COMMENT: Pop con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry has focused on the Bilder­berg Group in recent years, mis­tak­en­ly iden­ti­fy­ing this impor­tant ele­ment of the pow­er elite as com­pris­ing a “Mas­ters of the Uni­verse” enti­ty, sub­sum­ing all oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions and ele­ments beneath its man­tle.

Analy­sis of the Bilder­berg­ers fails to include the deep his­tor­i­cal and eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion under­ly­ing their cre­ation. In par­tic­u­lar, the pop con­spir­a­cy crowd does not deal in depth with the back­ground of Prince Bern­hard, the founder of the group (named, not inci­den­tal­ly, after the hotel out­side of Arn­hem, Hol­land, in which the group first met and formed. The Bat­tle of Arn­hem in Sep­tem­ber of 1944 and Prince Bern­hard’s prob­a­ble role as “the Trai­tor of Arn­hem” are dis­cussed below.)

In turn, Prince Bern­hard can­not be under­stood absent analy­sis of his back­ground and the aris­to­crat­ic, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lega­cy he has left behind. In addi­tion to the record of his ser­vice in the SS and an I.G. Far­ben espi­onage office, the avail­able evi­dence sug­gests strong­ly that Bern­hard was a dou­ble agent for the Axis.

Fur­ther­more, the record of his fam­i­ly through the decades is sug­ges­tive of involve­ment with the Under­ground Reich and the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

Prince Bern­hard zu Lippe von Bis­ter­feld was a Ger­man noble, mem­ber of the SS and oper­a­tive of the Berlin N.W. 7 office of I.G. Far­ben, the Ger­man chem­i­cal car­tel. The lat­ter com­prised an inter­na­tion­al espi­onage office, oper­at­ed under the I.G. man­tle. (See links and excerpts at the bot­tom of this post.)

Many of the books avail­able for down­load for free on this site will give inter­est­ed readers/listeners a great deal of depth on the deci­sive­ly impor­tant “IG.”

After mar­ry­ing Princess Juliana of the Nether­lands, Bern­hard fled with Juliana to the Unit­ed King­dom fol­low­ing the Third Reich’s con­quest of that coun­try. Bern­hard then became head of the Dutch mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture in exile, includ­ing the Dutch resis­tance!

(Bern­hard has been lion­ized as an Allied hero, a view­point we feel is bad­ly mis­tak­en. Evi­dence sug­gests Bern­hard was, in fact, a dou­ble agent for the Axis, not exact­ly a dif­fi­cult deduc­tion in light of his back­ground.) 

In what pass­es for schol­ar­ship on the Sec­ond World War, mil­i­tary his­to­ri­ans have rumi­nat­ed about the pos­si­ble rea­son for the dev­as­tat­ing dam­age inflict­ed on the Dutch resis­tance by the Gestapo. 

We would sug­gest that hav­ing a mem­ber of the SS and I.G. Far­ben spy as head of an anti-Nazi resis­tance cadre is a very poor for­mu­la for suc­cess!

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to us is the sto­ry of the betray­al of Oper­a­tion Mar­ket Gar­den, which result­ed in the Bat­tle of Arn­hem, pop­u­lar­ized in a major motion pic­ture (based on a book by Cor­nelius Ryan) “A Bridge Too Far.” 

British Field Mar­shal Bernard Mont­gomery envi­sioned the oper­a­tion as a way to quick­ly bring the war to a con­clu­sion. By drop­ping large num­bers of air­borne forces behind Ger­man lines to seize key bridges and facil­i­tat­ing the Allied advance, the plan was seen as a way to avoid a great num­ber of casu­al­ties.

In the event, the oper­a­tion was a dis­as­ter, with Ger­man forces slaugh­ter­ing the para­troop­ers, many of them before they even land­ed. Post­war analy­sis has fea­tured the prob­a­ble betray­al of the bat­tle plan to the Ger­mans, often pinned on a Dutch resis­tance fight­er named Chris­t­ian Lin­de­mans, code-named “King Kong.” 

In a book titled Betray­al at Arn­hem, author Anne Lau­rens set forth infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that King Kong was real­ly “Lee Har­vey Lin­de­mans.” A cel­e­brat­ed resis­tance fight­er, Lin­de­mans was ordered to pose as a dou­ble agent, osten­si­bly betray­ing the resis­tance to the Ger­mans, while retain­ing alle­giance to the resis­tance as a “triple agent.”

Lin­de­mans was then “left out in the cold” by his con­trol struc­ture, betrayed and labeled as a turn­coat to the Gestapo and blamed for betray­ing the plans for Oper­a­tion Mar­ket Gar­den to the ene­my. He died in a psy­chi­atric ward after the war.

Author Lau­rens points out that the Ger­man units that slaugh­tered the Allied forces were mov­ing into posi­tion before Lin­de­mans was ordered to osten­si­bly “go over to the ene­my” and that he could not have been the agent of betray­al.

The actu­al “Trai­tor of Arn­hem” had to have been some­one else–in these quar­ters we feel that Bern­hard is the most prob­a­ble can­di­date.

In this con­text, we should note that the Third Reich plans for the post­war entailed con­tin­u­ing the war until the wealth of the Reich could be secret­ed abroad in the 750 cor­po­rate fronts set up by Mar­tin Bor­mann after the war. Had Oper­a­tion Mar­ket Gar­den suc­ceed­ed, the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal plan would have been cut short!

EXCERPT: . . . . Three times, at least, [Dutch resis­tance fight­er] Kas de Graaf sum­moned Krist [Lin­de­mans] to the Prince’s head­quar­ters for offi­cial ques­tion­ing, which was mere­ly pre­sent­ed as a rough pre­cis after the event and which was held in a most irreg­u­lar way. Off­i­cal­ly, Chris­taan Lin­de­mans was sim­ply informed that he was only being asked to report on his past mis­sions before new ones were assigned him. But one would hagve had to be made of stone not to sense the atmos­phere of these ses­sions. The word, there­fore, passed round rapid­ly that it was only a front, that they were try­ing to make Chris­ti­aan respon­si­ble for a cer­tain num­ber of dis­as­ters and “acci­dents,” the most impor­tant of which was the betray­al of Arn­hem. . . (Betray­al at Arn­hem by Anne Lau­rens; Char­ter Books [SC]; copy­right 1969 by Anne Lau­rens; pp. 153–153.)

. . . . When he sum­moned Chris­taan to his office in Anvers, he was told by the Prince’s HQ that if his “sus­pect” was unable to come, it would be because he had left on a mis­sion. [British intel­li­gence offi­cer Oreste] Pin­to was furi­ous. As he had rather strained rela­tions with the head­quar­ters of Prince Bern­hard, he imme­di­ate­ly held him respon­si­ble for this crime of “high trea­son,” stat­ing that although he knew of the sus­pect­ed treach­ery of Chris­taan Lin­de­mans, Prince Bern­hard pre­ferred to shut his eyes to it, rather than admit that this war hero was real­ly a hired ene­my agent. After this, Pin­to swore that he would not rest until he had proved the alle­ga­tions that he had real­ly only thrown at ran­dom under the influ­ence of his jeal­ous tem­per.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Chris­taan, Pin­to was not the only one who who felt vin­dic­tive towards him. At the Chateau Rubens, the HQ of Prince Bern­hard (who lat­er trans­ferred his HQ to the Chateau Wit­touck), where a con­flict was devel­op­ing among the mem­bers of the dif­fer­ent Dutch infor­ma­tion ser­vices, it was decid­ed to sac­ri­fice Chris­taan Lin­de­mans. It was mere­ly a ques­tion of wait­ing the right time. . . . (Ibid.; pp. 149–150.)

. . . . At the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber, there had been only a few scat­tered units of Ger­man troops in Hol­land. On Sep­tem­ber 8, these were joined by four divi­sions equipped with tanks and mobile guns–some of these mount­ed on the under­car­riages of Pan­ther tanks. These forces includ­ed the 9th and 10th Divi­sions of the II SS Panz­er Corps. Until divert­ed to Arn­hem, one of these had been sched­uled to return to Ger­many from France; the oth­er was prepar­ing to leave Den­mark. On the day of the Arn­hem drop, [Gen­er­al Wil­helm “Willi”] Bit­trich was to com­mand all these forces–with the back­ing of Berlin and over the oppo­si­tion of Mod­el and Stu­dent.

What had alert­ed Bittrich–long before Chris­taan Lin­de­mans arrived at Abwehr head­quar­ters in Dreibergen–to Allied plans when they must still have been in their infan­cy? How was he able to form a for­mi­da­ble armored force in Hol­land with­out the intel­li­gence ser­vice of SHAEF–Supreme Head­quar­ters Allied Expe­di­tionary forces–being alert­ed?

Of all the rea­sons for the deba­cle at Arn­hem, the most impor­tant was the loss of the ele­ment of sur­prise. Some­body had betrayed the Allies’ plans to the Ger­mans. But the betray­er could not have been Chris­taan Lin­de­mans. By the time he had entered the pic­ture, every­thing had been already set in motion.

Was it pos­si­ble that he had been used as a scape­goat? Had Chris­taan Lin­de­mans betrayed his coun­try, or was he an inno­cent vic­tim, sac­ri­ficed to cov­er up for the real trai­tor? . . . (Ibid.; p. 17.)

In Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile, Paul Man­ning dis­cuss­es this strate­gic deci­sion, arrived at dur­ing the after­noon con­fer­ence in Stras­bourg, 8/6/1944–just over a month before the Bat­tle of Arn­hem.

EXCERPT: “. . . A small­er con­fer­ence in the after­noon was presided over by Dr. Bosse of the Ger­man Arma­ments Min­istry. It was attend­ed only by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Hecko, Krupp, and Rochling. Dr. Bosse restat­ed Bor­man­n’s belief that the war was all but lost, but that it would be con­tin­ued by Ger­many until cer­tain goals to insure the eco­nom­ic resur­gence of Ger­many after the war had been achieved. He added that Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists must be pre­pared to finance the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Nazi Par­ty, which would be forced to go under­ground, just as had the Maquis in France. . . .” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Lyle Stu­art [HC]; Copy­right 1981 by Paul Man­ning; p.26.)

COMMENT: There is rea­son to sus­pect Bern­hard of active­ly aid­ing the Nazi flight cap­i­tal pro­gram and obscur­ing the West­ern cor­po­rate links to the Third Reich.  Author John Lof­tus has fin­gered Prince Bern­hard for his role in help­ing to obscure the link between the Bush fam­i­ly and the Thyssens. (That rela­tion­ship is dis­cussed at length in numer­ous For The Record pro­grams, includ­ing FTR #‘s 361, 370, 435.)

EXCERPT: “. . . . Accord­ing to Gowen’s source, Prince Bern­hard com­mand­ed a unit of Dutch intel­li­gence, which dug up the incrim­i­nat­ing cor­po­rate papers in 1945 and brought them back to the “neu­tral” bank in Rot­ter­dam. The pre­text was that the Nazis had stolen the crown jew­els of his wife, Princess Juliana, and the Rus­sians gave the Dutch per­mis­sion to dig up the vault and retrieve them. Oper­a­tion Juliana was a Dutch fraud on the Allies who searched high and low for the miss­ing pieces of the Thyssen for­tune. . . ” (The Dutch Con­nec­tion: How a Famous Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Made its For­tune from the Nazis by John Lof­tus.)

COMMENT: Worth not­ing in this con­text is the goal of the Bilderbergers–the eco­nom­ic uni­fi­ca­tion of Europe. Essen­tial­ly, this is what the Third Reich envi­sioned as a goal of their mil­i­tary cam­paign, now real­ized in the form of the EU/EMU! Fiat’s Gian­ni Agnel­li artic­u­lat­ed these goals. Agnel­li belonged to the Knights of Mal­ta and was also very close to the P‑2 milieu of Licio Gel­li.

EXCERPT: . . . Euro­pean inte­gra­tion is our goal and where the politi­cians have failed, we indus­tri­al­ists hope to suc­ceed. . . . (Bilder­berg; Source­watch)

Prince Bern­hard’s descen­dants and and in-laws appear to have main­tained his polit­i­cal lin­eage, with cur­ric­u­la vitae  sug­ges­tive of Under­ground Reich activ­i­ties and affil­i­a­tions. Some thoughts and reflec­tions in this regard:

• Bern­hard’s daugh­ter Beat­rix mar­ried a Ger­man Third Reich vet­er­an, Claus von Ams­berg. NB: Most sources are apolo­getic for Claus’s Third Reich activ­i­ties. In The Nazis Go Under­ground (avail­able for down­load for free on this web­site and writ­ten before the 1944 Nor­mandy land­ings), author Kurt Riess notes that those tabbed for post­war under­ground work would have their back­grounds delib­er­ate­ly rep­re­sent­ed in such a way as to make them “accept­able.”
• EXCERPT from Claus’s linked Wikipedia entry: “. . . .The future prince was a mem­ber of such Nazi youth organ­i­sa­tions as Deutsches Jungvolk and the Hitler Youth (mem­ber­ship in the lat­ter was manda­to­ry for all fit mem­bers of his gen­er­a­tion) [1]. From 1938 until 1942, he attend­ed the Bal­tenschule Mis­droy. . . “In 1944, he was con­script­ed into the Ger­man Wehrma­cht, becom­ing a sol­dier in the Ger­man 90th Panz­er­grenadier Divi­sion in Italy in March, 1945, but tak­en as a pris­on­er of war by the Amer­i­can forces at Mer­an before tak­ing part in any fight­ing. . . .
• Prince Friso–Claus and Beat­rix’s son–was the chief finan­cial offi­cer of URENCO, the ura­ni­um enrich­ment com­pa­ny that was deeply involved with the smug­gling of nuclear weapons tech­nol­o­gy to the A.Q. Khan net­work and to Sad­dam Hus­sein. (Friso moved to URENCO after a stint at Gold­man Sachs.)
• In FTR #‘s 384, 395, 447, 450, we set forth the URENCO links to nuclear smug­gling. Note that the Dutch facil­i­ty was deeply involved with the smug­gling. One of the prin­ci­pals in the nuclear smug­gling was Karl Heinz Schaab, a pro­tege of Ger­not Zippe, who helped to pio­neer the ura­ni­um cen­trifuges and worked for the Third Reich’s nuclear devel­op­ment pro­gram. This is set forth in FTR #395.
• In FTR #155 , we exam­ined the last writ­ten con­tri­bu­tion from the late, hero­ic Paul Man­ning, in which he detailed the Bor­mann net­work’s role in help­ing Sad­dam acquire nukes and the Con­dor mis­sile tech­nol­o­gy with which to devel­op them.
• Prince Friso’s wife Mabel Smits has been an active sup­port­er of Islamist caus­es (oper­at­ing under the rubric of human­i­tar­i­an aid). Specif­i­cal­ly, she has been active on behalf of Bosnia and Chech­nya.
• In FTR #456, among oth­er pro­grams, we’ve not­ed that Ali­ja Izetbe­gov­ic, first head of state of inde­pen­dent Bosnia, recruit­ed Bosn­ian Mus­lims for the 13th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion dur­ing World War II, sup­port­ed Osama bin Laden and recre­at­ed the 13th Waf­fen SS Divi­son (Han­jar) as the pri­ma­ry elite unit of the Bosn­ian army.
• In FTR #583, we not­ed that Kazbek Soob­zokov, son of  SS offi­cer and lat­er CIA oper­a­tive Tscher­im Soob­zokov heads the Amer­i­can branch of an Islam­ic char­i­ty that is active­ly sup­port­ing the Islamist com­bat­ants in Chech­nya. The Chech­nyan rebels are, in turn, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the Waf­fen­gruppe der SS Krim, as we saw in FTR #414.
• Mabel Smits is a pro­tege of George Soros, the so-called left­ist, who in real­i­ty gives every indi­ca­tion of being a “Bor­mann Jew,” hav­ing got­ten his start in busi­ness aid­ing the Nazis with the “Aryaniza­tion” of Jew­ish prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust in Hun­gary. Her char­i­ta­ble out­let in Chech­nya may well have been lend­ing sup­port to the Islamist com­bat­ants in Chech­nya, which has led to the sus­pen­sion of that chap­ter of the orga­ni­za­tion.
• EXCERPT of linked arti­cle: . . . She was the chair­woman of the EU branch of George Soros’ Open Soci­ety Insti­tute and also chaired a char­i­ty called ‘War Child’.”….the ‘char­i­ty’ (whose Dutch branch founder Mabel Wisse Smit (employed by George Soros), went from being the lover of jailed Bosn­ian for­eign min­is­ter Muhammed Sacir­bey, to the wife of Prince Friso of Holland,has announced they ‘have decid­ed to stop all sup­port to their part­ner organ­i­sa­tion in Chech­nya ...euphemisti­cal­ly say­ing that they ‘could no longer guar­an­tee the effec­tive and con­trolled man­ag­ing of War Child project activ­i­ties’ .Trans­la­tion: the mon­ey was ‘find­ing it’s way’ into the hands of ter­ror­ists.” . . .
• Crown Prince Willem-Alexan­der, son of Prince Claus and Queen Beat­rix and heir appar­ent to the throne, mar­ried Max­i­ma Zor­re­gui­ta, the daugh­ter of the Argen­tine Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture dur­ing the mur­der­ous reign of the “dirty war” jun­ta of 1976–1983. Her moth­er also had ties to the Argen­tine right wing which, of course, has the most pro­found links to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work and ODESSA Nazis.
• EXCERPT of linked Los Ange­les Times arti­cle: Whether love con­quers all will be decid­ed by the Dutch par­lia­ment soon when it is asked to approve the mar­riage plans of Crown Prince Willem-Alexan­der and Max­i­ma Zor­regui­eta, the daugh­ter of an Argen­tine offi­cial who served under his coun­try’s “dirty war” jun­ta. . . .. . . After nation­al news­pa­pers last year unearthed details of Jorge Zor­regui­eta’s alle­giance to the 1976–83 Argen­tine dic­ta­tor­ship of Jorge Videla, Prime Min­is­ter Wim Kok stepped in to ascer­tain the extent of the father’s involve­ment and to allay fears of right-wing influ­ence on the roy­al house. [Sure would­n’t want that to happen!–D.E.]
  Kok deployed Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam pro­fes­sor Michiel Baud, a Latin Amer­i­ca spe­cial­ist. After an inves­ti­ga­tion, Baud con­clud­ed that the elder Zor­regui­eta, who served as agri­cul­ture min­is­ter dur­ing the Videla regime, was “moral­ly cul­pa­ble” for some of the crimes of that era when thou­sands of gov­ern­ment oppo­nents were killed, tor­tured or dis­ap­peared.
  Just ahead of the March 30 engage­ment announce­ment, Kok sent for­mer For­eign Min­is­ter Max van der Stoel to meet with the elder Zor­regui­eta and explain “that his pres­ence at the wed­ding would be impos­si­ble,” recounts a source close to the roy­al fam­i­ly who declined to be iden­ti­fied.
  The would-be bride’s father has con­sent­ed to stay away from the roy­al wed­ding, expect­ed ear­ly next year, and her mother–also linked to right-wing pol­i­tics in Argentina–has sig­naled that she too will skip the state affair to spare the cou­ple any risk of being barred from the throne. . . .
• An idle thought: In his book Rat­line: Sovi­et Spies, Nazi Priests and the Dis­ap­pear­ance of Adolf Hitler, author Peter Lev­en­da main­tains that Hitler escaped the war, ulti­mate­ly going to ground in Indone­sia, a for­mer Dutch colony. Might Fifth Colum­nists there have played a role in this gam­bit? NB:We have yet to read Lev­en­da’s account.

“Cab­i­net Knew of Prince Bern­hard’s SS Past”; Radio Nether­lands World­wide; 1/23/2010.

EXCERPT: The Dutch gov­ern­ment knew of the SS mem­ber­ship of the late Prince Bern­hard as ear­ly as 1944, accord­ing to NRC Han­dels­blad.

The news­pa­per bases its find­ing on doc­u­ments released by the Nation­al Archive in The Hague ear­li­er this year. One of the doc­u­ments refers to a cod­ed telegram, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 1944, from For­eign Min­is­ter Eel­co van Klef­fens. The telegram reveals the cab­i­net knew Prince Bern­hard had briefly joined the SS. . . . In the telegram, the for­eign min­is­ter instructs the Dutch ambas­sador in the Unit­ed States not to refute claims, made by Amer­i­can media as of 1941, that Prince Bern­hard had been a mem­ber of the SS. . . .

. . . For many years Prince Bern­hard remained eva­sive on his links with the Nazi NSDAP par­ty and relat­ed organ­i­sa­tions. In an inter­view with De Volk­skrant, pub­lished short­ly after his death in Decem­ber 2004, the prince admit­ted to his SS mem­ber­ship for the first time. . . .

“Chap­ter Two: The Empire of I.G. Far­ben” [Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antho­ny Sut­ton]; reformed-theology.org.

EXCERPT: . . . The Berlin N.W. 7 office of I.G. Far­ben was the key Nazi over­seas espi­onage cen­ter. The unit oper­at­ed under Far­ben direc­tor Max Ilgn­er, nephew of I.G. Far­ben pres­i­dent Her­mann Schmitz. Max Ilgn­er and Her­mann Schmitz were on the board of Amer­i­can I.G., with fel­low direc­tors Hen­ry Ford of Ford Motor Com­pa­ny, Paul War­burg of Bank of Man­hat­tan, and Charles E. Mitchell of the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York.

At the out­break o£ war in 1939 VOWI employ­ees were ordered into the Wehrma­cht but in fact con­tin­ued to per­form the same work as when nom­i­nal­ly under I.G. Far­ben. One of the more promi­nent of these Far­ben intel­li­gence work­ers in N.W. 7 was Prince Bern­hard of the Nether­lands, who joined Far­ben in the ear­ly 1930s after com­ple­tion of an 18-month peri­od of ser­vice in the black-uni­formed S.S.8

The U.S. arm of the VOWI intel­li­gence net­work was Chem­ny­co, Inc. Accord­ing to the War Depart­ment,
Uti­liz­ing nor­mal busi­ness con­tacts Chem­ny­co was able to trans­mit to Ger­many tremen­dous amounts of mate­r­i­al rang­ing from pho­tographs and blue­prints to detailed descrip­tions of whole indus­tri­al plants.9

Chem­ny­co’s vice pres­i­dent in New York was Rudolph Ilgn­er, an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen and broth­er of Amer­i­can I, G. Far­ben direc­tor Max Ilgn­er. In brief, Far­ben oper­at­ed VOWI, the Nazi for­eign intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, before World War II and the VOWI oper­a­tion was asso­ci­at­ed with promi­nent mem­bers of the Wall Street Estab­lish­ment through Amer­i­can I.G. and Chem­ny­co. . .

8. Bern­hard is today bet­ter known for his role as chair­man of the secre­tive, so-called Bilder­berg­er meet­ings. See U.S. Con­gress, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Spe­cial Com­mit­tee on Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties, Inves­ti­ga­tion of Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da Activ­i­ties and Inves­ti­ga­tion of Cer­tain oth­er Pro­pa­gan­da Activ­i­ties. 73rd Con­gress, 2nd Ses­sion, Hear­ings No. 73-DC‑4. (Wash­ing­ton: Gov­ern­ment Print­ing Office, 1934), Vol­ume VIII, p. 7525. . .