The Bormann Brotherhood

by William Stevenson

  A major part of that foreign trade was in the Mideast. After King Farouk’s overthrow in Egypt, an appeal went to Gehlen to help train security forces there. Here was a long-awaited opportunity to restore German influence in the Mideast, where the Nazi secret services had taken a bad bashing, although remnants still survived and were being used for ODESSA stations. Gehlen and Schacht quickly agreed that there was only one man for the over-all direction of this new challenge: Otto Skorzeny.

  Skorzeny had been in touch with forcibly retired German generals and other comrades, seeking support for the bold proposal that he raise several military divisions to help the Americans fight the war in Korea. It is interesting that in the conversations of which there is any record, it was always an American war and it was always a case of the more experienced Germans showing the Americans how to win it. This canvassing started in 1950, when Skorzeny was scarcely out of detention camp, and it clearly had the tolerant interest of the Western occupying powers. Germany was full of ex-soldiers with no place in civil life, and Skorzeny proposed to bring them to Spain for training.

  He took the view that the Korean war might be orchestrated with another in Europe, so that his “four or five crack divisions” could be utilized there. How much of this was scaremongering designed to stampede the authorities into making concessions? Skorzeny’s record was one of maximum noise. He boasted of great adventures, and he did have a schoolboy enthusiasm for unconventional methods of warfare. His performance was not nearly as impressive as made out. He had rescued Mussolini and also Franco’s brother-in-law, Ramon Serrano Suñer, from seemingly impregnable prisons, but, without wishing to diminish these accomplishments, it must be said that he did have a tendency to launch wild schemes that came to nothing. His projected operations in the Mideast during the war never amounted to much because of almost incredible inefficiency and the misjudgment of the Arab temper. Nevertheless, he had his own peculiar vision of what Germany could do in the Arab world and he swallowed the reports given him by his least admiring fan, Walter Schellenberg, who journeyed to the office in Madrid that Skorzeny opened in 1950 for business as a kind of consultant in unconventional warfare (with “engineering” as the professed purpose of the enterprise). Schellenberg wanted a reconciliation because he believed he saw a grand design forming: Gehlen and the Org taking in American money on a scale that for Europe was quite magnificent, and Skorzeny in Spain preparing an operational arm of a restored foreign intelligence service beyond the confining limits of the Soviets. The Communist threat was simply the quickest and most convenient way to get Yankee dollars.

  Franco, however grateful for getting back his brother-in-law, knew something of President Juan Perón’s problems in Argentina with the boisterous members of the Brotherhood. He told Skorzeny that a defense project in Spain was, of course, always interesting. However, the Americans were dealing directly with Spain in the matter. Perhaps Skorzeny would like to get official American support, particularly for his plan to fall back onto Spanish North Africa if the Russians overran Europe?

  Skorzeny then turned his attention to reviving old Nuremberg connections, and through his father-in-law made the biggest postwar deal between Spain and West Germany, for the delivery in 1952 of five million dollars’ worth of railway stock and machine tools.

  Skorzeny played the part of a Spanish grandee in Madrid. He met “customers” at one of the best restaurants, run by a former pet of Göring. It was here that most of Franco’s Cabinet lunched.

  Skorzeny was lecturing in Spanish universities on the new warfare and “the strategy of wide spaces where long front lines no longer exist. Between major war theaters will be a wide space for lightning strokes to throw down a slower adversary. Other conflicts may well start with a series of assassinations and kidnappings.” He was doing excellent business that spilled over into Brotherhood affairs in Latin America. And he still had his youthful romantic notion of Arab warriors.

  The job in Cairo, as Gehlen and Schacht had agreed, was tailormade for him. He went as General Mohammed Naguib’s adviser, and when that gentleman was pushed aside for Gamal Abdel Nasser, continued under the new firm. A German military mission had grown out of the large numbers of former SS men sent to Egypt by ODESSA. Other Nazis were brought over from Argentina, where they had been recruited by the Brotherhood’s much-decorated representative, Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

  Did the Americans and British, knowing Skorzeny’s projected role in Bormann’s postwar plans, deliberately let him go? He was far from stupid, but he was bombastic and indiscreet. He might be expected to lead the hunters to Bormann, or help the Allies define the size of the Brotherhood’s conspiracies. His salary was subsidized by Allen Dulles, using the CIA’s unaccountable funds, after Dulles persuaded him in 1953 to help build Egyptian security forces. By then, of course, John Foster Dulles was also in the act, and the brothers in this period were swept away by the concept of a liberated Arab world standing strong against Communism.

  CHAPTER 12

  Nazi influence in the Mideast was the last thing I anticipated when I flew to Cairo after Nasser took over the Suez Canal in 1956. I was living in Hong Kong and covering Asia, where events were having their effect on all the new nations of Africa and the Arab world. I had in my passport the key that opened many doors in those days: a visa into Maoist China. The former wards and colonies of the West welcomed a white man who was in turn welcomed by the New China.

  The first sign of something odd came when I went to see General Naguib, the revolutionary leader who was under house arrest. Police agents requisitioned my car and hustled me into a suburban barracks. The drill seemed vaguely familiar. A friendly Egyptian Army sergeant said wryly, when I asked: “The Germans won. Our real boss is one of Rommel’s old staff officers, General Farnbacher.” This was the former Waffen SS General Wilhelm Farnbacher.

  Later, after being released on my promise not to go near that area again, I heard the usual gossip when foreign correspondents flock to the center of a crisis. At the Metropolitan Hotel there was talk of a German military mission, of SS men and Wehrmacht officers who said they were never Nazis (because, of course, as army men they could not join the party). They worked under Arab names. That seemed to imply some sense of embarrassment at least.

  At the old Gezira Sporting Club I found an Argentine diplomat who was one of the post-Perón radicals. Would he feel like talking about Nazi survivors? Indeed he would. He had a list of 240 names—the real German names of men who had fled from the prospect of Allied justice. He had the travel details of German professionals recruited in Argentina, where they had found sanctuary while that country endured the dictatorship of Perón.

  I cabled Iain Lang, the Foreign Editor of the London Sunday Times, asking him to check some of the more prominent names. Back came several potted biographies, including that of a high official of Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry and Himmler’s Central Security Office, Franz Bünsch. He was the author of Sexual Habits of the Jews, a piece of German racist pornography published at the height of anti-Semitic viciousness. He collaborated with Eichmann on the “final solution.” Now he was working in Nasser’s Ministry of Guidance under an Arab pseudonym.

  When this kind of information comes the way of a reporter, it is good tactics to share it with a colleague. The prospect of confronting Bünsch was slim. It was unlikely I could take notes. I would need a reputable witness. A respected Western writer in Cairo was Ann Sharpley, whose boss was Lord Beaverbrook. She had come to a position similar to mine in her own investigations: there were several hundred Germans with Gestapo, SS, or Nazi propaganda experience. Their anonymity was protected by a security system established by Otto Skorzeny. Worse, Gestapo-trained Egyptian agents were looking for ways to trap Western journalists. These agents provocateurs would employ Nazi methods of incriminating their victims. Two correspondents for London newspapers had been warned by the British Embassy’s security man that they were in danger. Their “secret” negotiations with an Egyptian Army maj
or for a news story on the Suez defense system would be climaxed by the handing over of military maps, whereupon they would be arrested for spying. One of the reporters hopped on the next plane home. The other, Donald Wise, then with the Daily Express, dropped his contact but stayed to brazen things out.

  Yet there were Egyptian officials ready to risk their lives to help. An official of the Ministry of Guidance suggested we look for another prominent ex-Nazi, Professor Johann von Leers, masquerading under a Moslem name. He directed radio propaganda against Israel.

  The shock of coming face to face with this man still impresses me. It is one thing to put together the circumstantial evidence leading to a certain conclusion, and quite another matter to confront reality. It is one of the most exciting moments in any investigation when all the abstract calculations prove to be visibly exact.

  It was a Saturday morning. An anonymous voice on my phone recommended that I go to the ministry. I picked up Ann. We took the precaution of telling two colleagues to start inquiries if we were not back by a certain time. At the ministry the anonymous caller finally made himself known. After sending his watchdog colleague out for coffee, this Egyptian official said quickly: “Go to the office of —— on the fifth floor.”

  There the door with that Arab name on it was open. Inside sat a pink-cheeked, white-haired man with bright-blue marblelike eyes. We stepped inside, Ann closed the door, and I said: “Von Leers!”

  He sprang to his feet. “Yes?”

  “What are you doing here?” “I am a specialist in Zionist affairs.” “How did you get here?” “From Argentina in 1954.” “You are wanted as a war criminal.” “That is right. I have been three times arrested by Americans in Germany before I make my escape….”

  The questions and answers fell into the familiar pattern of an interrogation. Ann and I concluded later that the man had been questioned so often by Allied experts that he responded automatically. After the first brisk exchange, we took him back to the mystery of his easy escapes from one Allied camp after another; and further back, to his work for Hitler and his belief in the Zionist menace. I cannot say what created the mood. It seemed as if he had been expecting us all his life.

  Ann put her questions quietly, without emotion, a soft woman’s voice talking to a child. Only I knew the suppressed rage inside her. Perhaps this plump little man was really not listening to her words so much as responding to the strength behind them. My own questions were brief and deliberately curt, with a touch of panic. I was certain the police would burst in. We had penetrated all the barriers to talk with a Nazi war criminal now held in respect and paid a large salary, plus all expenses, plus the cost of bringing his German wife and children from Argentina.

  Incredibly, he continued to talk. There was indeed a Zionist conspiracy, and always had been. Nothing would cure the human race of the Jewish disease except massive surgery…. Israel was the cancer that must be cut out…. “But in attacking Israel, aren’t you providing Russia with a door into this region?” I asked, pursuing his argument that Nazi Germany recognized the true enemy long before the rest of what he called the “civilized world.” “Ah, the Russians!” he murmured. He began to rock back and forth, crooning: “First they arrive singing Arab songs and then slowly the melody turns into words and music for balalaika….”

  Ann recalled for me in 1972 her own impressions. She said: “He was instantly recognizable as a German despite that Arab name on the door. His manner was nervous and yet welcoming, as if he was bored and glad of the diversion. Without asking who we were, he went into a half-hysterical flood of confession, reminiscences, excuses—and fear…. He compared world dictators. Hitler had been too impatient. Perón, for whom he’d also worked, was too impatient. Nasser also. But ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin could take his time.”

  We were arrested that afternoon. By then, however, our dispatches were out. Authority decided to put us on the first available plane, and we were expelled that same night.

  We were relieved to get off so lightly. During the previous week, I had received a cable advising that “Mike” considered I should leave Cairo immediately for my own safety. “Mike” was Lester Pearson, the Canadian Foreign Minister at that time. He told me later that the threats which disturbed him most had come from known Nazis, whose opinions about “Jew lovers” were voiced in the presence of Canadian intelligence officers. Threats had been made to both Ann and me in a more direct fashion. We were invited out for dinner with an Egyptian journalist whose job was to keep on good terms with foreign correspondents and also to report to his government. The evening was full of bonhomie until the host turned deadly quiet and said with soft precision: “I have been asked to tell you that if you persist in looking for dirt to dig up, your body will be rolled in a carpet and dropped on the doorstep of your embassy.” It took us several seconds to realize that the words had been carefully rehearsed and were not meant as a joke. By the time we were expelled, the threats were taken so seriously that the foreign press corps came out to the Cairo airport to make sure we boarded an overseas flight and were not escorted straight through the customs hall and out the other side.

  Professor Johann von Leers was a doctor of philosophy and professor of history in Nazi Germany. He had described Hitler as “absorbing the powerful forces of this Germanic granite landscape into his blood through his father.” The Professor wrote little else but variations on the theme of blood and iron. In his conversation with us, he claimed to have been held in “Jewish” concentration camps after the war—American Jews, he added helpfully. On further questioning, however, it developed that he was held in Russian and East German camps, too.

  Since then, it has been possible to trace the Professor’s movements in greater detail. He was sent into West Germany with Communist help, and, ironically, moved immediately into the Vatican Line. He was regarded by the Brotherhood as a distinguished theoretician in racial matters, and he was able to collect his family in Italy and move to Argentina. Within months, he was on his way to Cairo. His propaganda themes were curious because, on close examination, they promoted ideas that were far more helpful to Communism than anything else: “The Germans will unite again. Their natural friends are the Arabs. The Arabs must unite under Nasser. Israel is an abnormality which must disappear. Zionists are responsible for ninety percent of the press attacks against Nasser. The Egyptian song is a modest song until Father Khrushchev joins in with his Russian balalaika.”

  One thought he left with me was “Escape. Always escape. Always leave yourself a line of escape.”

  And another: “Otto Skorzeny is a commando adventurer. He makes business here, in South America, in Africa, wherever our Brotherhood functions. When he comes here next, I will introduce you.” But, of course, he never could.

  When last heard from, Professor Leers still piped the same tune from Cairo. I have always had the feeling that his escape route now, however, is back to his original home: East Germany.

  An encounter of this nature delivers a sharp jolt. It is not like attending the public trial of Eichmann, nor is it the same as facing such men in interrogation centers. It left me with a sense of wonder foreshadowing my 1972 conversation with General Gehlen.

  Gehlen sent, under his direct orders, a variety of German “experts” to Cairo in the postwar period. It is claimed he did this after Nasser took over because Washington regarded the new Egypt as a valuable ally. The facts are different. Long before King Farouk was overthrown in January 1952, a steady stream of ex-SS and ex-Gestapo men moved to Cairo and other Mideast centers. By the mid-1950’s there were so many in Egypt alone that Gehlen sent a liaison officer, former Deputy Reich Leader of Hitler Youth Hermann Lauterbacher. Another resurrected Nazi to join the Cairo clique was a former colleague of Bünsch. Both had worked under Eichmann in the Central Security Office’s “Jewish department.” Ex-SS Captain Alois Brunner, supposedly hanged by the Russians, had escaped to join the Gehlen Org and was posted for his own safety to the station in Damascus. There he functioned
as director of the Syrian-German trading company Otraco, under the name of George Fisher (spelled sometimes Georg Fischer). He shared an office in Cairo with the stepson of Gehlen’s aide, Major General Hans-Heinrich Worgitzky. This was Gerhard Bauch, whose cover was the German heavy industry concern Quandt.

  The list goes on. This brief glimpse of mass killers is enough to tell us something about their protectors.

  To return to Schacht and Skorzeny, let it be said that the frosty banker in the frock coat and the scarfaced adventurer who shrewdly married his daughter were a curious pair.

  Schacht had the golden touch that made him attractive to that other great opportunist, Martin Bormann. They met in 1931 to discuss Hitler’s finances.

  After that 1931 meeting, Schacht wrote to Hitler: “Your movement is carried internally by so strong a truth and necessity that victory in one form or another cannot elude you….” He thereupon set about drumming up funds. He had Gustav Krupp and other leading German industrialists contributing large sums to Hitler by 1933, when Bormann had full control over all Hitler’s income. This was the Ruhr barons’ way of saying “thank you and keep it up” while the Nazis crushed Communism, socialism, the free trade unions, and Jewish competition.

  Schacht bled the Jews in several ingenious ways. He regarded as the most rewarding of his fiscal measures the price exacted for every Jew who migrated to Palestine. The World Zionist Organization paid, per head, the sum of 15,000 Reichsmarks, which represented a quarter of Schacht’s annual salary as President of the Reichsbank.

  By 1951, when we talked in Indonesia about his new schemes to make Germany proud again, he had been in and out of twenty-three prisons without visible signs of remorse. He was scouting for Krupp.