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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 Record pro­grams.

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

“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.)

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.)

44a.

“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.)

44b. Man­ning notes that Bor­mann cul­ti­vat­ed his rela­tion­ship with Fritz Thyssen in order to pre­serve a pipeline to Allen Dulles.

. . . . Also, Bor­mann felt Thyssen was his ace in the hole, in case he ever need­ed a pipeline to Allen Dulles. . . .

Ibid.; p. 254.

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.)