Dave Emory’s entire lifetime of work is available on a flash drive that can be obtained HERE [1]. The new drive is a 32-gigabyte drive that is current as of the programs and articles posted by the fall of of 2017. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE [2].
You can subscribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE [3].
You can subscribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE [3].
You can subscribe to the comments made on programs and posts–an excellent source of information in, and of, itself HERE [4].
COMMENT: Jane Mayer’s Dark Money [5] has received considerable discussion and media play over the last couple of years. What has been overlooked is a detail about the upbringing of the young Koch boys.
Aficionados of psycho-history will find the German Nazi nanny hired by Fred Koch to mind and raise his young sons substantial, as well as interesting.
With Fred Koch having networked with the Nazi spy William Rhodes Davis, we wonder if the nanny might have worked for Nazi intelligence as well.
[6] [7]D [5]ark Money [5] by Jane Mayer; Anchor Books [SC]; Copyright 2016, 2017 by Jane Mayer; ISBN: 978–0‑307–94970‑1; pp. 39–40. [5]
. . . . he [Fred Koch] was enamored enough of the German way of life and thinking that he employed a German governess for his first two sons, Freddie and Charles. At the time, Freddie was a small boy, and Charles was still in diapers. The nanny’s iron rule terrified the little boys, according to a family acquaintance. In addition to being overbearing, she was a fervent Nazi sympathizer, who frequently touted Hitler’s virtues. Dressed in a starched white uniform and pointed nurse’s hat, she arrived with a stash of gruesome German children’s books, including the Victorian classic Der Struwwelpeter, that featured sadistic consequences for misbehavior, ranging from cutting off of one child’s thumbs to burning another to death. [That’ll learn ’em!—D.E.] The acquaintance recalled that the nurse had a commensurately harsh and dictatorial approach to child rearing. She enforced a rigid toilet-training regimen requiring the boys to produce morning bowel movements precisely on schedule or be force-fed castor oil and subjected to enemas. [“Shitzkrieg?”—D.E.]
The despised governess ruled the nursery largely unchallenged for several years. In 1938, the two boys were left for months while their parents toured Japan, Burma, India, and the Philippines. Even when she was home, Mary Koch characteristically deferred to her husband, declining to intervene. “My father was fairly tough with my mother,” Bill Koch later told Vanity Fair. “My mother was afraid of my father.” Meanwhile, Fred Koch was often gone for months at a time, in Germany and elsewhere.
It wasn’t until 1940, the year before the twins were born, when Freddie was seven and Charles was five, that back in Wichita the German governess finally left the Koch family, apparently at her own initiative. Her reason for giving notice was that she was so overcome with joy when Hitler invaded France she felt she had to go back to the fatherland in order to join the Fuhrer in celebration. What if any effect this early experience with authority had on Charles is impossible to know, but it’s interesting that his lifetime preoccupation would become crusading against authoritarianism while running a business over which he exerted absolute control. . . .