The Bormann Brotherhood

by William Stevenson

  “No.”

  “The draft was requested by Pius XI in 1938. It was written on racism and anti-Semitism. If it had been published it might have saved a great slaughter.” Later, details of the draft encyclical (“Humani Generis Unitas”) were made public.

  Sir Campbell Stuart, at the time of this conversation, was out of public life, but he remained a governor of the Imperial College of Science and Technology and he continued to work, on and off, among the secret archives. When some of the wartime files became available at the Public Record Office in 1972, he suggested that I request the Bormann Life reports, if only on the basis that I could read through them. Some of the information was of recent date and still highly confidential. Many of the contributors to the later information, covering Bormann’s distribution of wealth around the world, were prominent figures, and it would be embarrassing if their revelations were traced back to them.

  Bormann’s protectors appeared in the fitful gleam of the postwar twilight of Nazidom: assassinations, odd movements of stolen treasures, the blackmailing of a Jewish community in Paraguay, secret accounts in banking institutions where questions were never asked, and so on. This kind of knowledge is hedged about with legal restrictions, and it can be dangerous. Nonetheless, having been given access to the later files, I wondered just what did paralyze the civilized world? Forgiveness was one thing. But the West, so diligent in its pursuit of radicals, seemed to have done little to stem the flow of anti-Jewish bile from Cairo or interfere with racial pogroms initiated by Nazi-minded groups in Latin America.

  “It’s not our skins, that’s why,” Noel Coward told me late in 1972. His secret life as an agent had been a matter on which he could not speak until then. His first assignment had been the Latin-American beat, under Stephenson. His cover was the best. “I never had to pretend to be a silly ass,” said Sir Noel. “I just played myself. The place crawled with Nazis, but, you see, those were times when we didn’t pull our punches. Mind you—” he balanced a cigarette carefully in an ashtray—“don’t make the mistake of supposing we let them get away with it now. The rules of the game have changed. Bormann got away, no doubt. I suspect he’s never been lost though. He got away—but he did not get away with it.”

  This conformed with the suspicion gathering in my own mind. The Brotherhood had not been as clever as might be supposed. The valuable debris of the death camps, the jewelry and gold, the forged banknotes and stolen treasures, had financed business enterprises in faraway places. An examination of the commercial fortunes of these businesses, however, suggested that the Nazis were not good in trade. They were accustomed to bullying, not bargaining. Master forger Schwend wound up in jail when he bribed the wrong people. Others had died violently in lonely places. I had an impression that the slow strangulation of these people had been more painful than the Nuremberg hangings. Yet there still remained evidence of their lingering influence.

  A summary of this influence in the 1970’s, when I set it forth, produced an incomplete but not heartening picture. It was an accounting of Bormann and the Brotherhood gleaned from the most persuasive of intelligence digests then available. The pieces were the most striking in the puzzle, and worth recapitulating:

  • Ronald Gray’s Story: This was supported to some extent by Dr. Fritz Bauer, the West German State Attorney with over-all responsibility for the government’s search for Bormann after 1964. Bauer believed he had escaped to the Flensburg exit route, missed the rendezvous with Erich Koch and an escape submarine, and followed Koch’s example of lying low as a refugee during the period when Nazi sympathizers or Germans interested solely in making some money were able to bribe occupation troops to help fugitives cross the Danish border. “We believe Bormann stayed in the Danish Royal Castle at Gråsten, which was an SS military hospital. It became known that many high-ranking Nazi leaders hid there,” Bauer reported. His testimony has been regarded as more reliable than that of most German officials dragooned into hunting war criminals in an atmosphere hostile to “disloyal” Germans. Bauer himself was a concentration-camp inmate who managed to escape.

  • Bormann’s Personality: This and the details of eyewitness reports of his escape were presented in contradictory ways by sources whose motives were often suspect. Comments that Bormann planned nothing, beyond service to Hitler, came from Germans eager to stop speculation that he got away. The psychological sections of the latest edition of his proso profile confirmed the observations of those who had studied his operations within the party machine. Bormann was a missionary intent upon leading the Nazi movement, and left Berlin when he was confirmed as the lawful successor to the Führer.

  • The New Führer: In accordance with Nazi interpretation of German laws properly passed during the Hitler period, Martin Bormann was the appointed leader of a Fourth Reich. Those who subscribed to this belief sheltered in the “brotherhoods” of their particular crafts. Professional soldiers or policemen shared what they had and were helped by mutual-aid groups. Authority for this arrangement was the traditional German respect for each man’s “trade-craft.” Thousands of men skilled in the work of the party machine could be persuaded to collaborate. The first major step was to provide an anti-Bolshevik cover. General Reinhard Genien, chief of Hitler’s Foreign Armies East (FHO), was declared to be the expert on Soviet military organization.

  • The Gehlen Org: This put up a cloud of information and misinformation about the Communists: Hitler’s former Finance Minister, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, having made a presurrender speech warning the Allies against a Bolshevized Europe. The Org was free to move its agents anywhere. It’s chieftains found jobs and safe haven for Brotherhood members in need.

  • The Paper Chase: Martin Bormann used his powers as the Führer’s central authority to move documents and gold through German intelligence routes to Latin America before Hitler’s death. The secret service had full authority to utilize Lufthansa and shipping routes, and cargo-carrying U-boats. Bormann selected key men in those military sections concerned with forging documents, transport of agents, unconventional warfare, evaluation of art treasures, and financial experts who were responsible for paying German agents abroad. The bankers by 1945 had spread many millions of dollars’ worth of forged British currency around the world. The forged notes caused a major economic crisis in Britain. The subsequent “paper chase” by British Treasury investigators produced a pattern of Nazi operations. This led to discovery of:

  • Aktion Adlerflug (Operation Eagle’s Flight) : This was the means by which blackmailing documents were distributed. The papers were concealed in three separate regions, guarded by leading fugitives.

  • Bolivia: This was the residence of Bormann in 1948. The country’s armed forces were trained by Hitler’s men; and the postwar economy was dominated by friendly Germans. How Bormann reached Latin America was a matter of dispute. Some investigators thought he traveled on a forged Vatican passport issued by the Office of Stateless Persons on board the passenger vessel Giovanni C, from Italy. There were doubts among professionals like Sir William Stephenson. He emphasized the paramount weakness in many intelligence services. Agents lacking integrity could make up reports to cover themselves, with catastrophic results: “There is a temptation to weave known facts into a generally fictitious report.” It was already known, however, that Adolf Eichmann traveled on the Giovanni in 1950.

  • The Consortium: This covered financial transactions for the Brotherhood. Its branches were located in Latin-American capitals and its affairs were directed from the Peruvian capital of Lima by trusted chieftains: Klaus Barbie, sentenced to death by a French court for war crimes; Adolf Hundhammer, alias Hubner, former colleague of Scarface Skorzeny in Hitler’s personal bodyguard; Oskar Obrist, owner of an iron foundry named after the God of Fire; Hernz Aeschbacher, a courier for Bormann. The Consortium operated subsidiaries like:

  • SA Estrella: It took exclusive care of Bormann’s finances. Its officers included relatives in Brazil of German Field Marshal Wilhelm Ri
tter von Leeb (who nearly captured Leningrad) and of German Armored Cavalry General Jochen Peiper, whose daughter had looked after the Bormann children at Hitler’s retreat, Eagle’s Nest. In Ecuador, the company’s affairs were managed by former SS man Alfons Sassen, sentenced to death in his absence by a Dutch war-crimes tribunal.

  • Vatican Papers: These were a collection of letters, reports of conversations, and other documents said to have passed between the Führer and Pope Pius XII. They were variously described as demonstrating, perhaps confirming, the Pope’s tacit agreement to Hitler’s proposal for a “final solution” to the Jewish question. (Philip Toynbee has commented: “How typical that Pius XII made vigorous protests against Nazi plans for ‘mercy-killings’ of the feeble but no protest during the whole period of the extermination of the Jews.”) They included the copy of a report to which Hitler had objected, written before World War II as the draft of a papal encyclical attacking anti-Semitism.

  • Operation Bernhard: This provided fake American and British currency, and moved at least two experts to Peru. One, “Frederico” Fritz Schwend, had been called into Brotherhood councils when business operations ran into difficulties in 1965. Bormann was asked what he had done with some ninety-five tons of gold worth about 150 million U.S. dollars on the black market.

  • Brother Bormann: He had adopted the role of a Catholic priest. He called himself Monsignore Augustin von Lange-Lenbach (the spelling was rendered as Lonbach in one report, and another recalled a line from Goethe: “They call me Friar Augustin von Lange but my name is Brother Martin.”) There was some confusion because his eldest son, also Martin, had been ordained a Catholic priest and became a missionary in a remote country. He left the priesthood in 1971 to marry a nun, and a year later was looking for work as a schoolmaster in Bavaria.

  • Bormann’s Retreat: This was described as “la monastère Rédemptoriste.” He was said to move, as Father Augustin, between the cloisters of Rurrenabaque, in the northernmost part of Bolivia, and other sections of Redemptorist property in the fertile Yungas zone adjacent to the Mato Grosso.

  Bormann’s movements were given on the basis of reports from professional men—doctors, dignitaries, and politicians—who were critical of fascist tendencies in the countries where he was supposed to move. Photographs of Father Augustin were in the possession of Willy Reckhorn, in Warendorf, central Germany, who had been “married by Bormann, dressed as a priest, in the chapel of the German Nunnery of La Paz in November 1953.” Reckhorn at the time worked as a teacher at the German School Mariscal Braun, and when the happy couple left to go home to Germany in October 1965, they were intercepted at the airport by Klaus Barbie and warned to keep silent about suspicions they had voiced about Father Augustin’s true identity as Bormann.

  • Che Guevara: He was quoted by Communist-front sources as having reported back to Cuba the presence of the Brotherhood in Bolivia, where he was killed. If this was true, it seemed odd that Communist propaganda failed to exploit the story.

  • Anti-Communist Groups: These were trained by former German military figures, especially in Bolivia. A Major Westernhagen had been killed in Brazil. He was an intelligence adviser to the German Military Academy at São Paulo, and the son-in-law of an escaped SS general. He returned to West Germany when the federal government took full control of the country’s affairs, and had been recruited by the secret service that succeeded the Gehlen Org.

  • Eva Perón: She was described as having met Otto Skorzeny during a 1947 visit to Europe. There was no evidence that she had knowingly or otherwise helped Bormann get from Europe to Argentina, although Juan Perón, as military attaché, had lived and worked in Rome during the war and was a student and admirer of the Nazi German war machine. Eva had been welcomed by General Francisco Franco on her arrival in Spain and consulted a number of prominent Germans, including the former wizard of Hitler’s early state finances, Hjalmar Schacht, father-in-law of Skorzeny. She had talked with the mistress of Gestapo killer Kaltenbrunner, Countess Westrop. She had not visited Britain because of socialist protests against her reputedly neo-Nazi politics and the ruling Labour party’s strong disapproval of Argentina’s fascist tendencies. Since President Perón’s downfall in 1955, Argentina had made it difficult for the Brotherhood to function except in legitimate business enterprises. (A footnote to one report here lists “smuggling into neighboring countries” as a pursuit not likely to fall afoul of the law.)

  • Die Spinne (The Spider): This escape group functioned from the end of the war, for a time under the supreme command of the father of the Waffen SS, General Paul Hausser (who led public tributes to the last Germans to be hanged for war crimes, on June 8, 1951, as the “Seven Great Germans”), assisted by former Panzer General Hasso von Manteuffel, whose identity had been borrowed at one stage by Bormann. The Spider was known in Spain as La Araña and in France as L’Araignée. There was evidence to show that Bormann was helped by Die Spinne to reach Spain. One report stated he flew there on a Werewolf American Flying Fortress of the Luftwaffe squadron assigned to help guerrilla operations.

  • Revival of Nazism: Sir Ivonne Kirkpatrick, an Irishman with a lifetime’s study of Germany behind him, and onetime British High Commissioner in West Germany, believed Nazis and their successors would soon feel safest in their own country because they could appeal to German loyalties. He had interrogated Hess at length and knew the Nazi mentality. In 1953 he was convinced that some fugitives had crept back and were testing the wind. He had evidence of a neo-Nazi conspiracy but decided against informing German authorities “because the neo-Nazis had agents everywhere and might be warned in time to destroy documents.” He ordered the arrest of Werner Naumann, who fled with Bormann from Berlin. Naumann had gone underground until the newly independent West German government announced an amnesty; then he went into partnership with the cousin of Belgian SS chief Léon Degrelle. The business: import-export. Overseas connections: Degrelle and Skorzeny in Madrid, and Brotherhood companies in Latin America. “One cannot betray an ideal in which one has believed since early days,” he wrote. “The ruins of the Reich Chancellery held greater values….” He had written about those values in Hitler’s time: the necessity to destroy subhuman Slavs and Jews, and the virtues of keeping discipline through terror. Using the business as cover, he traveled to places of exile for wanted Nazis and conferred with Sir Oswald Mosley, the British fascist leader. He recommended a more subtle political approach than that of neo-Nazi parties that copied Hitler’s old slogans. He warned ex-generals who spoke too openly in public, including Gehlen, that the times required patience and stealth.

  On the night of January 14, 1953, British agents raided his villa in a Düsseldorf suburb and collected slightly more than one ton of Nazi-type documents filling thirty large crates. His associates were arrested simultaneously, and the Minister of Justice in Bonn, Tomas Dehler, confronted with statements from Naumann and his comrades, said: “He was trying to fill key positions in the rightiest parties with his supporters. The final goal was the restoration of the Nazi dictatorship with emphasis on the German race and its leadership role. [He] plotted to destroy the democratic system in Germany with considerable support from abroad.” Kirkpatrick reported to the British Foreign Office that Naumann and his group were “like a Chinese pirate gang that plans to gain control of the bridge of one ship and then boards other ships until it collects a navy.” The Naumann case happened at a bad time. The West German economy was booming, and the British were accused of jealously trying to create new difficulties. Chancellor Adenauer had his own reasons for playing down Nazi infiltration and saw an opportunity to prove that the British no longer had any voice in German affairs. The case had to go to a West German court, of course, and its spokesman announced a predictable verdict. The accused would be released because “There is no longer any justifiable suspicion that a genuine conspiracy existed.”

  Naumann, after his release, stated that Bormann had escaped but went straight to Russian military headquart
ers because he had always been a Soviet spy. Having regard to Naumann’s known associations, his propaganda expertise throughout the Nazi regime, his analysis of why the Nazi movement after the war provoked Allied reactions and proved self-defeating, the chorus of Bormann-the-Russian-spy from his like-minded companions, his statements can be taken as a shrewd exploitation of the publicity surrounding his case. There were too many contradictions now in the reports that Bormann had been killed in Berlin, and too many indications that he had escaped to safety. It diverted attention to place him in Moscow.

  The British move against the more obvious of neo-Nazi movements put the exiled fugitives on their guard again. Their operations abroad were difficult to prove. The views of men like Kirkpatrick and other authorities on German history were reliable, but it was obvious that any countermeasures they took would have to be kept secret. Therefore, many official files had to be read with an eye for what they might also conceal.

  I recorded a distillation of the more persuasive reports. Some, on closer examination, raised more questions than they answered. For instance, the reports from Bolivia collected by several different Western agencies, including Interpol, often gave as a primary source a man notorious for selling gossip to European newspapers. A Peruvian official with impressive credentials and an abundance of influential relatives told me a convincing story of armed Nazi camps and then undermined his whole credibility by telling me that Field Marshal Hermann Göring’s widow worked in a Lima department store and that he would be glad to take me to see her. The woman was, of course, a fake. I had been in touch that same week with the real widow, ill in Munich.

  I was inclined to agree with Simon Wiesenthal, of the Vienna Documentation Center, that a deliberate campaign was being conducted to confuse hunters of war criminals. He called it a “Nazi disinformation bureau,” patterned on the KGB model. Somehow, that seemed too complex and sophisticated. And yet …