FTR #305 The Bormann Organization

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FTR #305 The Bormann Organization

POSTED BY FTR ⋅ AUGUST 15, 2001POST A COMMENT  EMAIL THIS POST  PRINT THIS POST 

TAGS  AUSCHWITZ, BERTELSMANN, CBS, CORPORATE STATE, EDWARD R. MURROW, GEHLEN, IG FARBEN, ISRAEL, MAFIA, MONEY LAUNDERING,MORGAN, MOSSAD, NAZI, ODESSA, PAUL MANNING, ROCKEFELLER, STANDARD OIL, THYSSEN, UNDERGROUND REICH, WALTER CRONKITE

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Orig­i­nally recorded in June of 1997, this pro­gram sets forth the basic facts con­cern­ing the gen­e­sis and func­tion­ing of the remark­able and deadly Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, named for Reich­sleiter Mar­tin Bor­mann. (This site con­tains exten­sive mate­r­ial doc­u­ment­ing the pro­found con­nec­tions between the Bush fam­ily, the admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush, and the Bor­mann organization.)

1. The eco­nomic and polit­i­cal com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone under­ground, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­trols cor­po­rate Ger­many and much of the rest of the world. Cre­ated and run by Mar­tin Bor­mann, the orga­ni­za­tional genius who was the “the power behind the throne” in Nazi Ger­many, the Bor­mann group is a pri­mary ele­ment of the analy­sis pre­sented in the For the Recordprograms.

2. The broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion of the resump­tion of long-dormant inves­ti­ga­tions of the Nazi money trail cre­ated as the Third Reich siphoned off its wealth, in an effort to polit­i­cally sur­vive the inevitabil­ity of mil­i­tary defeat.

(“Nazi Money Trail Heats Up after 50 Years” by Greg Stein­metz; Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/28/97; p. A1.)

3. As noted in this arti­cle, much of the Nazi money was rein­vested in Ger­man corporations.

(Idem.)

4. Although it is not men­tioned directly in this arti­cle, the story of the Nazi money trail leads, inevitably to the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. The pur­pose of the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal pro­gram was set forth by Paul Man­ning, the heroic author who wrote the story of the Bor­mann organization.

“Mar­tin Bor­mann, forty-one at the fall of Berlin, and strong as a bull, was at all times at Hitler’s side, impas­sive and cool. His be-all and end-all was to guide Hitler, and now to make the deci­sions that would lead to the even­tual rebirth of his coun­try. Hitler; his intu­itions at peak level despite his crum­bling phys­i­cal and men­tal health in the last year of the Third Reich, real­ized this and approved of it.

‘Bury your trea­sure,’ he advised Bor­mann, ‘for you will need it to begin a Fourth Reich.’[Empha­sis added.] That is pre­cisely what Bor­mann was about when he set in motion the ‘flight cap­i­tal’ scheme August 10, 1944, in Stras­bourg. The trea­sure, the golden ring, he envi­sioned for the new Ger­many was the sophis­ti­cated dis­tri­b­u­tion of national and cor­po­rate assets to safe havens through­out the neu­tral nations of the rest of the world.”

(Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 29–30.)

5a. Man­ning began his research at the urg­ing of the late Edward R. Murrow.

“. . . My wartime CBS col­league, the late Edward R. Mur­row, had talked at length with me about devel­op­ing the Bor­mann saga as a solid and his­tor­i­cally enlight­en­ing, valu­able post­war story. . . .”

Ibid.; p. 18

5b. The pro­gram describes the Stras­bourg meet­ing in detail.

“The Staff car had left Col­mar at first light for Stras­bourg, car­ry­ing SS Ober­grup­pen­fue­herer Scheid, who held the rank of lieu­tenant gen­eral in the Waf­fen SS, as well as the title of Dr. Scheid, direc­tor of the indus­trial firm of Her­madorff & Schen­burg Com­pany. While the beauty of the rolling coun­try­side was not lost on Dr. Scheid, his thoughts were on the meet­ing of impor­tant Ger­man busi­ness­men to take place on his arrival at the Hotel Mai­son Rouge in Stras­bourg. Reich­sleiter Mar­tin Bor­mann him­self had ordered the con­fer­ence, and although he would not phys­i­cally be present he had con­fided to Dr. Scheid, who was to pre­side, ‘The steps to be taken as a result of this meet­ing will deter­mine the post­war future of Ger­many.’ The Reish­sleiter had added, ‘Ger­man indus­try must real­ize that the war can­not now be won, and must take steps to pre­pare for a post­war com­mer­cial cam­paign which will in time insure the eco­nomic resur­gence of Ger­many.’ It was August 10, 1944. The Mercedes-Benz bear­ing SS Ober­grup­pen­fuer­her Scheid moved slowly now through the nar­row streets of Stras­bourg. Dr. Scheid noticed that this was a most agree­able city, one to return to after the war.”

(Ibid.; pp. 23–24.)

6. The meet­ing was crafted by Bor­mann and presided over by SS lieu­tenant gen­eral Dr. Scheid.

(Ibid.; p. 23.)

7.

“The staff car drew up before the Hotel Mai­son Rouge on the Rue des France-Bourgeois. Dr. Scheid, brief­case in hand, entered the lobby and ascended in the ele­va­tor to the con­fer­ence suite reserved for his meet­ing. Method­i­cally he cir­cled the room, greet­ing each of the twelve present, then took his place at the head of the con­fer­ence table. Even the pads and pen­cils before each man had been checked; Waf­fen SS tech­ni­cians had swept the entire room, inspect­ing for hid­den micro­phones and minia­ture trans­mit­ters. As an addi­tional pre­cau­tion, all suites flank­ing the con­fer­ence suite had been held unfilled, as had the floors above and below, out of bounds for the day. Lunch was to be served in the con­fer­ence suite by trusted Waf­fen SS stew­ards. Those present, all thir­teen of them, could be assured that the thor­ough pre­cau­tions would safe­guard them all, even the sec­re­tary who was to take the min­utes, later to be typed with a copy sent by SS courier to Bormann.”

(Ibid.; p. 24.)

8.

“A tran­script of that meet­ing is in my pos­ses­sion. It is a cap­tured Ger­man doc­u­ment from the files of the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment, and states who was present and what was said, as the econ­omy of the Third Reich was pro­jected onto a post­war profit seek­ing track.”

(Ibid.; p.24.)

9.

“Present were Dr. Kas­par rep­re­sent­ing Krupp, Dr. Tolle rep­re­sent­ing Rochling, Dr. Sin­ceren rep­re­sent­ing Messer­schmitt, Drs. Kopp, Vier, and Beer­wanger rep­re­sent­ing Rhein­metall, Cap­tain Haberkorn and Dr. Ruhe rep­re­sent­ing Bussing, Drs. Ellen­mayer and Kar­dos rep­re­sent­ing Volk­swa­gen­werk, engi­neers Drose, Yanchew, and Kopp­shem rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous fac­to­ries in Posen, Poland (Drose, Yanchew, & Co., Brown-Boveri, Herkuleswerke, Buschw­erke, and Stadtwerke); Dr. Meyer, an offi­cial of the Ger­man Naval Min­istry in Paris; and Dr. Stross­ner of the Min­istry of Arma­ment, Paris.”

(Ibid.; p. 25.)

10. Scheid briefed the lead­ers of Ger­man indus­try on Bormann’s plan, and gave them contacts—many of them in New York.

“Dr. Scheid, papers from his brief­case arranged neatly on the table before him, stated that all indus­trial materiel in France was to be evac­u­ated to Ger­many imme­di­ately. ‘The bat­tle of France is lost to Ger­many,’ he admit­ted, quot­ing Reich­sleiter Bor­mann as his author­ity, ‘and now the defense of the Siegfried Line (and Ger­many itself) is the main prob­lem. . . . From now on, Ger­many indus­try must take steps in prepa­ra­tion for a post­war com­mer­cial cam­paign, with each indus­trial firm mak­ing new con­tacts and alliances with for­eign firms. This must be done indi­vid­u­ally and with­out attract­ing any sus­pi­cion. How­ever, the party and the Third Reich will stand behind every firm with per­mis­sive and finan­cial sup­port.’ He assured those present that the fright­en­ing law of 1933 known as Trea­son Against the Nation, which man­dated the death penalty for vio­la­tion of for­eign exchange reg­u­la­tions or con­ceal­ing of for­eign cur­rency, was now null and void, on direct order of Reich­sleiter Bormann.”

(Ibid.; p. 25.)

11. One of the firms that he cited as an exam­ple of a com­pany that had been par­tic­u­larly use­ful to Ger­many was the Hamburg-Amerika Line. As dis­cussed in FTRs 273, 346, the Hamburg-Amerika Line was part of the Bush family’s busi­ness oper­a­tions on behalf of the Third Reich.

“Dr. Scheid also affirmed, ‘The ground must now be laid on the finan­cial level for bor­row­ing con­sid­er­able sums from for­eign coun­tries after the war.’ As an exam­ple of the kind of sup­port that had been most use­ful to Ger­many in the past, Dr. Scheid cited the fact that ‘patents for stain­less steel belonged to the Chem­i­cal Foun­da­tion, Inc. New York, and the Krupp Com­pany of Ger­many, jointly, and that of the United States Steel Cor­po­ra­tion, Carnegie, Illi­nois, Amer­i­can Steel & Wire, National Tube, etc., were thereby under an oblig­a­tion to work with the Krupp con­cern.’ He also cited the Zeiss Com­pany, the Leica Com­pany, and the Hamburg-Amerika line as typ­i­cal firms that had been espe­cially effec­tive in pro­tect­ing Ger­man inter­ests abroad. He gave New York addresses to the twelve men.”

(Idem.) Hamburg-Amerika Line’s oper­a­tions in the U.S. were con­trolled by the grand­fa­ther and great grand­fa­ther of George W. Bush.

12. The group also dis­cussed pro­vi­sions to con­tinue to fund the Nazi party in an under­ground fash­ion after the war.

“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.”

(Ibid.; p.26.)

13.

“From this day, Ger­man indus­trial firms of all rank were to begin plac­ing their funds—and, wher­ever pos­si­ble, key manpower—abroad, espe­cially in neu­tral coun­tries. Dr. Bosse advised that ‘two main banks can be used for the export of funds for firms who have made no prior arrange­ments; the Basler Han­dels­bank and Schweiz­erische Kred­i­tanstalt of Zurich.’ He also stated, ‘There are a num­ber of agen­cies in Switzer­land which for a five per­cent com­mis­sion will buy prop­erty in Switzer­land for Ger­man firms, using Swiss cloaks.’”

(Ibid.; p. 27.)

14.

“Dr. Bosse closed the meet­ing, observ­ing that ‘after the defeat of Ger­many, the Nazi Party rec­og­nizes that cer­tain of its best known lead­ers will be con­demned as war crim­i­nals. How­ever, in coop­er­a­tion with the indus­tri­al­ists, it is arrang­ing to place its less con­spic­u­ous but most impor­tant mem­bers with var­i­ous Ger­man fac­to­ries as tech­ni­cal experts or mem­bers of its research and design­ing offices.”

(Idem.)

15. Bor­mann set up 750 cor­po­ra­tions in neu­tral coun­tries, and these became repos­i­to­ries for the liq­uid wealth of the Third Reich. Over­seas sub­sidiaries of key Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions were also cen­tral to the real­iza­tion of the Bor­mann assets.

“The move­ment of Ger­man assets into Switzer­land had also gone well, Bor­mann noted from his reports. Flight cap­i­tal invest­ments had been accom­plished prin­ci­pally through the estab­lish­ment of sub­sidiaries of pow­er­ful Ger­man firms. Over half of the total Ger­man cap­i­tal in Switzer­land was used in set­ting up hold­ing com­pa­nies rep­re­sent­ing I.G. Far­ben, Merck, Siemens, Osram, Henkel, and oth­ers. A hold­ing com­pany may not trade in any form. It may only hold stock in other com­pa­nies, but through this device the exist­ing Ger­man firms, and the 750 new cor­po­ra­tions estab­lished under the Bor­mann pro­gram, gave them­selves absolute con­trol over a post­war eco­nomic net­work of viable, pros­per­ous com­pa­nies that stretched from the Ruhr to the ‘neu­trals’ of Europe and to the coun­tries of South Amer­ica; a con­trol that con­tin­ues today and is eas­ily main­tained through the bearer bonds or shares issued by these cor­po­ra­tions to cloak for real own­er­ship. Bearer shares require no reg­is­tra­tion of iden­tity, for such shares are exactly what they mean; the bearer of the major­ity shares con­trols the com­pany with­out need­ing a ves­tige of proof as to how he acquired them. Thus the Ger­mans who par­tic­i­pated as a silent force in Bormann’s post­war com­mer­cial campaign—which is some­times referred to by aging nazis as ‘Oper­a­tion Eagle’s Flight’ or ‘Aktion Adlerflug’-insured their com­mand over the indus­trial and finan­cial insti­tu­tions that were to move the new Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many back into the fore­front of world eco­nomic leadership.”

(Ibid.; pp. 134–135.)

16.

“Seven hun­dred and fifty new cor­po­ra­tions were estab­lished in the last months of the war under the direc­tion of Reich­sleiter Bor­mann, using the tech­nique per­fected by Her­mann Schmitz [of I.G. Far­ben]. A national of each coun­try was the nom­i­nal head of each cor­po­rate struc­ture and the board was a mix of Ger­man admin­is­tra­tors and bank offi­cials, while the staffing at senior and mid­dle man­age­ment lev­els was com­prised of Ger­man sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cians. In the back­ground were the shad­owy own­ers of the cor­po­ra­tion, those Ger­mans who pos­sessed the bearer bonds as proof of stock own­er­ship. The estab­lish­ment of such com­pa­nies, usu­ally launched in indus­tries requir­ing high tech­ni­cal skills was wel­comed in Spain and Argentina, to give two exam­ples because those gov­ern­ments appre­ci­ated that Ger­man com­pa­nies would gen­er­ate jobs and imple­ment a more favor­able bal­ance of trade. Coun­try by coun­try, a break­down by U.S. trea­sury inves­ti­ga­tors of these new 750 Ger­man firms was as fol­lows: Por­tu­gal, 58; Spain, 112; Swe­den, 233; Switzer­land, 214; Turkey, 35; Argentina, 98.”

(Ibid.; pp. 135–136)

17.

“In addi­tion to over­see­ing his 750 new cor­po­ra­tions, Mar­tin Bor­mann was also kept apprised of I.G. Farben’s activ­i­ties in neu­tral coun­tries, as well as the inten­si­fied activ­i­ties of other major firms that were uti­liz­ing the new Bor­mann pol­icy of trans­fer­ring Third Reich money to sub­sidiaries. Far­ben had eight sub­sidiaries in Argentina, three in Por­tu­gal, four in Swe­den, six in Switzer­land, and four­teen in Spain. A.E.G., the giant elec­tri­cal equip­ment man­u­fac­turer had six sub­sidiaries in Argentina, three affil­i­ates in Spain, and four in Swe­den. In brief, every major Ger­man cor­po­ra­tion with an inter­na­tional oper­a­tion strength­ened its branches, sub­sidiaries, and affil­i­ates with an influx of new money and tal­ent that included sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cians arriv­ing weekly ready to per­form lab­o­ra­tory research in Spain and Buenos Aires.”

(Ibid.; p. 140.)

18. One of the fac­tors that per­mit­ted the real­iza­tion and per­pet­u­a­tion of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion was the pro­found con­nec­tion between the above-ground Ger­man cor­po­rate struc­ture, the 750 flight cap­i­tal cor­po­rate fronts estab­lished in neu­tral coun­tries, and major cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal ele­ments in West­ern nations. (Read more about the con­nec­tions between Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions and their Axis coun­ter­parts.)

“Pow­er­ful friends of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion in all West­ern coun­tries, includ­ing those sprin­kled in con­trol points through­out the admin­is­tra­tion in Wash­ing­ton and in the finan­cial and bro­ker­age busi­nesses of Wall Street, the City of Lon­don, and the Paris estab­lish­ment, did not wish a coor­di­nated drive to get at these exter­nal Ger­man assets. They had under­stand­able rea­sons, if you over­look moral­ity: the finan­cial ben­e­fits for coop­er­a­tion (col­lab­o­ra­tion had become an old-hat term with the war wind­ing down) were very entic­ing, depend­ing on one’s impor­tance and abil­ity to be of ser­vice to the orga­ni­za­tion and the 750 cor­po­ra­tions they were secretly manip­u­lat­ing, to say noth­ing of the known multi­na­tion­als such as I.G. Far­ben, Thyssen A.G., and Siemens; and, as a sec­ond rea­son, the phi­los­o­phy of free enter­prise and preser­va­tion of pri­vate property.”

(Ibid.;. 156.)

19. The vast inter­na­tional scope of the I.G. Far­ben firm and its var­i­ous sub­sidiary oper­a­tions was a prin­ci­pal ele­ment of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. I.G. Far­ben chief Her­mann Schmitz dis­cussed I.G.‘s involve­ment with the Bor­mann program.

“In tes­ti­mony later given to Nurem­berg inves­ti­ga­tors, Schmitz praised Bor­mann for the way he had directed the dis­tri­b­u­tion of Ger­man assets around the world. His own Far­ben orga­ni­za­tion had, of course, con­tributed to the suc­cess of the oper­a­tion. Every regional rep­re­sen­ta­tive work­ing for Her­mann Schmitz was an excep­tional busi­ness­man, or he would not have been with I.G. All had con­tributed sound advice in their areas of com­pe­tence, the regions of the world where they rep­re­sented Far­ben while keep­ing an eye on the sub­sidiaries of the par­ent con­cern and the 700 hid­den cor­po­ra­tions they con­trolled. They had pro­vided assis­tance and con­tin­u­ing guid­ance in estab­lish­ing the 750 new com­pa­nies cre­ated on order of Bor­mann, who wanted more than hid­den assets; Bor­mann wanted the money and patents and tech­ni­cians put to work to cre­ate even greater assets that would bol­ster Ger­many in the post­war years. In their meet­ing in the chan­cellery, both men checked over the fig­ures of sums dis­bursed, and they were accu­rate to the pfennig.”

(Ibid.; pp. 157–158.)

20. Bor­mann and Schmitz then dis­cussed I.G.‘s prospects for the post­war period. The cozy rela­tion­ship with pow­er­ful ele­ments within the power elites of the West­ern allies was fore­seen by Schmitz as bod­ing well for the company’s future.

“The Reich­sleiter asked Schmitz his views of the future. Schmitz replied, ‘The occu­pa­tion armies will be under­stand­ing in the West, but cer­tainly not in the East. I have instructed all Far­ben admin­is­tra­tors and tech­ni­cians to come to the West, where they can be of use in resum­ing our oper­a­tions once the dis­tur­bances of 1945 come to a halt.’ Schmitz added that, while gen­eral bomb dam­age to the I.G. plants was about 25 per­cent of capac­ity, some were untouched. He men­tioned speak­ing with Field Mar­shal Model, who was com­mand­ing the defenses of the Ruhr. ‘Model had planned to turn our Bayer-Leberkusen phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal fac­tory into an artillery base, but he agreed to make it an open, unde­fended fac­tory. Hope­fully, we will get it back untouched.’ ‘What about your board of direc­tors and the essen­tial exec­u­tives? If they are held by the occu­pa­tion author­i­ties, can I.G. con­tinue?’ Bor­mann asked. ‘We can con­tinue. We have an oper­a­tional plan for such a con­tin­gency, which every­one under­stands. How­ever, I don’t believe our board mem­bers will be detained too long. Nor will I. But we must go through a pro­ce­dure of inves­ti­ga­tion before release, so I have been told by our N.W. 7 peo­ple who have excel­lent con­tacts in Washington.’”

(Ibid.; p. 158.)

Schmitz’s pre­dic­tions were rel­a­tively accu­rate. Nei­ther Schmitz nor any of the I.G. Far­ben exec­u­tives were severely pun­ished and the firm’s three suc­ces­sor firms car­ried on effec­tively in the post­war period. (See FTR 179.)

21. Even the post­war per­pet­u­a­tion of I.G.‘s poi­son gas-producing firms was pre­pared. (Degussa, now a sub­sidiary of Eon, was obvi­ously part of this nexus.)

“Schmitz also told Bor­mann of his visit to Switzer­land ear­lier in the month. ‘Ger­many will have a poor image prob­lem this time. Much worse than after the First World War. It can all be placed on the doorsteps of Goer­ing, Himm­ler, and Hey­drich. Goer­ing and Himm­ler thought up the Final Solu­tion for the Jews, and Hey­drich made it a fact.’ Bor­mann agreed, ask­ing, ‘How does that affect I.G.?’ ‘We pro­duced the poi­son gas on Himmler’s orders,’ Schmitz explained, ‘so I’ve been mak­ing some cor­po­rate name changes in Basel, which may help our over­seas situation.’”

(Ibid.; p. 159.)

22. The Man­ning text high­lights the piv­otal role of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion in Ger­man heavy indus­try and, in turn, the influ­ence of the Her­mann Schmitz trust in the Bor­mann organization.

“The Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ues to wield enor­mous eco­nomic influ­ence. Wealth con­tin­ues to flow into the trea­suries of its cor­po­rate enti­ti­ties in South Amer­ica, the United States, and Europe. Vastly diver­si­fied, it is said to be the largest land-owner in South Amer­ica, and through stock­hold­ings, con­trols Ger­man heavy indus­try and the trust estab­lished by the late Her­mann Schmitz, for­mer pres­i­dent of I.G. Far­ben, who held as much stock in Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey as did the Rock­e­fellers.”

(Ibid.; p. 292.)

The rela­tion­ship between the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, Degussa and Eon is one to be care­fully considered

23. Bor­mann made a point of main­tain­ing invest­ment in blue-chip Amer­i­can corporations.

“With such funds accu­mu­lat­ing rapidly in Spain, Por­tu­gal, Swe­den, Switzer­land, and Argentina, Bor­mann and his group, who were han­dling the for­tunes of 750 new cor­po­ra­tions, would use these cor­po­ra­tions in neu­tral coun­tries as cloaks for invest­ing in Amer­i­can com­pa­nies. Bor­mann always had a high regard for U.S. blue chip stocks as a sta­ble invest­ment con­sis­tently pur­chas­ing a vast num­ber of shares from the Euro­pean offices of such New York stock bro­ker­age houses as Mer­rill, Lynch on behalf of the Reich chan­cellery and Hitler, until war became offi­cial between the United States and Ger­many and the buy­ing stopped, for a time.”

(Ibid.; p. 138.)

24.

“In 1941, invest­ments in U.S. cor­po­ra­tions by Ger­man com­pa­nies and assorted Ger­man indi­vid­u­als held vot­ing own­er­ship in 170; minor­ity own­er­ship was held in another 108 Amer­i­can com­pa­nies. These busi­nesses cov­ered the fol­low­ing fields: man­u­fac­tur­ing, food­stuffs, chem­i­cals, elec­tri­cal and auto­mo­bile equip­ment, machin­ery and machine equip­ment, other metal prod­ucts); petro­leum pro­duc­tion, refin­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion; finance; trade; and miscellaneous.”

(Ibid.; pp. 138–139.)

25.

“Amer­i­can indus­try, of course, had a finan­cial stake in Ger­man indus­try. In the same year, 1941, 171 U.S. cor­po­ra­tions had major invest­ments in Ger­man firms amount­ing to $420 mil­lion. A list­ing of these cor­po­ra­tions is iden­ti­cal to the gen­eral cat­e­gories under Ger­man own­er­ship in the United States.”

(Ibid.; p. 139.)

26.

“When Bor­mann gave the order for his rep­re­sen­ta­tives to resume pur­chases of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate stocks, it was usu­ally done through the neu­tral coun­tries of Switzer­land and Argentina. From for­eign exchange funds on deposit in Swiss banks and in Deutsche Sudamerikan­ishe Bank, the Buenos Aires branch of Deutsche Bank, large demand deposits were placed in the prin­ci­pal money-center banks of New York City; National City (now Citibank), Chase (now Chase Man­hat­tan N.A.), Man­u­fac­tur­ers and Hanover (now man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust), Mor­gan Guar­anty, and Irv­ing Trust. Such deposits are interest-free and the banks can invest this money as they wish, thus turn­ing tidy prof­its for them­selves. In return, they pro­vide rea­son­able ser­vices such as the pur­chase of stocks and trans­fer or pay­ment of money on demand by cus­tomers of Deutsche bank such as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Bor­mann busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions and and Mar­tin Bor­mann him­self, who has demand accounts in three New York City banks. They con­tinue to do so. The Ger­man invest­ment in Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions from these sources exceeded $5 bil­lion and made the Bor­mann eco­nomic struc­ture a web of power and influ­ence. The two German-owned banks of Spain, Banco Ale­man Transat­lantico (now named Banco Com­er­cial Transat­lantico), and Banco Ger­man­ico de la Amer­ica del Sur, S.A., a sub­sidiary of Deutsche Bank served to chan­nel Ger­man money from Spain to South Amer­ica, where fur­ther invest­ments were made.”

(Ibid.; p. 139.)

27. Among the many coun­tries that fig­ured in an impor­tant way in the Bor­mann struc­ture was Argentina.

“Argentina was the mecca for such money in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, and when Bor­mann gave the go-ahead in his over­all flight cap­i­tal pro­gram after the deci­sions at Stras­bourg, over $6 bil­lion of this money flowed into Buenos Aires for invest­ment there and else­where in Latin Amer­ica. The invest­ments cov­ered fac­to­ries, hotels, resorts, cat­tle, banks, land, sugar and cof­fee plan­ta­tions, met­al­lurgy, insur­ance, elec­tri­cal prod­ucts, con­struc­tion, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. It as much the same invest­ment spec­trum as estab­lished in Spain. West Ger­man invest­ments today account for nearly 45 per­cent of all for­eign invest­ments in Spain.”

(Ibid.; pp. 139–140.)

28. French finan­cial insti­tu­tions were cen­tral to the Bor­mann plan.

“Before D-day four Paris banks, Worms et Cie., Banque de Paris et de Pays-Bas, Banque de l’Indochine (now with ‘et de Suez’ added to its name), and Banque Nationale pour le Com­merce et l’Industrie (now Banque Nationale de Paris), were used by Bor­mann to siphon NSDAP and other Ger­man money in France to their bank branches in the colonies, where it was safe­guarded and invested for its Ger­man ownership.”

(Ibid.; p. 140.)

29. As dis­cussed in FTR 372, there were strong con­nec­tions between French indus­tri­al­ists and their Ger­man coun­ter­parts, a struc­tural rela­tion­ship that con­tributed to and facil­i­tated polit­i­cal coop­er­a­tion dur­ing the Occupation.

“In the years before the war, the Ger­man busi­ness­men, indus­tri­al­ists, and bankers had estab­lished close ties with their coun­ter­parts in France. After the blitzkrieg and inva­sion, the same French­men in many cases went on work­ing with their Ger­man peers. They didn’t have much choice, to be sure, and the occu­pa­tion being insti­tuted, very few in the high ech­e­lons of com­merce and finance failed to col­lab­o­rate. The Third Republic’s busi­ness elite was vir­tu­ally unchanged after 1940 . . . They regarded the war and Hitler as an unfor­tu­nate diver­sion from their chief mis­sion of pre­vent­ing a com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion in France. Anti­bol­she­vism was a com­mon denom­i­na­tor link­ing these French­men to Ger­mans, and it accounted for a vol­un­teer French divi­sion on the East­ern Front. . .The upper-class men who had been superbly trained in finance and admin­is­tra­tion at one of the two grand corps schools were referred to as France’s per­ma­nent ‘wall of money,’ and as pro­fes­sion­als they came into their own in 1940. They agreed to the estab­lish­ment of Ger­man sub­sidiary firms in France and per­mit­ted a gen­eral buy-in to French companies.”

(Ibid.; 70–71.)

30. The Ger­man eco­nomic con­trol of the French econ­omy pro­ceeded smoothly into the post­war period.

“Society’s nat­ural sur­vivors, French ver­sion, who had served the Third Reich as an exten­sion of Ger­man indus­try, would con­tinue to do so in the period of post­war tri­als, just as they had sur­vived the war, occu­pa­tion, and lib­er­a­tion. These were many of the French elite, the well-born, the prop­er­tied, the titled, the experts, indus­tri­al­ists, busi­ness­men, bureau­crats, bankers. . . .Eco­nomic col­lab­o­ra­tion in France with the Ger­mans had been so wide­spread (on all lev­els of soci­ety) that there had to be a real­iza­tion that an entire nation could not be brought to trial. Only a few years before, there had been many a sin­cere and well-meaning Frenchman—as in Bel­gium, Eng­land, and through­out Europe — who believed National Social­ism to be the wave of the future, indeed, the only hope for cur­ing the many des­per­ate social, polit­i­cal, and eco­nomic ills of the time. France, along with other occu­pied coun­tries, did con­tribute vol­un­teers for the fight against Rus­sia. Then there were many other French­men, the major­ity, who resignedly felt there was no way the Ger­mans could be pushed back across the Rhine.”

(Ibid.; p. 30.)

31. Long after the war, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ued to wield effec­tive con­trol of the French econ­omy, uti­liz­ing the cor­po­rate rela­tion­ships devel­oped before and dur­ing the occupation.

“The char­ac­ter­is­tic secrecy sur­round­ing the actions of Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists and bankers dur­ing the final nine months of the war, when Bormann’s flight cap­i­tal pro­gram held their com­plete atten­tion, was also car­ried over into the post­war years, when they began pulling back the skeins of eco­nomic wealth and power that stretched out to neu­tral nations of the world and to for­merly occu­pied lands. There was a sug­ges­tion of this in France. Flora Lewis, writ­ing from Paris in the New York Times of August 28, 1972, told of her con­ver­sa­tion with a French pub­lisher: ‘It would not be pos­si­ble to trace own­er­ship of cor­po­ra­tions and the power struc­ture as in the United States. ‘They’ would not per­mit it. ‘They’ would find a way to hound and tor­ture any­one who tried,’ com­mented the pub­lisher. ‘They’ seem to be a fairly small group of peo­ple who know each other, but many are not at all known to the pub­lic. ‘They’ move in and out of gov­ern­ment jobs, but pub­lic ser­vice appar­ently serves to win pri­vate pro­mo­tion rather than the other way around. The Gov­ern­ment ‘con­trol’ that prac­ti­cally every­one men­tions can­not be traced through stock hold­ings, reg­u­la­tory agen­cies, pub­lic deci­sions. It seems to func­tion through a maze of per­sonal con­tacts and tacit under­stand­ings.’ The under­stand­ings arrived at in the power struc­ture of France reach back to pre­war days, were con­tin­ued dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, and have car­ried over to the present time. Lewis, in her report from Paris, com­mented fur­ther: ‘This hid­den con­trol of gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions has pro­duced a gen­eral unease in Paris.’ 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. West Germany’s eco­nomic power struc­ture is fueled by a two-tier sys­tem: the cor­po­ra­tions and indi­vid­u­als who pub­licly rep­re­sent the prod­ucts that are com­mon house­hold names around the world, and the secre­tive groups oper­at­ing in the back­ground as hold­ing com­pa­nies and who pull the threads of power in over­seas cor­po­ra­tions estab­lished dur­ing the Bor­mann tenure in the Third Reich. As explained to me, ‘These threads are like the strands of a spider’s web and no one knows where they lead — except the inner cir­cle of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion in South America.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 271–272.)

32. Bormann’s FBI file revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name in New York for some time.

“The file revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name from his office in Ger­many in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argen­tin­ian dic­ta­tor Juan Peron, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had writ­ten checks on demand accounts in first National City Bank (Over­seas Divi­sion) of New York, The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, and Man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires.”

(Ibid.; p. 205.)

33. The broad­cast sets forth numer­ous aspects of the Bor­mann group’s oper­a­tions and power. These include:

• Gestapo chief Hein­rich Muller’s role as secu­rity direc­tor for the Bor­mann group
• The close and thor­ough sur­veil­lance that Muller main­tained on Man­ning while he was writ­ing the book Manning’s unsuc­cess­ful direct nego­ti­a­tions with the Bor­mann group in an effort to gain an inter­view with Bormann
• Ger­man spy chief Rein­hard Gehlen’s pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship with Muller
• Muller’s work­ing rela­tion­ship with the CIA (this and above points dis­cussed in FTR 283)
• The Bor­mann group’s enor­mous influ­ence in Israel (FTR 294)
• The organization’s use of Jew­ish busi­ness­men (FTR–294, 397.).

34. Man­ning relates his direct nego­ti­a­tions with the Bor­mann lead­er­ship group and its secu­rity direc­tor Hein­rich Mueller, the for­mer head of the Gestapo. In addi­tion to attempt­ing to secure a video­taped inter­view with Bor­mann, Man­ning was nego­ti­at­ing to secure doc­u­ments from the orga­ni­za­tion itself.

“Dur­ing years of research for this book, I have become aware of Hein­rich Mueller and his secu­rity force, which pro­vides pro­tec­tion for the lead­er­ship in Latin Amer­ica and wher­ever else they may travel to Europe and to the United States to check on invest­ments and prof­its. Through inter­me­di­aries, I have attempted unceas­ingly to pen­e­trate to the cen­tral core of the orga­ni­za­tion in South Amer­ica, but have been denied access. At the last meet­ing that I know about, it was voted: ‘Herr Manning’s writ­ing would focus undue atten­tion on our activ­i­ties and his request must once again be denied.’ The elderly lead­ers, includ­ing Reich­min­is­ter Bor­mann, who is now eighty, wanted me on the scene to write of their side of the story, above all his story, of one of the most amaz­ing and suc­cess­ful finan­cial and indus­trial cloak­ing actions in his­tory, of which he is jus­ti­fi­ably proud. I had sent word to Bor­mann that the true story, his first­hand account, should become a mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal record, and stated that I would be agree­able to writ­ing it if I could tell his true story, warts and all.”

(Ibid.; p. 272.)

35.

“Back came the word: ‘You are a free world jour­nal­ist, and can write as you think best. We, too, are inter­ested only in truth.’ They agreed to my request to bring along a three-man cam­era crew from CBS News to film my con­ver­sa­tions with Mar­tin Bor­mann, and even approved my wish for at least a per­sonal thumbprint of the for­mer Reich­sleiter and party min­is­ter, which would be pos­i­tive proof of his iden­tity. At the organization’s request, I sent the back­ground, names, pho­tos and cre­den­tials of the par­tic­u­lar CBS cam­era­men: Lawrence Wal­ter Pierce, Richard Henry Perez, and Oden Lester Kitzmiller, an award-winning cam­era crew (which got the exclu­sive film cov­er­age of the attempted assas­si­na­tion of Gov­er­nor George Wal­lace when he was run­ning for president).”

(Ibid.; pp. 272–3.)

36. The younger mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion vetoed this effort.

“I am sorry to say that the younger lead­ers, the ones now in vir­tual com­mand, voted ‘No.’ They did agree, how­ever that 232 his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments from World War II, which Bor­mann had had shipped out of Berlin in the wan­ing days of the war, and which are stored in his archives in South Amer­ica, could be sent to me anony­mously, to be pub­lished. They said their lengthy inves­ti­ga­tion of me had pro­duced con­fi­dence that I was an objec­tive jour­nal­ist, as well as a brave one, for their prob­ing stretched back to World War II days, and up to the present.”

(Ibid.; p. 273.)

37.

“Hein­rich Mueller, now seventy-nine years old, who also serves as keeper of these archives as well as chief of all secu­rity for the NSDAP, rejected this deci­sion: when the courier reached the Buenos Aires inter­na­tional air­port bear­ing these doc­u­ments for me he was relieved of them by the Argen­tine secret police act­ing under an ini­tia­tive from Mueller.”

(Idem.)

38.

“As Mueller had explained pre­vi­ously, he had noth­ing against me per­son­ally; I had been cleared of any ‘strange con­nec­tions’ by his agents in New York City, whose sur­veil­lance efforts were sup­ple­mented by the old pros of the Gestapo, up from South Amer­ica to assist in watch­ing me. This con­tin­ued inter­mit­tently for years, and efforts were stepped up in response to the inten­sity of my inves­ti­ga­tions. The state­ment I had orig­i­nally made to their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in West Ger­many, that I was only a dili­gent jour­nal­ist try­ing to dig out an impor­tant story, finally proved sat­is­fac­tory to them. I observed that Mueller hadn’t lost his touch in the field of sur­veil­lance, judg­ing by the qual­ity, skill, and num­ber of men and women who tracked me, at what must have been enor­mous cost, wher­ever I went in New York City, Wash­ing­ton, and overseas.”

(Idem.)

39. Mueller didn’t restrict his secu­rity activ­i­ties on behalf of the Bor­mann group to surveillance.

“Israeli agents who move too closely to these cen­ters of power are elim­i­nated. One such ter­mi­na­tion was Fritz Bauer, for­merly attor­ney gen­eral for the State of Hesse in Frank­furt, a sur­vivor of Auschwitz and the man who tipped off the Israeli Mossad about the pres­ence of Adolf Eich­mann in Buenos Aires, who was killed on orders of Gen­eral Mueller. . . .Mueller’s ruth­less­ness even today is what deters Artur Axmann from alter­ing his tes­ti­mony that he saw Bor­mann lying dead on the road­way the night of their escape from the Fuehrerbunker, May 1–2, 1945. . . .To this day, Axmann, the only so-called liv­ing wit­ness to the ‘death’ of Bor­mann in Berlin, knows his life is in jeop­ardy if he reverses him­self. Gen­eral Mueller is thor­ough and has a long mem­ory, and for a Nazi such as Axmann to go against Mueller’s orig­i­nal direc­tive would make him a trai­tor; ret­ri­bu­tion would surely follow.”

(Ibid.; pp. 289–90.)

41. Bormann’s busi­ness oper­a­tions have included Jew­ish par­tic­i­pants as a mat­ter of strate­gic intent. In turn, this has given the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­sid­er­able influ­ence in Israel.

“Since the found­ing of Israel, the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many had paid out 85.3 bil­lion marks, by the end of 1977, to sur­vivors of the Holo­caust. East Ger­many ignores any such lia­bil­ity. From South Amer­ica, where pay­ment must be made with sub­tlety, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion has made a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion. It has drawn many of the bright­est Jew­ish busi­ness­men into a par­tic­i­pa­tory role in the devel­op­ment of many of its cor­po­ra­tions, and many of these Jews share their pros­per­ity most gen­er­ously with Israel. If their pro­pos­als are sound, they are even pro­vided with a spe­cially dis­pensed ven­ture cap­i­tal fund. I spoke with one Jew­ish busi­ness­man in Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut. He had arrived there quite unknown sev­eral years before our con­ver­sa­tion, but with Bor­mann money as his lever­age. Today he is more than a mil­lion­aire, a quiet leader in the com­mu­nity with a cer­tain share of his prof­its ear­marked, as always, for his ven­ture cap­i­tal bene­fac­tors. This has taken place in many other instances across Amer­ica and demon­strates how Bormann’s peo­ple oper­ate in the con­tem­po­rary com­mer­cial world, in con­trast to the fan­ci­ful non­sense with which Nazis are described in so much ‘lit­er­a­ture.’ So much empha­sis is placed on select Jew­ish par­tic­i­pa­tion in Bor­mann com­pa­nies that when Adolf Eich­mann was seized and taken to Tel Aviv to stand trial, it pro­duced a shock wave in the Jew­ish and Ger­man com­mu­ni­ties of Buenos Aires. Jew­ish lead­ers informed the Israeli author­i­ties in no uncer­tain terms that this must never hap­pen again because a rep­e­ti­tion would per­ma­nently rup­ture rela­tions with the Ger­mans of Latin Amer­ica, as well as with the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, and cut off the flow of Jew­ish money to Israel. It never hap­pened again, and the pur­suit of Bor­mann qui­eted down at the request of these Jew­ish lead­ers. He is resid­ing in an Argen­tine safe haven, pro­tected by the most effi­cient Ger­man infra­struc­ture in his­tory as well as by all those whose pros­per­ity depends on his well-being. Per­sonal invi­ta­tion is the only way to reach him.”

(Ibid.; pp. 226–227.)

42. The pro­gram relates an inci­dent in which orga­nized crime king­pin Meyer Lan­sky tried to black­mail the Bor­mann group, which resulted in his removal from Israel.

“A reveal­ing insight into this inter­na­tional finan­cial and indus­trial net­work was given me by a mem­ber of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion resid­ing in West Ger­many. Meyer Lan­sky, he said, the finan­cial advi­sor to the Las Vegas—Miami under­world sent a mes­sage to Bor­mann through my West Ger­man SS con­tact. Lan­sky promised that if he received a piece of Bormann’s action he would keep the Israeli agents off Bormann’s back. ‘I have a very good rela­tion with the Israeli secret police’ was his claim, although he was to be kicked out of Israel when his pres­ence became too noted—and also at the urg­ing of Bormann’s secu­rity chief in South Amer­ica. At the time Lan­sky was in the pent­house suite of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, in which he owned stock. He had fled to Israel to evade a U.S. fed­eral war­rant for his arrest. He sent his mes­sage to Bor­mann through his bag man in Switzer­land, John Pull­man, also wanted in the United States on a fed­eral war­rant. Lan­sky told Pull­man to make this offer ‘which he can’t refuse.’ The offer was for­warded to Buenos Aires, where it was greeted with laugh­ter. When the laugh­ter died down, it was replaced with action. Meyer was evicted from Israel and was told by Swiss author­i­ties to stay out of their coun­try, so he flew to South Amer­ica. There he offered any pres­i­dent who would give him asy­lum a cool $1 mil­lion in cash. He was turned down every­where and had to con­tinue his flight to Miami, where U.S. mar­shals, alerted, were wait­ing to take him into custody.”

(Ibid.; pp. 227–228.)

43.

“The Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion has the ulti­mate in clout and sub­stance, and no one can tam­per with it. I have been told: ‘You can­not push these peo­ple. If you do it can be extremely risky.’ Know­ing their her­itage I take this state­ment at face value.”

(Ibid.; p. 228.)

44.

“A for­mer CIA con­tract pilot, who once flew the run into Paraguay and Argentina to the Bor­mann ranch described the estate as remote, ‘worth your life unless you entered their air space with the right iden­ti­fi­ca­tion codes.”

(Ibid.; 292.)

45. While serv­ing in his capac­ity as direc­tor of secu­rity for the Bor­mann organization—the NSDAP in exile and its eco­nomic infrastructure—Mueller worked closely with US intel­li­gence. worked directly with U.S. intel­li­gence, the CIA, in particular.

“The Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion had many com­mer­cial and polit­i­cal links to the cap­i­tals of these three nations, and real clout was avail­able should the chase become too hot. The CIA could have pulled aside the gray cur­tain that obscured Bormann—at any time. But the CIA and Mueller’s crack orga­ni­za­tion of for­mer SS men found it to their mutual advan­tage to coop­er­ate in many sit­u­a­tions. There is no moral­ity in the sense that most of us know it in the strange world of pro­fes­sional secrecy, and when it was to the advan­tage of each to work together they did so.”

(Ibid.; p.211.)

46. As might be sur­mised, Mueller’s oper­a­tives also worked with the orga­ni­za­tion of Rein­hard Gehlen.

“Even Gen­eral Gehlen, when he was chief of the Fed­eral Republic’s intel­li­gence ser­vice, sent his agents to con­fer with Gen­eral Hein­rich Mueller in South America.”

(Ibid.; p. 274.)

47. Bormann’s per­sonal influ­ence in Ger­many proper is exem­pli­fied in the fol­low­ing incident.

“This man, who legally suc­ceeded Hitler and there­fore is the leader of over sev­eral mil­lion NSDAP mem­bers in south Amer­ica and Ger­many, demon­strated the ulti­mate in clout in 1971, when he sum­moned the pres­i­dent of the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many, then Wal­ter Scheel, and the latter’s wife Mil­dred, to Bolivia, whence they quickly returned to Europe with a newly adopted one-year-old boy who bore the first name Simon-Martin. The child, now eleven years of age, is being reared and edu­cated in one of Germany’s most influ­en­tial fam­i­lies. The belief is, of course, that he is a son of Mar­tin Bor­mann, who insisted that this child of his old age he brought up as an upper-class Ger­man in his father­land and receive appro­pri­ate advan­tages befit­ting a son of the lead­ing Nazi.”

(Ibid.; p. 291.)

48. The Bor­mann group main­tains effec­tive con­trol over the Ger­man economy.

“Atop an orga­ni­za­tional pyra­mid that dom­i­nates the indus­try of West Ger­many through banks, vot­ing rights enjoyed by major­ity share­hold­ers in sig­nif­i­cant car­tels, and the pro­fes­sional input of a rel­a­tively young lead­er­ship group of lawyers, invest­ment spe­cial­ists, bankers, and indus­tri­al­ists, he is sat­is­fied that he achieved his aim of help­ing the Father­land back on its feet. To ensure con­ti­nu­ity of pur­pose and direc­tion, a close watch is main­tained on the profit state­ments and man­age­ment reports of cor­po­ra­tions under its con­trol else­where. This lead­er­ship group of twenty, which is in fact a board of direc­tors, is chaired by Bor­mann, but power has shifted to the younger men who will carry on the ini­tia­tive that grew from that his­toric meet­ing in Stras­bourg on August 10, 1944. Old Hein­rich Mueller, chief of secu­rity for the NSDAP in South Amer­ica, is the most feared of all, hav­ing the power of life and death over those deemed not to be act­ing in the best inter­ests of the orga­ni­za­tion. Some still envi­sion a Fourth Reich. . .What will not pass is the eco­nomic influ­ences of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, whose com­mer­cial direc­tives are obeyed almost with­out ques­tion by the high­est ech­e­lons of West Ger­man finance and indus­try. ‘All orders come from the share­hold­ers in South Amer­ica,’ I have been told by a spokesman for Mar­tin Bormann.”

(Ibid.; pp. 284–5.)

49. The Bor­mann group’s enor­mous influ­ence has led to an effec­tive cover-up over the years.

“. . .were he to emerge, it would embar­rass the gov­ern­ments that assisted in his escape, the indus­trial and finan­cial lead­ers who ben­e­fited from his acu­men and trans­ferred their cap­i­tal to neu­tral nations in the clos­ing days of World War II, and the busi­ness­men of four con­ti­nents who prof­ited from the 750 cor­po­ra­tions he estab­lished through­out the world as depos­i­to­ries of money, patents, bearer bonds, and shares in blue chip indus­tries of the United States and Europe. . . When I pen­e­trated the silence cloak­ing this story, after count­less inter­views and labo­ri­ous research in Ger­man and Amer­i­can archives for reveal­ing doc­u­ments of World War II, I knew that the Bor­mann saga of flight cap­i­tal and his escape to South Amer­ica was really true. It had been cov­ered up by an unpar­al­leled manip­u­la­tion of pub­lic opin­ion and the media. The closer I got to the truth, the more quiet atten­tion I received from the forces sur­round­ing and pro­tect­ing Mar­tin Bor­mann, and also from those who had a direct inter­est in halt­ing my inves­ti­ga­tion. Over the period of years it took to research this book, I was the object of dili­gent obser­va­tion by squads of Gestapo agents dis­patched from South Amer­ica by Gen­eral ‘Gestapo’ Mul­ller, who directs all secu­rity mat­ters for Mar­tin Bor­mann, Nazi in exile, and his orga­ni­za­tion, the most remark­able busi­ness group any­where in the secret world of today. Mueller’s inter­est in me, an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist, con­firmed the truth of my many inter­views and my ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion. . . There are also those in inter­na­tional gov­ern­ment and busi­ness who have attempted to stop my for­ward move­ment on this inves­ti­ga­tion. In Ger­many, France, Eng­land, and the United States, too many lead­ers in gov­ern­ment and finance still adhere to Win­ston Churchill’s state­ment to his Cab­i­net in 1943 ‘In wartime, truth is so pre­cious that she should always be attended by a body­guard of lies’ . . . Oddly, I encoun­tered less resis­tance from Mar­tin Bor­mann and his aging peers than I did from the cover-up groups in West Ger­many, Paris, Lon­don, Wash­ing­ton, and Wall Street.”

(Ibid.; pp. 11–12.)

50. In response to inves­ti­ga­tions that revealed Bormann’s escape and post­war activ­i­ties, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment arranged for a DNA test­ing of the remains—supposedly of Bormann—that were found in Berlin in the 1970’s. The DNA tests were never inde­pen­dently ver­i­fied and the remains that were sup­posed to be Bormann’s were dis­posed of in a secret loca­tion, pre­clud­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of future ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the test.

The corpses placed in the ruins of Berlin were, in fact, con­cen­tra­tion camp inmates whose den­tal work was metic­u­lously altered under the super­vi­sion of Dr. Hugo Blaschke, Hitler and Bormann’s per­sonal den­tist. The inmates’ den­tal work was made iden­ti­cal to Bormann’s, right down to the wear and aging of the oral architecture.

The inmates were then killed, and their remains buried in the rub­ble of Berlin. These corpses were the remains found—and tested—by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment to “ver­ify” Bormann’s sup­posed death in World War II!

” . . . A decep­tion plan for Bor­mann had been com­pleted by Mueller in Berlin. Tops in police work and crafty beyond imag­in­ing, he pro­vided for a match­ing skele­ton and skull, com­plete with iden­ti­cal den­tal work, for future foren­sic experts to pon­der over and to reach con­clu­sions that suited his pur­pose. . . . When Hein­rich Mueller vis­ited Sach­sen­hausen he walked through the engrav­ing, print­ing, and doc­u­ment areas look­ing for any inmates who might resem­ble Bormann.

In one, he noticed two indi­vid­u­als who did bear a resem­blance in stature and facial struc­ture to the Reich­sleiter. He had them placed in sep­a­rate con­fine­ment. There­upon a spe­cial den­tal room was made ready for “treat­ment” of the two men. A party den­tist was brought in to work over and over again on the mouth of each man, until his teeth, real and arti­fi­cial, matched pre­cisely the Reichsleiter’s. In April 1945, upon com­ple­tion of these alter­ations, the two vic­tim­ized men were brought to the Kur­fuer­sten­strasse build­ing to be held until needed.

Dr. Blaschke had advised Mueller to use live inmates to insure a believ­able aging process for den­tures and gums; hence the need for sev­eral months of prepa­ra­tion. Exact den­tal fidelity was to play a major part in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Hitler’s body by the invad­ing Rus­sians. It was to be of sig­nif­i­cance in Frank­furt twenty-eight years later, when the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment staged a press con­fer­ence to declare that they had ‘found Bormann’s skele­ton prov­ing he had died in Berlin’s freight yards May 1–2, 1945.’ Dr. Hugo Blaschke was the den­tist who had served both Hitler and Bor­mann. . . . In Bormann’s case, the prob­lem was more com­plex, more challenging.

Yet under Mueller’s skill­ful guid­ance, two bod­ies were planted; their dis­cov­ery was made pos­si­ble when an SS man, act­ing on Mueller’s orders, leaked the infor­ma­tion to a Stern mag­a­zine edi­tor as part of a ploy to “prove” that Bor­mann had died in the Berlin freight yard.

The stand-ins for Bor­mann were two unfor­tu­nates from Con­cen­tra­tion Camp Sach­sen­hausen, who had been killed gen­tly in the Gestapo base­ment secret cham­bers with cyanide spray blown from a cig­a­rette lighter. . . .

At Gestapo head­quar­ters, the night of April 30, the bod­ies were taken by a spe­cial SS team to the freight yards near the Wei­den­damm Bridge and buried not too deep beneath rub­ble in two dif­fer­ent areas. The Gestapo squad then made a hur­ried retreat from Berlin, join­ing their leader, SS Senior Gen­eral Hein­rich Mueller, in Flensburg.

The funeral and bur­ial caper was to be a Mueller trade­mark through­out the years of search­ing for Mar­tin Bor­mann. The Mossad was to point out that they have been wit­nesses over the years to the exhuma­tion of six skele­tons, two in Berlin and four in South Amer­ica, pur­ported to be that of Mar­tin Bor­mann. All turned out to be those of others . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 180–183; archived excerpt.)