Revealed:
The secret report
that shows how the Nazis planned a Fourth
Reich ...in the EU
*
By
Adam Lebor
Last updated at 10:30 PM on 09th May 2009
The paper
is aged and fragile, the typewritten letters
slowly fading. But US Military Intelligence
report EW-Pa 128 is as chilling now as the
day it was written in November 1944.
The document, also known
as the Red House Report, is a detailed
account of a secret meeting at the Maison
Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg on August 10,
1944. There, Nazi officials ordered an elite
group of German industrialists to plan for
Germany's post-war recovery, prepare for
the Nazis' return to power and work for a
'strong German empire'. In other words: the
Fourth Reich.
Plotters: SS chief Heinrich Himmler with
Max Faust, engineer with Nazi-backed
company I. G. Farben
The
three-page, closely typed report, marked
'Secret', copied to British officials and
sent by air pouch to Cordell Hull, the US
Secretary of State, detailed how the
industrialists were to work with the Nazi
Party to rebuild Germany's economy by
sending money through Switzerland.
They would set up a
network of secret front companies abroad.
They would wait until conditions were right.
And then they would take over Germany again.
The industrialists
included representatives of Volkswagen,
Krupp and Messerschmitt. Officials from the
Navy and Ministry of Armaments were also at
the meeting and, with incredible foresight,
they decided together that the Fourth German
Reich, unlike its predecessor, would be an
economic rather than a military empire - but
not just German.
The Red House Report,
which was unearthed from US intelligence
files, was the inspiration for my thriller
The Budapest Protocol.
The book opens in 1944 as
the Red Army advances on the besieged city,
then jumps to the present day, during the
election campaign for the first president of
Europe. The European Union superstate is
revealed as a front for a sinister
conspiracy, one rooted in the last days of
the Second World War.
But as I researched and
wrote the novel, I realised that some of the
Red House Report had become fact.
Nazi Germany did export
massive amounts of capital through neutral
countries. German businesses did set up a
network of front companies abroad. The
German economy did soon recover after 1945.
The Third Reich was
defeated militarily, but powerful Nazi-era
bankers, industrialists and civil servants,
reborn as democrats, soon prospered in the
new West Germany. There they worked for a
new cause: European economic and political
integration.
Is it possible that the
Fourth Reich those Nazi industrialists
foresaw has, in some part at least, come to
pass?
The Red House Report was
written by a French spy who was at the
meeting in Strasbourg in 1944 - and it
paints an extraordinary picture.
The industrialists
gathered at the Maison Rouge Hotel waited
expectantly as SS Obergruppenfuhrer Dr
Scheid began the meeting. Scheid held one of
the highest ranks in the SS, equivalent to
Lieutenant General. He cut an imposing
figure in his tailored grey-green uniform
and high, peaked cap with silver braiding.
Guards were posted outside and the room had
been searched for microphones.
Death camp: Auschwitz, where tens of
thousands of slave labourers died
working in a factory run by German firm
I. G. Farben
There was a
sharp intake of breath as he began to speak.
German industry must realise that the war
cannot be won, he declared. 'It must take
steps in preparation for a post-war
commercial campaign.' Such defeatist talk
was treasonous - enough to earn a visit to
the Gestapo's cellars, followed by a one-way
trip to a concentration camp.
But Scheid had been given
special licence to speak the truth – the
future of the Reich was at stake. He ordered
the industrialists to 'make contacts and
alliances with foreign firms, but this must
be done individually and without attracting
any suspicion'.
The industrialists were to
borrow substantial sums from foreign
countries after the war.
They were especially to
exploit the finances of those German firms
that had already been used as fronts for
economic penetration abroad, said Scheid,
citing the American partners of the steel
giant Krupp as well as Zeiss, Leica and the
Hamburg-America Line shipping company.
But as most of the
industrialists left the meeting, a handful
were beckoned into another smaller
gathering, presided over by Dr Bosse of the
Armaments Ministry. There were secrets to be
shared with the elite of the elite.
Bosse explained how, even
though the Nazi Party had informed the
industrialists that the war was lost,
resistance against the Allies would continue
until a guarantee of German unity could be
obtained. He then laid out the secret
three-stage strategy for the Fourth Reich.
In stage one, the
industrialists were to 'prepare themselves
to finance the Nazi Party, which would be
forced to go underground as a Maquis', using
the term for the French resistance.
Stage two would see the
government allocating large sums to German
industrialists to establish a 'secure
post-war foundation in foreign countries',
while 'existing financial reserves must be
placed at the disposal of the party so that
a strong German empire can be created after
the defeat'.
In stage three, German
businesses would set up a 'sleeper' network
of agents abroad through front companies,
which were to be covers for military
research and intelligence, until the Nazis
returned to power.
'The existence of these is
to be known only by very few people in each
industry and by chiefs of the Nazi Party,'
Bosse announced.
'Each office will have a
liaison agent with the party. As soon as the
party becomes strong enough to re-establish
its control over Germany, the industrialists
will be paid for their effort and
co-operation by concessions and orders.'
Extraordinary
revelations: The 1944 Red House Report,
detailing 'plans of German
industrialists to engage in underground
activity'
The exported funds were to
be channelled through two banks in Zurich,
or via agencies in Switzerland which bought
property in Switzerland for German concerns,
for a five per cent commission.
The Nazis had been
covertly sending funds through neutral
countries for years.
Swiss banks, in particular
the Swiss National Bank, accepted gold
looted from the treasuries of Nazi-occupied
countries. They accepted assets and property
titles taken from Jewish businessmen in
Germany and occupied countries, and supplied
the foreign currency that the Nazis needed
to buy vital war materials.
Swiss economic
collaboration with the Nazis had been
closely monitored by Allied intelligence.
The Red House Report's
author notes: 'Previously, exports of
capital by German industrialists to neutral
countries had to be accomplished rather
surreptitiously and by means of special
influence.
'Now the Nazi Party stands
behind the industrialists and urges them to
save themselves by getting funds outside
Germany and at the same time advance the
party's plans for its post-war operations.'
The order to export
foreign capital was technically illegal in
Nazi Germany, but by the summer of 1944 the
law did not matter.
More than two months after
D-Day, the Nazis were being squeezed by the
Allies from the west and the Soviets from
the east. Hitler had been badly wounded in
an assassination attempt. The Nazi
leadership was nervous, fractious and
quarrelling.
During the war years the
SS had built up a gigantic economic empire,
based on plunder and murder, and they
planned to keep it.
A meeting such as that at
the Maison Rouge would need the protection
of the SS, according to Dr Adam Tooze of
Cambridge University, author of Wages of
Destruction: The Making And Breaking Of The
Nazi Economy.
He says: 'By 1944 any
discussion of post-war planning was banned.
It was extremely dangerous to do that in
public. But the SS was thinking in the
long-term. If you are trying to establish a
workable coalition after the war, the only
safe place to do it is under the auspices of
the apparatus of terror.'
Shrewd SS leaders such as
Otto Ohlendorf were already thinking ahead.
As commander of
Einsatzgruppe D, which operated on the
Eastern Front between 1941 and 1942,
Ohlendorf was responsible for the murder of
90,000 men, women and children.
A highly educated,
intelligent lawyer and economist, Ohlendorf
showed great concern for the psychological
welfare of his extermination squad's gunmen:
he ordered that several of them should fire
simultaneously at their victims, so as to
avoid any feelings of personal
responsibility.
By the winter of 1943 he
was transferred to the Ministry of
Economics. Ohlendorf's ostensible job was
focusing on export trade, but his real
priority was preserving the SS's massive
pan-European economic empire after Germany's
defeat.
Ohlendorf, who was later
hanged at Nuremberg, took particular
interest in the work of a German economist
called Ludwig Erhard. Erhard had written a
lengthy manuscript on the transition to a
post-war economy after Germany's defeat.
This was dangerous, especially as his name
had been mentioned in connection with
resistance groups.
But Ohlendorf, who was
also chief of the SD, the Nazi domestic
security service, protected Erhard as he
agreed with his views on stabilising the
post-war German economy. Ohlendorf himself
was protected by Heinrich Himmler, the chief
of the SS.
Ohlendorf and Erhard
feared a bout of hyper-inflation, such as
the one that had destroyed the German
economy in the Twenties. Such a catastrophe
would render the SS's economic empire almost
worthless.
The two men agreed that
the post-war priority was rapid monetary
stabilisation through a stable currency
unit, but they realised this would have to
be enforced by a friendly occupying power,
as no post-war German state would have
enough legitimacy to introduce a currency
that would have any value.
That unit would become the
Deutschmark, which was introduced in 1948.
It was an astonishing success and it
kick-started the German economy. With a
stable currency, Germany was once again an
attractive trading partner.
The German industrial
conglomerates could rapidly rebuild their
economic empires across Europe.
War had been
extraordinarily profitable for the German
economy. By 1948 - despite six years of
conflict, Allied bombing and post-war
reparations payments - the capital stock of
assets such as equipment and buildings was
larger than in 1936, thanks mainly to the
armaments boom.
Erhard pondered how German
industry could expand its reach across the
shattered European continent. The answer was
through supranationalism - the voluntary
surrender of national sovereignty to an
international body.
Germany and France were
the drivers behind the European Coal and
Steel Community (ECSC), the precursor to the
European Union. The ECSC was the first
supranational organisation, established in
April 1951 by six European states. It
created a common market for coal and steel
which it regulated. This set a vital
precedent for the steady erosion of national
sovereignty, a process that continues today.
But before the common
market could be set up, the Nazi
industrialists had to be pardoned, and Nazi
bankers and officials reintegrated. In 1957,
John J. McCloy, the American High
Commissioner for Germany, issued an amnesty
for industrialists convicted of war crimes.
The two most powerful Nazi
industrialists, Alfried Krupp of Krupp
Industries and Friedrich Flick, whose Flick
Group eventually owned a 40 per cent stake
in Daimler-Benz, were released from prison
after serving barely three years.
Krupp and Flick had been
central figures in the Nazi economy. Their
companies used slave labourers like cattle,
to be worked to death.
The Krupp company soon
became one of Europe's leading industrial
combines.
The Flick Group also
quickly built up a new pan-European business
empire. Friedrich Flick remained unrepentant
about his wartime record and refused to pay
a single Deutschmark in compensation until
his death in July 1972 at the age of 90,
when he left a fortune of more than
$1billion, the equivalent of £400million at
the time.
'For many leading
industrial figures close to the Nazi regime,
Europe became a cover for pursuing German
national interests after the defeat of
Hitler,' says historian Dr Michael
Pinto-Duschinsky, an adviser to Jewish
former slave labourers.
'The continuity of the
economy of Germany and the economies of
post-war Europe is striking. Some of the
leading figures in the Nazi economy became
leading builders of the European Union.'
Numerous household names
had exploited slave and forced labourers
including BMW, Siemens and Volkswagen, which
produced munitions and the V1 rocket.
Slave labour was an
integral part of the Nazi war machine. Many
concentration camps were attached to
dedicated factories where company officials
worked hand-in-hand with the SS officers
overseeing the camps.
Like Krupp and Flick,
Hermann Abs, post-war Germany's most
powerful banker, had prospered in the Third
Reich. Dapper, elegant and diplomatic, Abs
joined the board of Deutsche Bank, Germany's
biggest bank, in 1937. As the Nazi empire
expanded, Deutsche Bank enthusiastically 'Aryanised'
Austrian and Czechoslovak banks that were
owned by Jews.
By 1942, Abs held 40
directorships, a quarter of which were in
countries occupied by the Nazis. Many of
these Aryanised companies used slave labour
and by 1943 Deutsche Bank's wealth had
quadrupled.
Abs also sat on the
supervisory board of I.G. Farben, as
Deutsche Bank's representative. I.G. Farben
was one of Nazi Germany's most powerful
companies, formed out of a union of BASF,
Bayer, Hoechst and subsidiaries in the
Twenties.
It was so deeply entwined
with the SS and the Nazis that it ran its
own slave labour camp at Auschwitz, known as
Auschwitz III, where tens of thousands of
Jews and other prisoners died producing
artificial rubber.
When they could work no
longer, or were verbraucht (used up) in the
Nazis' chilling term, they were moved to
Birkenau. There they were gassed using
Zyklon B, the patent for which was owned by
I.G. Farben.
But like all good
businessmen, I.G. Farben's bosses hedged
their bets.
During the war the company
had financed Ludwig Erhard's research. After
the war, 24 I.G. Farben executives were
indicted for war crimes over Auschwitz III -
but only twelve of the 24 were found guilty
and sentenced to prison terms ranging from
one-and-a-half to eight years. I.G. Farben
got away with mass murder.
Abs was one of the most
important figures in Germany's post-war
reconstruction. It was largely thanks to him
that, just as the Red House Report exhorted,
a 'strong German empire' was indeed rebuilt,
one which formed the basis of today's
European Union.
Abs was put in charge of
allocating Marshall Aid - reconstruction
funds - to German industry. By 1948 he was
effectively managing Germany's economic
recovery.
Crucially, Abs was also a
member of the European League for Economic
Co-operation, an elite intellectual pressure
group set up in 1946. The league was
dedicated to the establishment of a common
market, the precursor of the European Union.
Its members included
industrialists and financiers and it
developed policies that are strikingly
familiar today - on monetary integration and
common transport, energy and welfare
systems.
When Konrad Adenauer, the
first Chancellor of West Germany, took power
in 1949, Abs was his most important
financial adviser.
Behind the scenes Abs was
working hard for Deutsche Bank to be allowed
to reconstitute itself after
decentralisation. In 1957 he succeeded and
he returned to his former employer.
That same year the six
members of the ECSC signed the Treaty of
Rome, which set up the European Economic
Community. The treaty further liberalised
trade and established increasingly powerful
supranational institutions including the
European Parliament and European Commission.
Like Abs, Ludwig Erhard
flourished in post-war Germany. Adenauer
made Erhard Germany's first post-war
economics minister. In 1963 Erhard succeeded
Adenauer as Chancellor for three years.
But the German economic
miracle – so vital to the idea of a new
Europe - was built on mass murder. The
number of slave and forced labourers who
died while employed by German companies in
the Nazi era was
2,700,000.
Some sporadic compensation
payments were made but German industry
agreed a conclusive, global settlement only
in 2000, with a £3billion compensation fund.
There was no admission of legal liability
and the individual compensation was paltry.
A slave labourer would
receive 15,000 Deutschmarks (about £5,000),
a forced labourer 5,000 (about £1,600). Any
claimant accepting the deal had to undertake
not to launch any further legal action.
To put this sum of money
into perspective, in 2001 Volkswagen alone
made profits of £1.8billion.
Next month, 27 European
Union member states vote in the biggest
transnational election in history. Europe
now enjoys peace and stability. Germany is a
democracy, once again home to a substantial
Jewish community. The Holocaust is seared
into national memory.
But the Red House Report
is a bridge from a sunny present to a dark
past. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda
chief, once said: 'In 50 years' time nobody
will think of nation states.'
For now, the nation state
endures. But these three typewritten pages
are a reminder that today's drive towards a
European federal state is inexorably tangled
up with the plans of the SS and German
industrialists for a
Fourth Reich - an
economic rather than military imperium.
• The Budapest Protocol, Adam LeBor's
thriller inspired by the Red House Report,
is published by Reportage Press.
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Altered-Bolding & Underlining Used-Comments
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*
*
[
Prime
Minister
Edward Heath was a
NAZI
SPY for over 60 years to his death
in 2005 before which he publicly
admitted that he had
lied
to the people when he said there
would be no loss of sovereignty. His
fellow traitors were Roy Jenkins and
Geoffrey Rippon who were reported to
MI5 in 1938 by the Master Lindsay of
Balliol College Oxford . Harold
MacMillian before him was exposed by
intelligence sources 13 years earlier
in 1957 as an agent of the
German Abwehr.
This country has
been served by many traitors since
that day as a look at the list of
members of the
and that is not a
complete list because of the great
difficulty of obtaining the names of
those who belong to such a secretive
body. But we know that Gordon
Brown- Ed Balls on the Labour side
and Kenneth Clarke and George
Osborne the Shadow Chancellor on the
Tory side. The Liberal Democrats
have their David Steel and no doubt
many others. The Governor of the
Bank of England Mervyn King is also
on the list and this man has charge
of our of the future financial
health of our nation. And we must
not forget our greatest despot Tony
Blair.
www.worldreports.org.uk
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