Where did all the Nazis go Pt. 4
Many Nazis freed by western powers have bizarrely impactful careers, but are compromised, opening up a two-way intelligence corridor between the West and the USSR.
The West opened up all sorts of avenues for Nazi war criminals to escape accountability. Some went down US and Roman Catholic sponsored Ratlines, which usually ended in South America, where they went on to fight political aspirants what displeased the US or scared the Catholic Church. Ironically, some Ratline beneficiaries, like Klaus Barbie, went on to kidnap, torture and kill segments of Catholicism.
Others ended up getting administrative forgiveness because they were perceived necessary in the fight against Communism in Central Europe such as Reinherd Gelhen, a Nazi intelligence officer, whose post-war intelligence/paramilitary organization was stacked with some of the most notorious war criminals, but which was converted into the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) of West Germany, filling its ranks with former Nazis. Not everyone wanted to be known for their past at that time. The Nuremberg Trials were still at the time creating a lot of uncertainty about former Nazis traits, making them prime targets for blackmail by Soviet Russians, or East Germans. This meant that the new BND was filled with people primed for treason. But we will get back to that.
Others ended the war in places which were so damaged and anarchic, that they seemed to have re-begun their lives without having to acknowledge their wartime activities. Such was the life of Kurt Waldheim, who landed unnoticed in the Austrian Civil Service, and like a faerie tale, almost magically floated into the office of Secretary General of the UN. Like with members of the BND, the Soviets were very attuned to who was compromised during their Nazi days before the UN, and Waldheim was well entwined with them. The US eventually had to ban him from their shores when his Nazi war crimes became too much to hide (7). It appears the US knew for some time, but didn’t do anything about it. It is quite possible they thought they were blackmailing him rather than the Soviets. In any event, he seems to be loosely linked through his undersecretary to a group of people who were unambiguously linked to the Soviets, the Esalen group (1)
The point here is all three of these individuals were incredibly powerful in their own ways, and their organizations all had remarkably two-sided relationships in the Cold War. Gelhen’s organization had a remarkable number of hard core Nazis including at least 100 SS or Gestapo agents (2). This meant that a number of them were primed to become Soviet or East German double agents. In fact, the CIA talked of “catastrophic” penetration of the Gelhen Organization (3). This is what became the BND, the US’s most important European Cold War partner.
Now we must acknowledge what is going on here. Blackmail is certainly a factor, but disloyalty is almost certainly another. All of these Nazis were trying to make another career in intelligence before the West Germany was formed. Why should they have any loyalty to the US, NATO or the Federal Republic of West Germany, formed by the losers who lost their dream of a thousand year Riech? On the other hand, why should they swear loyalty to the Soviets, who ripped their country in two? It is undoubtably wrong to view them as switching sides because of ideological convictions, because they despised the democratic convictions of NATO and the Socialist convictions of the Soviets and East Germany (at least most of them). My guess is many were playing both sides, ingratiating themselves to both task masters by feeding them intelligence, getting networked on both sides, spreading beliefs to both sides.
Remember that these were top intelligence positions in West Germany. I see no reason that such ideologies would not be continued to be maintained and spread from cadres in German intelligence to other groups within German, Russian and NATO to this day. After all, they and US intelligence used and supported Colonia Dignidad (6). This is a purely Nazi play which would not exist without some good will inside the at least the German service.
There is no reason to believe these networks do not exist today because there is no record of anyone in the German or NATO government making any efforts to remove them or their allies. However evidence for the existence of such networks does exist. The best one is the existence of neonazi networks throughout the world, including in places Nazis were hated enemies. Since WW2, up until 2014, when Nazism started propagating on the internet, Neonazism was not overly popular and usually confined to social misfits who we would not expect to be keen enough to maintain or fund a strong movement. Intelligence networks have the training and funding to propagate such networks through psyop.
Of course, this is not unarguable truth, but it would explain a lot of things:
The development of undeniably Nazi ideologies within Russia, like Alexandre Dugin’s perspectives.
The Nazi like perspectives of Putin, who worked in a German station for the KGB.
The intransigence of German and US elites to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defeat Russia.
The strange persistence of neo-Nazi ideologies within NATO countries and the lack of a will to get rid of them in the counterintelligence community, in spite of their obvious Russian connections.
UN institution’s antisemitic and anti-Ukrainian biases
Former CIA agent Erik Prince’s Nazi buddies (4)
Austria was widely perceived as being an intermediary ground between the West and the USSR. It was also well known as a sanctuary for Nazis (8).
Far right private intelligence firm Western Goals had an Austrian and West German office. It appeared to receive much of its money from Germans, many who appear to have had Nazi pasts (9).
(1)
(2)https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/index.htm
(3) https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/washington/06cnd-nazi.html
(4) https://newrepublic.com/article/182008/erik-prince-secret-global-group-chat-off-leash
(6)
(7)https://web.archive.org/web/20150128112359/http://www.demokratiezentrum.org/fileadmin/media/pdf/mitten.pdf
(8)https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-austria-spy-service-bvt-government-intelligence-wirecard-jan-marsalek-freedom-party/
(9)https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/02/larry-mcdonald-communists-deep-state-222726/ “Even as an employee, Buckland says, she was unaware of what the organization was doing much of the time. “A lot of the funding came from Germany—more than what came from the U.S.,” she recalls. “A lot of it was kept from us. … The Germans all wore a lot of medals and had a lot of money.”