berlin to defend Hitler in his final bunker days, but inde­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion of this remains elu­sive. There is no evi­dence that Lafitte was ever cap­tured, let alone brought to tri­al; how­ev­er, at the end of World War II, Fil­li­ol was tried in absen­tia and sen­tenced to death. His sen­tence was nev­er car­ried out because he escaped to Spain, and fas­cist Dic­ta­tor Gen­er­al Fran­cis­co Fran­co refused to extra­dite the killer.

Once in Spain, Fil­li­ol soon estab­lished con­tact with Nazi Otto Sko­rzeny, who had been “reset­tled” for the ben­e­fit of U.S. intel­li­gence inter­ests in the nation’s capi­tol. . . .

. . . . There, Fil­li­ol quick­ly land­ed a secure and well-paid exec­u­tive job with the inter­na­tion­al divi­sion of L’Oreal, a cos­met­ic and beau­ty prod­ucts com­pa­ny. Today a very well-known com­pa­ny, L’Oreal was found­ed and oper­at­ed by Eugene Schueller, a pas­sion­ate anti-Semi­te and ultra­right-winger. Schueller, dur­ing the 1930’s and the war years, finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed La Cagoule and Deloncle’s 1940 polit­i­cal group, Mou­ve­ment Social Rev­o­lu­tion­naire (MSR). MSR, like La Cagoule was ultra­na­tion­al­is­tic, anti­com­mu­nist, and anti-Semit­ic and fea­tured Fil­li­ol as chief of intel­li­gence and Schueller as a group direc­tor and cen­tral source of funds. . . .

. . . . Begin­ning in Octo­ber 1944, after hold­ing fa series of con­fer­ences with Ger­man and French advis­ers, Joseph Dar­nand, a forty-six-year old promi­nent La Cagoule mem­ber, vir­u­lent anti-Bol­she­vist, Mil­ice Founder, and Nazi SS offi­cer, found­ed a “spe­cial ser­vice” called the Organ­i­sa­tion Tech­nique (OT), which was made up of about 200 vol­un­teers. Fil­li­ol was placed in charge of OT’s train­ing divi­sion. His first major project was to take on the train­ing of about 150 para­mil­i­tary para­chutists. We begin to grasp the impact of Filliol’s his­to­ry with Otto Sko­rzeny.

Not sure how best to go about the task of train­ing the OTs, Fil­li­ol sent a telegram request­ing assis­tance from Nazi Sturm­ban­n­fuhrer Sko­rzeny, who he had first encoun­tered in Paris. . . .

7. Jacques Cor­reze joined Fil­li­ol at L’Oreal, even­tu­al­ly mov­ing from the Span­ish oper­a­tions of the firm to its U.S. sub­sidiary. “ . . . . Cor­reze had been a high-rank­ing mem­ber of La Cagoule and the per­son­al assis­tant of Eugene Delon­cle [head and appar­ent founder of La Cagoule] and served as a crit­i­cal link in the fund­ing of La Cagoule by Eugene Schuller, founder of the L’Oreal cos­met­ic com­pa­ny. . . . While in Spain, nat­u­ral­ly, Cor­reze became friends with Otto Sko­rzeny after being intro­duced to his fel­low SS offi­cer by for­mer La Cagoule assas­sin Jean Fil­li­ol, by now the vice pres­i­dent of inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing for L’Oreal. . . .”

Cor­reze came to the atten­tion of the Jus­tice Department’s Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions. In turn, the OSI came across reports of Fil­li­ol and [fel­low French fas­cist and SS man Ger­ard] Litt’s pres­ence in Dal­las on 11/22/1963. “ . . . . He suc­cess­ful­ly built the divi­sion to a very pros­per­ous mar­ket posi­tion, but in 1991, the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions, announced that it was open­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion “to deter­mine whether the chair­man [Cor­reze] of the $1 bil­lion Amer­i­can affil­i­ate of l’Oreal, the French cos­met­ic com­pa­ny, should be barred from the Unit­ed States for his pro-Nazi activ­i­ties dur­ing World War II.” . . .

. . . . Accord­ing to two for­mer employ­ees of the department’s Office of Spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tions, both of whom declined to be iden­ti­fied in this book, the exam­i­na­tion of Correze’s past quick­ly unearthed unex­pect­ed details about his links to Jean Fil­li­ol, Ger­ard Litt, and Otto Sko­rzeny, inclu­sive of detailed sus­pi­cions about Filliol’s and Litt’s pres­ence in Dal­las, Texas, at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. . . .”

Coup In Dal­las: The Deci­sive Inves­ti­ga­tion into Who Killed JFK by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. (For­ward by Dick Rus­sell); Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. and Lin­da O’Hara; ISBN 978–1‑5107–4031‑0; pp. 15–16.

. . . . Anoth­er close asso­ciate of the mur­der­ous Fil­li­ol was Jacques Cor­reze, a man who over the past half-cen­tu­ry has con­sis­tent­ly been labeled a blood­thirsty racist and shapeshifter who causal­ly over­saw Filliol’s homi­ci­dal activ­i­ties. Cor­reze had been a high-rank­ing mem­ber of La Cagoule and the per­son­al assis­tant of Eugene Delon­cle [head and appar­ent founder of La Cagoule] and served as a crit­i­cal link in the fund­ing of La Cagoule by Eugene Schuller, founder of the L’Oreal cos­met­ic com­pa­ny. . . .

. . . . Fol­low­ing the close of World War II, Cor­reze was con­vict­ed of sev­er­al war crimes and sen­tenced to ten years in a French prison. Jacques Cor­reze was freed in 1949 after only five years in prison. Short­ly there­after, he was hired by then‑L’Oreal com­pa­ny pres­i­dent Fran­cois Dalle. One of Correze’s first assign­ments for the com­pa­ny was to help bet­ter orga­nize Pro­casa, L’Oreal’s Span­ish mar­ket­ing firm. While in Spain, nat­u­ral­ly, Cor­reze became friends with Otto Sko­rzeny after being intro­duced to his fel­low SS offi­cer by for­mer La Cagoule assas­sin Jean Fil­li­ol, by now the vice pres­i­dent of inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing for L’Oreal.

After sev­er­al years with Pro­casa, Cor­reze was dis­patched to the Unit­ed States, where he was charged with direct­ing Cos­mair, a divi­sion of L’Oreal. He suc­cess­ful­ly built the divi­sion to a very pros­per­ous mar­ket posi­tion, but in 1991, the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions, announced that it was open­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion “to deter­mine whether the chair­man [Cor­reze] of the $1 bil­lion Amer­i­can affil­i­ate of l’Oreal, the French cos­met­ic com­pa­ny, should be barred from the Unit­ed States for his pro-Nazi activ­i­ties dur­ing World War II.” . . .

. . . . Accord­ing to two for­mer employ­ees of the department’s Office of Spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tions, both of whom declined to be iden­ti­fied in this book, the exam­i­na­tion of Correze’s past quick­ly unearthed unex­pect­ed details about his links to Jean Fil­li­ol, Ger­ard Litt, and Otto Sko­rzeny, inclu­sive of detailed sus­pi­cions about Filliol’s and Litt’s pres­ence in Dal­las, Texas, at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. A for­mal request by author Albarel­li to the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice for doc­u­men­ta­tion con­cern­ing these sus­pi­cions remained unan­swered. Cor­reze died sud­den­ly in June 1991, and the Jus­tice Depart­ment sus­pend­ed its inves­ti­ga­tion into his activ­i­ties. . . .

8. Skorzeny’s Span­ish mer­ce­nary train­ing camps were uti­lized by OAS com­man­do and assas­sin Jean Sou­e­tre, as well as U.S. Army Ranger offi­cer and lat­er Green Beret Antho­ny Her­bert.

In numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing AFA#22  we have detailed the inter­ac­tion, oper­a­tional and insti­tu­tion­al con­nec­tion between Sko­rzeny, his Pal­adin mer­ce­nary group, the Span­ish intel­li­gence ser­vice and what Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger calls “the Inter­na­tion­al Fascista.”

Coup In Dal­las: The Deci­sive Inves­ti­ga­tion into Who Killed JFK by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. (For­ward by Dick Rus­sell); Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2021 by H.P. Albarel­li, Jr. and Lin­da O’Hara; ISBN 978–1‑5107–4031‑0; p. 421.

. . . . Skorzeny’s aide explained to Her­bert that his supe­ri­or was absent because he had “oth­er things going on.” The arrange­ments that were made for [Army Ranger offi­cer Antho­ny] Her­bert to meet with Sko­rzeny con­firm Capt. Souetre’s com­man­dos were ful­ly aware of the nature of Skorzeny’s train­ing schools, which they also attend­ed. . . .

9. End­ing our first pro­gram and begin­ning our sec­ond, we set forth Rein­hard Gehlen’s net­work­ing with OAS French fas­cists, as well as his long-term use of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Mau­rice Picard as a mole inside the secu­ri­ty ser­vices of De Gaulle.

Note­wor­thy for deep polit­i­cal analy­sis is the ide­o­log­i­cal and com­mer­cial over­lap between Geheln’s inter­ests and those of his French fas­cist col­lab­o­ra­tors: “ . . . . An expla­na­tion for Gehlen’s atti­tude was advanced in the French press; Gen­er­al Salan and his fel­low con­spir­a­tors had assured Gehlen that, after oust­ing De Gaulle, a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in France under their lead­er­ship would offer West Ger­many impor­tant polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­ces­sions.  The French gen­er­als and the big busi­ness and finance tycoons who backed them regard­ed de Gaulle’s atti­tude to the trade unions and left-wing move­ments as too con­cil­ia­to­ry. France was plagued by recur­rent strikes and riots; if de Gaulle failed there was, in their opin­ion, a real dan­ger of a com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”

Gehlen: Spy of the Cen­tu­ry by E.H. Cookridge; Ran­dom House 1971 [HC]; Copy­right 1971 by Euro­pean Copy­right Com­pa­ny Ltd.; ISBN 0–394-47313–2; pp. 359–361.

. . . . The French had found suc­cour in Ger­many for sev­er­al years in their fight against Alger­ian nation­al­ists. But Gehlen turned against Gen­er­al de Gaulle after he exe­cut­ed a volte-face and offered inde­pen­dence to the Alge­ri­ans. He regard­ed de Gaulle’s deci­sion as open­ing the door to com­mu­nism in North Africa . . . . Thus, Gehlen sided with the French gen­er­als who staged the revolt against the French Pres­i­dent. Gehlen was in full accord with the politi­cians such as Georges Bidault and Jacques Soustelle who had turned against de Gaulle and sup­port­ed the OAS organ­i­sa­tion, aimed at pre­vent­ing the inde­pen­dence of Alge­ria. When Bidault and Soustelle and oth­er OAS sought refuge from arrest from the French police, Gehlen advised chan­cel­lor Kiesinger that there was no rea­son for refus­ing their request.

Gehlen had close con­tacts with the lead­ers of the anti-Gaullist rebel­lion. On June 15, 1961 Gen­er­al Raoul Salan had a secret meet­ing with Gehlen at a vil­la in Schwabing, used by BND for clan­des­tine pur­pos­es. Ear­li­er he had already met Gen­er­al Mau­rice Challe, the chief author of the gen­er­als’ Putsch in Algiers. Two oth­er OAS lead­ers, Joseph Ortiz and Pierre Lagail­larde, accused in Paris of hav­ing been involved in sev­er­al attempts at the assas­si­na­tion of Gen­er­al de Gaulle also found refuge in Germany—with Gehlen’s help, accord­ing to sub­se­quent dis­clo­sures in French news­pa­pers. In sup­port­ing the OAS activ­i­ties and pro­tect­ing its fugi­tive lead­ers, Gehlen had act­ed in direct oppo­si­tion to Adenauer’s avowed pol­i­cy, which sup­port­ed DeGaulle. An expla­na­tion for Gehlen’s atti­tude was advanced in the French press; Gen­er­al Salan and his fel­low con­spir­a­tors had assured Gehlen that, after oust­ing De Gaulle, a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in France under their lead­er­ship would offer West Ger­many impor­tant polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­ces­sions.  The French gen­er­als and the big busi­ness and finance tycoons who backed them regard­ed de Gaulle’s atti­tude to the trade unions and left-wing move­ments as too con­cil­ia­to­ry. France was plagued by recur­rent strikes and riots; if de Gaulle failed there was, in their opin­ion, a real dan­ger of a com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion. This must have been Gehlen’s main rea­son for sup­port­ing the OAS. Even­tu­al­ly, de Gaulle made peace with the gen­er­als. Gehlen, how­ev­er con­tin­ued to make sure that he received secret infor­ma­tion from Paris.

When the ques­tion of his con­tin­u­a­tion in office was still being dis­cussed by Chan­cel­lor Kiesinger and his social demo­c­ra­t­ic coali­tion part­ners dur­ing the win­ter of 1967–8, anoth­er affair in which Gehlen was deeply involved burst into the news­pa­per head­lines; a high offi­cial at the French min­istry of the inte­ri­or was arrest­ed, accused of being an agent of a for­eign pow­er. He was six­ty-one-year-old Mau­rice Picard, a for­mer chief of the ministry’s secret secu­ri­ty depart­ment and lat­er its civ­il defence direc­tor. At first, it was believed that he had sup­plied infor­ma­tion to Sovi­et agents, although he was known for his extreme right-wing views. Soon after­wards, Paris news­pa­pers revealed that the “for­eign pow­er” in ques­tion was the Ger­man Fed­er­al Repub­lic and that Picard had been work­ing for Gehlen for at least eight years; indeed, he may already have been con­nect­ed with Pul­lach when the dis­clo­sures of Gehlen’s spy­ing on Germany’s allies were made in 1958. What was even more dis­turb­ing was that Picard had been a “Petain­ist” and had col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis dur­ing the war. In 1945, he suc­ceed­ed in exon­er­at­ing him­self and even­tu­al­ly reached high rank in the gov­ern­ment ser­vice. . . .

10.  Next, the pro­gram illus­trates the deep polit­i­cal foun­da­tion of the events described in Coup in Dal­las by detail­ing the rela­tion­ship between the De Wen­dels and the Rochlings (as well as oth­er Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists). (The Ruhr is a tra­di­tion­al coal-pro­duc­ing region, with strong eco­nom­ic links to the French steel pro­duc­ers of the Lor­raine dis­trict.) This rela­tion­ship tran­scend­ed French nation­al inter­ests, and worked to sub­vert them at times. The De Wen­del fam­i­ly in France had strong con­nec­tions with, among oth­ers, the Rochlings in Ger­many. This result­ed in French pro­tec­tion for Ger­man steel pro­duc­ing ele­ments in the Briey Basin dur­ing World War I, the pro­tec­tion of the Rochlings from French crim­i­nal charges between the wars, and the award­ing of key con­tracts for con­struc­tion of the Mag­inot Line to the Rochlings pri­or to World War II.

All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; p. 34.

. . . . . The hor­i­zon­tal sep­a­ra­tion of pri­vate inter­ests from gov­ern­ment poli­cies went even fur­ther. The strug­gle of the inter­war peri­od was not sim­ply a clash between French inter­ests on the one side and Ger­man inter­ests on the oth­er. Dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the Ruhr-Lor­raine indus­tri­al com­plex, like-mind­ed indus­tri­al­ists in France and Ger­many had become direc­tors of joint­ly owned and joint­ly con­trolled finan­cial, indus­tri­al, and dis­trib­ut­ing enter­pris­es. In many cas­es com­mon views on ques­tions of eco­nom­ic orga­ni­za­tion, labor pol­i­cy, social leg­is­la­tion, and atti­tude toward gov­ern­ment had been far more impor­tant to the indus­tri­al­ists than dif­fer­ences of nation­al­i­ty or cit­i­zen­ship. After 1870 the inter­de­pen­dence of the French and Ger­man iron and steel indus­tries led the own­ers to work togeth­er despite nation­al dif­fer­ences, although the pri­vate activ­i­ties of the French own­ers were, in many instances, in direct oppo­si­tion to French pub­lic pol­i­cy. It is curi­ous to note that only the French appeared to have this con­flict between pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate activ­i­ties. On the Ger­man side, com­plete co-ordi­na­tion seems to have been pre­served between nation­al and pri­vate inter­ests; between offi­cials of the Ger­man Repub­lic and the lead­ers of Ger­man indus­try and finance. . . .

11.  All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; p. 34.

. . . . Dur­ing World War I the de Wen­dels, the influ­en­tial French-Ger­man bank­ing and indus­tri­al fam­i­ly which head­ed the French wing of the Inter­na­tion­al Steel Car­tel through their Comite des Forges and whose mem­bers had sat in the par­lia­ments of both France and Ger­many, were able to keep the French army from destroy­ing indus­tri­al plants belong­ing to the Ger­man enter­pris­es of the Rochling fam­i­ly. These plants were locat­ed in the Briey Basin, a Lor­raine ore field then in Ger­man con­trol. . . .

12. All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; p. 34.

. . . . The Rochling fam­i­ly, with their pow­er­ful com­plex of coal, iron, steel and bank­ing enter­pris­es in Ger­many, has for gen­er­a­tions played in close har­mo­ny with the de Wen­del fam­i­ly. For a cen­tu­ry, the descen­dants of Chris­t­ian Rochling have dom­i­nat­ed the indus­try and com­merce of the Saar Basin. It was Her­mann Rochling who arranged the return of the Saar to Ger­many in the plebiscite of Jan­u­ary 1935 by orga­niz­ing the Deutsche Front, which deliv­ered 90 per­cent of the votes to the Nazis. Though sev­en­ty-two mem­bers of the Rochling fam­i­ly have sur­vived two world wars and are still active in the busi­ness of the Saar today, two oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly, Her­mann and his broth­er Robert, a major, had been put in charge of pro­duc­tion in the Briey Basin. After the war, when the broth­ers Rochling moved out of the areas which had to be ced­ed to France under the Treaty, the two of them car­ried away bod­i­ly a cou­ple of large steel plants. . . .

13. All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; p. 35.

. . . . Con­ceiv­ing this grand lar­ce­ny to be some­thing in the nature of a war crime, the French gov­ern­ment tried the broth­ers Rochling in absen­tia and sen­tenced them to forty years in prison. But the Ger­man gov­ern­ment nev­er would give up the Rochlings to the French. For the next twen­ty-two years the broth­ers were under this cloud as far as the French gov­ern­ment was con­cerned. On the oth­er hand, as far as the French steel mak­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, the Comite des Forges, and in par­tic­u­lar the de Wen­dels who head­ed the Comite, were con­cerned, it was busi­ness as usu­al-or in this case, busi­ness as unusu­al-that pre­vailed. In the end even the French gov­ern­ment weak­ened for busi­ness pur­pos­es, though the war-crime sen­tence remained. When it came time for France to build its impreg­nable Mag­inot Line, who should be called in to sup­ply steel and tech­ni­cal assis­tance but the Ger­man firm of the broth­ers Rochling. If the French behaved in this as did the Amer­i­cans dur­ing World War II in the case of insur­ance cov­er­age on war plants, they doubt­less placed plen­ty of guards to pro­tect the secu­ri­ty and secre­cy of the Mag­inot Line con­struc­tion from the pry­ing eyes of the gen­er­al pub­lic while the blue­prints rest­ed safe­ly in the hands of the only peo­ple to whom they mat­tered: to wit, the ene­my. . . . 

14. All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; p. 36.

. . . . Now comes the out­break of World War II. The French army march­ing into the Saar dur­ing the ‘pho­ny war’ peri­od in 1939, received orders not to fire on or dam­age the plants of the ‘war crim­i­nals,’ the broth­ers Rochling. In 1940 came the blitz and the fall of France. The Vichy gov­ern­ment passed a decree exon­er­at­ing the Rochlings and can­cel­ing their forty-year prison sen­tences. . . . 

15. The Fran­co-Ger­man steel car­tel, in turn, was part of an inter­na­tion­al steel car­tel fea­tur­ing the Thyssen firm Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke (lat­er Thyssen A.G.).

Gen­er­a­tions of the Bush fam­i­ly were involved with the Thyssen busi­ness inter­ests, which became one of the pri­ma­ry cogs of the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion.

All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; pp. 41–42.

. . . . The mid-twen­ties were remark­able for Ger­man indus­tri­al com­bi­na­tion. They marked the for­ma­tion of the Unit­ed Steel Works in Ger­many, as a com­bi­na­tion of the four biggest steel pro­duc­ers Ernst Poens­gen, Fritz Thyssen, Otto Wolff, and the oth­ers who drew this com­bine togeth­er had man­aged to get over a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars from pri­vate investors in the Unit­ed States. Dil­lon Read & Com­pa­ny, the New York invest­ment house which brought Clarence Dil­lon, James V. For­re­stal, William H. Drap­er, Jr., and oth­ers into promi­nence, float­ed the Unit­ed Steel Works bonds in the Unit­ed States behind a glow­ing prospec­tus which declared that the Unit­ed Steel Works Cor­po­ra­tion (Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke) ‘will be the largest indus­tri­al unit in Europe and one of the largest man­u­fac­tur­ers of iron and steel in the world, rank­ing in pro­duc­tive capac­i­ty sec­ond only to the Unit­ed States Steel Cor­po­ra­tion.’ The for­ma­tion of Unit­ed Steel gave its man­age­ment tremen­dous pow­er in Ger­many: enough to car­ry through with­out delay the orga­ni­za­tion of the Ger­man domes­tic steel car­tel, and to guar­an­tee the ‘good behav­ior’ of all Ger­man steel com­pa­nies in their agree­ments with for­eign firms. . . .

16. The account of the actions of the French Fifth Col­umn relies heav­i­ly on the account pro­vid­ed by Pierre Cot, the French min­is­ter of avi­a­tion under the Leon Blum gov­ern­ment. In his 1944 book Tri­umph of Trea­son, Cot dis­cussed the sub­ver­sion of the French mil­i­tary resis­tance to the Ger­mans by mem­bers of the armed forces sym­pa­thet­ic to the fas­cist cause. The Vichy gov­ern­ment then under­took to pin the stun­ning mil­i­tary defeat on the Blum gov­ern­ment, instead of the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al activ­i­ties of some of its own sym­pa­thiz­ers.

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; p. 14.

. . . . First of all, it was nec­es­sary to ‘pre­serve the hon­or of the Army.’ Gen­er­al Wey­gand thun­dered these words like a com­mand. He used, uncon­scious­ly, the same terms that lead­ers of the French Army had invoked dur­ing the Drey­fus affair to pre­vent pub­lic opin­ion from dis­cov­er­ing their crit­i­cal mis­takes. ‘Pre­serve the hon­or of the Army,’ to French mil­i­tary men, is to secure by every means-includ­ing those out­lawed by moral law and the Penal Code-the defense of the mil­i­tary cor­po­ra­tion. The ques­tion of the respon­si­bil­i­ty of mil­i­tary lead­ers in the mil­i­tary defeat of France either had to be evad­ed or posed in dis­tort­ed terms. To ‘pre­serve the hon­or of the Army,’ the scape­goats of the defeat had to be cho­sen from the polit­i­cal per­son­nel of the Third Repub­lic. . . .

17.   The com­bi­na­tion of inep­ti­tude and delib­er­ate sub­ver­sion by ele­ments of the armed forces was rel­a­tive­ly well known at the time.

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; pp. 14–15.

. . . . In truth, at the end of June, 1940, the ques­tion of who was respon­si­ble was in every­one’s mind. In the two weeks pre­ced­ing the armistice, I was in touch with the crowd of refugees that slow­ly and painful­ly fol­lowed the roads south­ward. In the offices of the pre­fects, in the town halls, restau­rants, and relief cen­ters, I lis­tened to many con­ver­sa­tions received many con­fi­dences, heard many opin­ions. Opin­ions dif­fered on gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy, but all agreed in denounc­ing the blun­ders of the French Gen­er­al Staff. The coun­try was unan­i­mous, not against Blum, Dal­adier, or me, nor even against Laval, Pierre-Eti­enne Flandin, Georges Bon­net, or Jacques Dori­ot, but against the gen­er­als who had been inca­pable of under­stand­ing the con­di­tions of mod­ern war­fare and who were guilty of not know­ing the rudi­ments of their pro­fes­sion. ‘Just as before 1914 they had pre­pared for the war of 1870,’ the peo­ple said, ‘before 1939 they pre­pared for the war of 1914.’ . . . .

18. French enlist­ed per­son­nel in the ranks of the mil­i­tary were among the most severe of the crit­ics of the Fifth Col­umn in the gen­er­al staff, aris­toc­ra­cy and cor­po­rate elite.

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; pp. 14–15.

. . . . The sever­est con­dem­na­tion came from the sol­diers. Lost on the roads in pur­suit of dis­persed divi­sions and phan­tom reg­i­ments, thrown togeth­er with the refugees whose uncer­tain­ties and anx­i­eties they share, the men in uni­form cursed the con­duct of their lead­ers. They repeat­ed that they nev­er had been schooled in the tech­niques of mod­ern war­fare, espe­cial­ly in the com­bined use of tanks and avi­a­tion, and they were amazed at the inept­ness of their com­man­ders in the bat­tles of May and June. They asked why the Meuse and Seine bridges had not been blown up before the arrival of Ger­man motor­ized columns; why Paris had not been defend­ed street by street, as the Span­ish Repub­li­cans had defend­ed Madrid (and as the Rus­sians were to defend Stal­in­grad); and they want­ed to know why more than half of the tanks and air­planes had been left in the rear-in Orleans, Toulouse, Lyon, North Africa-instead of being massed for a coun­ter­at­tack that might have changed every­thing. They knew that the depots were burst­ing with the can­non, air­planes, and equip­ment they had need­ed. . . .

19. Gen­er­al Wey­gand appears to have helped hus­band French mil­i­tary resources to com­bat domes­tic “rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies” instead of the Ger­man invaders.

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; p. 15.

. . . . One began to hear quot­ed the dis­turb­ing remarks with which Gen­er­al Wey­gand had tried to per­suade the cab­i­net to ask for an armistice: that he need­ed his tanks to mas­ter the rev­o­lu­tion­ary ele­ments, if it should become nec­es­sary. That is to say, the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the French Army pre­ferred fight­ing French work­ers to throw­ing all his forces against the Ger­man troops. The sol­diers praised the brav­ery of cer­tain lead­ers-Giraud, Lestien, De Gaulle, Lucien, Delat­tre de Tas­signy, and many oth­ers-but they declared that most of the offi­cers had been the first to flee. ‘They left in auto­mo­biles and we left on foot,’ they said, talk­ing about those offi­cers, faith­ful fol­low­ers of l’Ac­tion Fran­caise, Je Suis Partout, Gringoire, and oth­er Fas­cist news­pa­pers which had said in var­i­ous forms, dur­ing the win­ter, that this was a demo­c­ra­t­ic war and con­se­quent­ly did not inter­est them. . . .

20. Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; pp. 15–16.

. . . . Their anger was legit­i­mate. It was inex­plic­a­ble, after all, that the Gen­er­al Staff, after decid­ing to aban­don Paris and thus open­ing the east to the Ger­mans, had not ordered the troops which occu­pied the Mag­inot Line to fall back toward the south. More than a mil­lion men, the best of the French Army, were caught in the Ger­man trap, a dis­as­ter which could have been pre­vent­ed by an order from Gen­er­al Wey­gand. . . .

21. The Vichy gov­ern­ment fea­tured promi­nent French fas­cists and col­lab­o­ra­tionist mem­bers of the Fifth Col­umn.

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; p. 16.

. . . . By its com­po­si­tion, the gov­ern­ment of Vichy was rep­re­sen­ta­tive not of the French peo­ple but of the Gen­er­al Staff. Its first cab­i­nets were head­ed by Petain, the spir­i­tu­al leader of the French Army, the man who had played the most impor­tant part in the prepa­ra­tion of the war and in the for­ma­tion of the Gen­er­al Staff. And these cab­i­nets were com­posed large­ly of mem­bers of the Gen­er­al Staff-Gen­er­al Wey­gand, Gen­er­al Pujo, Admi­ral Dar­lan, Gen­er­al Huntzinger, Gen­er­al Berg­eret, and Admi­ral Pla­ton. As the French proverb says, ‘the wolves do not eat each oth­er! . . .

22. Cot dis­cuss­es in detail the appoint­ment of Cagoulard fas­cists to posi­tions of influ­ence with­in the Vichy gov­ern­ment.

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; pp. 17–18.

. . . . To their aston­ish­ment the French peo­ple saw Petain slow­ly fill the most impor­tant posts of author­i­ty in local, depart­men­tal, and cen­tral admin­is­tra­tions with men who had tak­en part in the Cagoulard plot, with those who had repeat­ed the infa­mous refrain ‘rather Hitler than Leon Blum,’ and even with some of those who before or dur­ing the war had been arrest­ed for trea­son­able domes­tic and for­eign activ­i­ties. The peo­ple were apply­ing to the gov­ern­ment the old proverb, ‘tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.’ They were alarmed to see Vichy employ for its most del­i­cate mis­sions Fer­di­nand de Brinon, Jean Mon­tigny, Jean Goy, Jean Luchaire, and Gas­ton Hen­ry-Haye-mem­bers of the Comite France-Alle­magne, an orga­ni­za­tion which, before the war, had been inspired and financed by Otto Abetz, after 1940 Hitler’s Ambas­sador in Paris. They learned with fury that on the night of the armistice, when France was in mourn­ing, French­men and French­women of the aris­toc­ra­cy, high finance, and indus­try had drunk at Bor­deaux to the defeat which had rid them of the night­mare of democ­ra­cy and the Pop­u­lar Front. The peo­ple under­stood that the Fifth Col­umn in France, as in Spain, had opened the door to Hitler’s agents. And they watched with awe the agents of the Fifth Col­umn become mas­ters of France, the France of Petain, Wey­gand, and Laval. . . .

23. The pro­gram high­lights Cot’s account of the use of Fifth Col­umn activ­i­ty by fas­cists in the 1930s and 1940s. (AFA 10 con­tains an account of the 1934 coup attempt in the Unit­ed States by pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic inter­ests who hat­ed Franklin Roo­sevelt’s New Deal.)

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; p. 18.

. . . . The activ­i­ty of the Fifth Col­umn will not be con­sid­ered by his­to­ri­ans a spe­cial phe­nom­e­non of French pub­lic life, but as an inte­gral part of Fas­cism. The Fifth Col­umn has appeared wher­ev­er Fas­cism has tried to gain a foothold. It was at work in Spain, Aus­tria, and Czecho­slo­va­kia before it turned up in France, and there are Fifth Columns in the Unit­ed States, India, and Latin Amer­i­ca. By the Fifth Col­umn I do not mean only spies and licensed trai­tors. The Fifth Col­umn includes all who, by accept­ing fas­cist doc­trines or meth­ods, become the con­scious or uncon­scious accom­plices of a for­eign pow­er.

Trea­son and com­plic­i­ty have their degrees and nuances. The Gen­er­al Staff of the Fifth col­umn con­sists prin­ci­pal­ly of ambi­tious men who try to seize pow­er by destroy­ing or par­a­lyz­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. The body of the Fifth Col­umn is com­posed of peo­ple who think they are sav­ing their coun­try from the ‘com­mu­nist men­ace’ or from ‘British impe­ri­al­ism,’ and who do not even know in whose favor their actions are oper­at­ing. Through hate of the Pop­u­lar Front, good French­men, or men who con­sid­ered them­selves such, served Hitler gra­tu­itous­ly by doing work to which they would nev­er have con­sent­ed, had they had been offered pay­ment.

Why? Because they detest­ed the Repub­lic and democ­ra­cy more than they loved France. They accept­ed the idea of the defeat as a nec­es­sary evil which per­mit­ted them to rid France of the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem and to keep in pow­er, in the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, the Fas­cist dic­ta­tors whom they con­sid­ered sole­ly capa­ble of main­tain­ing order in Europe. They then became uncon­scious col­lab­o­ra­tors of these dic­ta­tors. They thought they were doing their duty in let­ting Hitler free France from the ‘Judeo-Mason­ic’ influ­ence, and Europe from the Com­mu­nist per­il. These peo­ple who had nev­er read Marx, con­sid­ered the ‘Marx­ist dan­ger’ more imme­di­ate than the Hit­ler­ian. They pre­ferred the risks of an entente with a vic­to­ri­ous Hitler to the risks of a demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry that would cause the col­lapse of the Fas­cist dic­ta­tors in Europe. Con­sid­er­ing Hitler in Ger­many, Mus­soli­ni in Italy, and Fran­co in Spain as knights of an anti-Bol­she­vist cru­sade, they became pre­cur­sors and lat­er par­ti­sans of ‘col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hitler’s New Order.’

24. More about the Fifth Col­umn, which used the ide­o­log­i­cal tenet of “anti-Com­mu­nism” to jus­ti­fy their oper­a­tions.

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; pp. 62–63.

. . . . Enough evi­dence has been pub­lished already to prove that France was stabbed in the back by those who saw in Hitler the new St. George who would slay the Com­mu­nist drag­on. When Pierre Lazareff, for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of Paris Soir (the French news­pa­per with the widest cir­cu­la­tion), reports roy­al­ists as say­ing: ‘We need the defeat to wipe out the Repub­lic;’ when Elie Bois, for­mer edi­tor of the Petit Parisien (the most influ­en­tial polit­i­cal news­pa­per), reports great indus­tri­al­ists ad admit­ting to him, dur­ing the win­ter of 1939–1940, that a plot had been orga­nized to replace the demo­c­ra­t­ic regime by a ‘gov­ern­ment of author­i­ty’ and that this plot pre­sup­posed a Nazi vic­to­ry. . .We have every rea­son to accept their affir­ma­tions, which tal­ly so per­fect­ly with the events. . . .

25. Cot char­ac­ter­izes the oper­a­tions and ide­ol­o­gy of the French Fifth Col­umn as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of actions by like-mind­ed inter­ests around the world, includ­ing the U.S.

Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot; Ziff-Davis [HC]; Copy­right 1944; p. 64.

. . . . No, France received no excep­tion­al treat­ment from Hitler and Fas­cism. A gen­er­al plan coor­di­nat­ed the activ­i­ty of the Fifth Columns all over the world. All were recruit­ed from the same cir­cles and had the same social and polit­i­cal com­po­si­tion. The object was the same every­where: to divide and unnerve pub­lic opin­ion, weak­en the resis­tance of the regime, and pre­pare a gov­ern­men­tal group ready to exe­cute a Fas­cist coup d’e­tat at a moment of trou­ble or con­fu­sion. The meth­ods were the same every­where: cul­ti­va­tion of the seeds of dis­uni­ty which nor­mal­ly exist among free men and in free coun­tries, exag­ger­a­tion and inflam­ma­tion of all racial and reli­gious con­flicts, all class rival­ries, all polit­i­cal antag­o­nisms, grad­ual con­ver­sion of oppo­si­tion and dis­sent into hate, cre­ation of an atmos­phere of civ­il war. The means used were the same every­where: cam­paigns of calum­ny against the demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers capa­ble of oppos­ing Fas­cism (Blum in France, Roo­sevelt in the Unit­ed States), the devel­op­ment of anti-Semi­tism, because anti-Semi­tism is the first man­i­fes­ta­tion of racism and con­tains in pet­to the whole doc­trine of Hitler, use of the fear of Com­mu­nism among the mid­dle class­es, because anti-Com­mu­nism is the best way to pre­vent the union of all anti-Fas­cist forces. This last device has been the most effi­ca­cious; the fear of Com­mu­nism has become, in Euro­pean and Amer­i­can pol­i­tics of recent years, a much more impor­tant fac­tor than Com­mu­nism itself. . . .

26. After the war, the “busi­ness as usu­al” pat­tern between the French Fifth Colum­nists of the Ruhr-Lor­raine com­plex and their Ger­man coun­ter­parts resumed. Once again, the De Wen­dels were at the fore­front of events.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 271–272.

. . . . Along with the unease, the fact that France has lin­ger­ing and seri­ous social and polit­i­cal ail­ments is a residue of World War II and of an eco­nom­ic occu­pa­tion that was nev­er real­ly ter­mi­nat­ed with the with­draw­al of Ger­man troops beyond the Rhine. It was this spe­cial eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ship between Ger­man and French indus­tri­al­ists that made it pos­si­ble for Friedrich Flick to arrange with the De Wen­del steel firm in France for pur­chase of his shares in his Ruhr coal com­bine for $45 mil­lion, which was to start him once more on the road back to wealth and pow­er, after years in prison fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion at Nurem­berg. . . .