The Ruling Elite

by Deanna Spingola

  Elsewhere, outraged citizens rioted and destroyed lodge buildings. Large segments of the population were well aware of the threat that Freemasonry posed to the welfare of citizens. Freemasonry’s ideology placed the security of the state in jeopardy. Lodges began closing their doors, often involuntarily. Some of them closed as early as March 1933, recognizing Hitler’s animosity toward their activities. Freemasons also destroyed their lodge archives. Many still hoped to obtain influential government positions and expected that National Socialism was temporary.70

  Many of the humanitarian grand lodges had Jewish majorities. Government authorities made it patently obvious that they would not tolerate their activities and that Freemasons would have to dissolve their lodges or the state police would take action. Some of the Old Prussian grand lodges altered their names and pretended to operate outside of Freemasonry, but these attempts proved unsatisfactory. By July 1935, the Freemasons had agreed to dissolve the Old Prussian lodges. After changing many of the lodges to orders, grand masters told their charges to repudiate their Masonic affiliation when they joined the NSDAP. To integrate, many lodge members by January 30, 1933, had denied their affiliations, a key Masonic characteristic. Others accused the state of anti-Semitism and claimed that great men in German history had been champions of authentic Freemasonry.71

  Freemasonry was hostile to fascism and to National Socialism. Freemasons waged a hate campaign against National Socialist Germany, especially after Hitler came to power. Jewish and other German immigrants joined the criticism of National Socialism. Prominent among the critics were Georg Bernhard, a Jew and the publisher of Vossische Zeitung and the emigrant newspaper Parisian Daily, and Emil Julius Gumbel, a former professor in Heidelberg.72 Freemasons in America endorsed and promoted the anti-German defamation. Freemasons in France controlled the international body. They opposed the amalgamation of Austria and Germany, the return of the Sudetenland to Germany, and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. They were also behind the hateful attacks on Germany and Hitler.73

  Freemasons in France also waged a rhetorical war against National Socialism. During international Masonic congresses, officials created resolutions against National Socialist Germany, which they passed to the League of Nations. The Rothschilds failed to establish a world government at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and 1815, but they established the League of Nations on April 28, 1919, during the Versailles Peace Conference. Many countries refused to accept this entity, with its pretense to end all wars, or to implement the stipulations of the treaty. While it existed, the future president of the World Zionist Congress, Nahum Sokolow, admitted, “The League of Nations is a Jewish idea. We created it after a fight of twenty-five years.”74 “For the peace of the world a League of Nations let us have by all means; but for the Humanity of the World, to give justice to the Jew.”75

  The NSDAP’s official policy for party membership required that the applicant state, upon his honor, that he had never been a Freemason or a member of a Masonic lodge. The same prerequisite applied to NSDAP subsidiary organizations like the SA, the SS, and the NSKK (motorized SA). Hitler, through an amnesty decree, dated April 20, 1938, made it possible for former Freemasons to remain in the party and its subsidiaries if they joined the party after January 30, 1933, and prior to the regulation. This stipulation did not apply to the higher-degree Freemasons or to those who held high lodge positions. The NSDAP did not permit them to remain in the party or its subsidiaries or allow these people to apply for membership.76

  Freemasons in America, under the direction of a special committee in Paris, spent thousands of dollars to facilitate the immigration of Freemasons from Central Europe. Individuals in other nations collected huge sums, which they funneled to Freemasons in Spain to finance the communists. The organization in France demonstrated Freemasonry’s predominant influence when numerous political factions, including republicans and Marxists, combined to reach an objective. During Spain’s civil war, Freemasons in France demanded their country’s armed intervention on the side of the communists.77

  After the Munich Accords, reached on September 29, 1938, by Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, Mussolini, and Hitler, Freemasons in Britain demanded war with Germany and had the constant cooperation of Freemason Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Versailles Treaty mandated American intervention to back its stipulations. The Jewish-controlled press, closely linked with Freemasonry, fought against National Socialist Germany. In 1939, the war erupted as a continuation of those efforts using military force.78 Chamberlain and Daladier approved Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland. Hitler vowed that he would not demand any further territory in Europe. Thus Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, and Mussolini signed the Munich Pact. Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovakia’s head of state, objected to the decision. Chamberlain reminded Beneš that Britain would not go to war over the Sudetenland issue.

  Jews, with their unique exclusivity, constitute a state within a state. A government cannot serve the best interests of its citizens if Freemasonry exists within its borders. Freemasonry is incompatible with national independence. Freemasons, unified by their international objectives, infiltrate and hold prominent positions in economic, political, and spiritual organizations. This is dangerous because every Freemason is required to be a Freemason first, always acting in accordance with his Masonic instruction. A Masonic politician is always a Freemason first and a politician second and thus is not accountable to his constituents or to the nation.79 National Socialism was different in that it embraced “unconditional racial nationalism” as opposed to the internationalism of Freemasonry and Judaism. German National Socialism focused on basic concepts of education beneficial to students and to the country rather than on Masonic internationalism.80

  A recruit must pledge the solemn Masonic oath, which requires obedience and secrecy even before one becomes a lodge member. This appears unethical as it requires compliance with unknown obligations. According to Dieter Schwarz, National Socialism represents duty and responsibility and views its philosophy as Nordic while Freemasonry represents Jewish internationalism. National Socialists give priority to nationalism while Freemasonry is antiracial, pro-Jewish, and international and includes a caste system.81 Christians should not swear oaths, especially open-ended oaths. This applies to any blank-check promise such as a pledge of allegiance to a government that might require a citizen’s participation in offensive wars in foreign countries. A citizen-created government owes allegiance to its citizens, not the other way around. A vow to the state essentially concedes permission for whatever the state decides to impose on its citizens—unjust taxes, wealth redistribution, media censorship, restrictive regulations, imprisonment without cause, and numerous other unjust laws.

  Incrementally, Hitler’s policies destroyed Freemasonry’s influence in Germany. The lodges in Austria soon waned as well, breaking “the Masonic world chain.” As Germany occupied Poland, Norway, Belgium, and Luxembourg, members dissolved the lodges. The French government recognized that Freemasonry was partially culpable for France’s defeat, and France eventually prohibited Masonic activity. War’s disruption limited activity in southeastern Europe. However, Freemasons in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, and especially in America maintained considerable power. Freemasons in America exercised extensive influence in driving “political opinion against National Socialism’s New Order in Europe.”82 Freemasons collaborated “with other enemies of National Socialism, with World Jewry, the political churches, and international Marxism.” Many countries throughout history have forbidden Freemasonry, but in a time of crisis, members of the brotherhood had introduced the craft, like “poison” with its “liberalistic” mentality, into Germany.83

  The Official History of Adolf Hitler

  To put the right spin on America in the aftermath of World War I, a Committee on Public Information (CPI) press team, including Edward Bernays, attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1918. George Creel wrote a book i
n 1920 titled How We Advertised America in which he recounted how “he and his committee used the principles of advertising to convince Americans to go to war with Germany.”84 Federal agencies were established, funded, and approved to work with the news media, Hollywood film studios, and magazines—virtually every communication vehicle. Those friendly, smiling TV and radio personalities of today may, in fact, be on the government’s payroll. Inspiring, patriotic, pro-war movies or Disney’s animations evoke a predictable response. Many media personalities belong to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an organization devoted to destroying America.

  The Rockefeller and Sloan foundations financed the official histories of World War II, paying CFR-associated establishment historians to develop these accounts to neutralize and discredit the facts revealed by nonestablishment researchers. The revisionists could easily produce reasonably acceptable rhetoric for people eager to believe the best about their leaders regardless of the overwhelming facts to the contrary. Citizens asked too many questions after World War I, an embarrassing situation that officials wanted to avoid after numerous discrepancies exposed by documents released during the Pearl Harbor investigations strongly suggested that Roosevelt deceived America into war despite assurances that he would keep the country out of battle.85

  Hermann Göring and his wife Carin, a Swedish baroness, entertained some notable people at their residence on the outskirts of Berlin in the first week of January 1931. Their guests included Adolf Hitler, Fritz Thyssen, Ernst Tengelmann, Hjalmar Schacht and his wife, and the Prince and Princess zu Wied, influential people who had not yet met Hitler. The prince joined the NSDAP on November 1, 1929. Tengelmann was the director of a major coal mining operation in Ruhr. In their book Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler’s Rise to Power, James and Suzanne Pool repudiate the contention by other authors that Hitler was uncomfortable and even incapable of carrying on a conversation in small groups or with individuals.86

  Even before the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) launched a smear campaign against Hitler, The Literary Digest of August 26, 1933, compared him to Charles Chaplin, with his “characteristic mustache and his bouncing way of walking.” A writer in the London New Statesman commented, “He was so funny; I inquired who he might be” and suggested that Hitler was “probably a trifle mentally deranged.” Hitler’s reputation was growing stronger in Germany, yet many European newspapers highlighted what they viewed as “the comic aspects of Germany’s dictator,” portraying him as a “comedian” with “an indefatigable sense of the theatre,” like an “actor—manager, staging his big show with scraps of discarded ideas and unconsidered trifles.”87

  Hermann Rauschning joined Hitler and the NSDAP, believing that they offered the only way out of Germany’s troubles and could bring the return of Danzig to Germany. In 1933, after Hitler came to power, the NSDAP in Danzig won control of the Free City’s government. Rauschning then became the third president of the Free City of Danzig and functioned in that office from June 20, 1933, to November 23, 1934, when Hitler dismissed him. Rauschning went to Poland in 1936, then to Switzerland in 1937, to France in 1938, and to England in 1939. From 1938 to 1942, Rauschning wrote anti-Nazi propaganda, including the defamatory 1940 book The Voice of Destruction, published in New York by G. P. Putnam’s Sons and printed seventeen times in the United States. In 1941, Rauschning moved to America, where he resided on a farm near Portland, Oregon.

  Rauschning claimed that Hitler planned to send German peasants to Bohemia and Moravia and that he was going to transport Czechs to Russia. In 1934, Hitler allegedly told Rauschning that he was going to systematically deport the Slavs to the “east of Germany.” According to Rauschning, Hitler said there was no need for “mass murder” when “there were other ways of accomplishing the same object.” Rauschning also claimed that Hitler said in 1934 that he was going to partition Poland. He said that Hitler told a group of Danzigers that he planned to drive the Jews ahead of the German attacking lines in the next war because “they’d be the best protection for our soldiers.” Rauschning claimed that Hitler had a “Nazi blueprint of the world” if he won the war. Further, he claimed that Hitler, whom he described as “abnormal” and “emotionally unstable,” said, “We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us—a world in flames.” Rauschning called the members of Hitler’s movement “the apocalyptic riders of world annihilation.”88

  In 1940, Rauschning wrote another book, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on His Real Aims, based on the dozens of conversations that he claimed to have had with Hitler from 1932 to 1934. Other books included Hitler’s Aims in War and Peace (1940), published in London, and Hitler Wants the World (1941), a series of articles, allegedly by the “man who knows Hitler’s mind,” also published in London. Serious and even court historians totally discredit Rauschning’s work and would never cite it.

  For five years, Swiss researcher Wolfgang Hänel examined Rauschning’s work, especially Hitler Speaks, supposedly Rauschning’s memoir, and concluded that it was a fraud that had absolutely no value “except as a document of Allied war propaganda.” Hänel presented his conclusions in West Germany in 1983. Rauschning claimed to have met and spoken with Hitler “more than a hundred times,” yet they had met only four times, always in the company of others. He invented the stories and lied about what Hitler did and said. He claimed that Hitler would awake shrieking at night, hearing voices and pointing to imaginary images in the corner of his room.89 To think Rauschning could possibly have known personal details, such as sex and sleep habits, is absolutely ridiculous. Even more ludicrous is that anyone would accept such nonsense. In 1939, Emery Reves, the Jewish publisher of the original French edition of Hitler Speaks, assigned the book just as the German army was invading France. Rauschning, apparently destitute at the time, agreed to fabricate Hitler’s personality traits in order to discredit him.

  William J. Donovan, head of the OSS, an agency filled with communists, initiated another malicious anti-German propaganda campaign when he commissioned psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer to evaluate Hitler from any available information, true or not, and to create a subjective report. The OSS surveyed all of the newspapers in Europe for negative articles about Hitler and created the thousand-page Hitler Source Book, presented as valid material. According to this book, Hitler “left Vienna early in 1912 and obtained work in Munich as a house painter and decorator.”90 Contrary to that myth, Hitler was never a house painter but rather a talented artist who also demonstrated a knowledge of architecture. The falsifications covered every aspect of his life, with the goal of marginalizing him and making people question his qualifications.

  Langer and his collaborators could use derogatory newspaper accounts, second- or third-hand reports, malicious hearsay, and interviews with enemies of Hitler. Langer submitted his report, A Psychological Profile of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend, in late 1943 or early 1944. It was one of two reports prepared for the OSS. The other, Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler, was an attempt to calculate Hitler’s personal traits. Langer collaborated with three other clinicians—Professor Henry A. Murray of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, Dr. Ernst Kris of the New School for Social Research, and Dr. Bertram D. Lewin of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute—as well as several research associates.

  Skeptics raised justifiable questions, prompting a letter from Secretary of War Robert Patterson, dated December 16, 1945, to Dr. Troyer S. Anderson of Army intelligence, requesting that “sound scholarship” be applied to “recent history,” which he said was important to the “future of American policy.” Professor Allan Nevins gathered a small group of historians who, with a four-year grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, were charged with writing something to “dispel the notion that this country was tricked into war by its own government.” They took a new official approach to American diplomatic history suggested by a Council on Foreign Relations commission. One of the
authors, William L. Langer of Harvard University, was the director of the OSS research and analysis section and in 1946 served as a special assistant to the secretary of state. He recruited another OSS veteran, S. Everett Gleason Jr., also associated with the CFR. Other establishment historians included CFR member George F. Kennan, former ambassador to Russia and head of the State Department’s policy planning staff.91

  Kennan began his analysis with the Spanish-American War. In his version, warmongers forced the conflict upon “an unwilling President William McKinley and a disapproving business and financial community.” He said that American imperialism could be blamed on the American people who wanted to see our flag flying on distant tropical isles and to bask in the “sunshine of recognition as a great imperial power.” He did not mention the thousands of Americans who opposed both the war and an American empire. He claimed that leaders could not stand up to the demands of citizens.92 He did not provide adequate explanations for the Filipino death toll.

  In 1972, when the media was popularizing stories about a holocaust of Jews, Basic Books, of New York, published The Mind of Adolf Hitler: The Secret Wartime Report. Walter C. Langer, the author, based the book on his World War II report. The book included a foreword by historian William L. Langer, his brother, and an afterword by psychoanalytic historian Robert G. L. Waite. William Langer had worked with Donovan throughout the war.93

  Walter Langer and his cronies drew most of their information from what Langer called the “screening of raw material.” Citing Sigmund Freud, Langer said that “Hitler’s actions as reported in the news were sufficient to convince us that he was, in all probability, a neurotic psychopath.” Later, in the book, he wrote, “There was general agreement among the collaborators that Hitler is probably a neurotic psychopath bordering on schizophrenia. This means that he is not insane in the commonly accepted sense of the term, but a neurotic who lacks adequate inhibitions.”94 As for “raw material,” Langer cited Rauschning so often, at least thirty-three times, that he should have listed him as a coauthor.