The Bormann Brotherhood

by William Stevenson

  Bormann was the wealthiest man in the Third Reich by virtue of his control over party funds and Hitler’s personal fortune. He had put in his own name all the Führer’s “possessions” during Hitler’s lifetime and presumably without Hitler’s knowledge: all Hitler’s properties, even the home of his parents, all the royalties, including those on postage stamps bearing Hitler’s likeness, everything. It was estimated at the end of the war by Allied investigators that Bormann had personal control over $1,890 million by current American values. Nine years later, when a denazification court tried to confiscate Bormann’s estate to pay compensation to victims of Nazi atrocities, a total of only $8,500 could be found. Then the Berchtesgaden County Court tried to settle Bormann’s estate for his children. After a prolonged search, it found the equivalent of only $450, enough to pay legal costs.

  Money in a hot climate buys privacy and an electrified fence around it. A Brotherhood without membership lists is impossible to pin down. In the London archives, among the thick volumes of declassified material, I browsed through the war’s-end reports from British Foreign Office posts: “Military Groups of Nazis in South America” ran to several hundred pages; “Hitlerites and Falange in Uruguay”; “Looted Gold in German Hands” spread itself through several files; “Disposal of Undesirable Germans Abroad” was an intriguing bit of skullduggery; “Forged Bank-notes” filled more than a thousand pages; “Vatican Communications with Berlin.”

  There were obvious dangers to drawing upon this material exclusively. Intelligence agencies sucked up information and masticated it for tiny tummies. I had learned to be suspicious of obscure references, and especially the gleaming efficiency of West German agencies, with their neat assemblies of card indexes and mile upon mile of steel cabinets from which coded information was pumped into computers for immediate retrieval. Somehow I trusted the scruffy shirt-sleeved clerks wheeling British Foreign Office trollies behind beetle-coated old men with coal scuttles to keep the office fires burning; but I didn’t trust them to the extent of swallowing their versions of events whole either. It was just too easy. I had seen how wrong conclusions were drawn by newsmen who relied too heavily on “informed sources” and military intelligence digests in places like Vietnam. I had seen propagandists who got into the habit of reprocessing information already processed by armies of intelligence clerks until the end result was totally unidentifiable with any reality.

  I stumbled across one example of this. It was reported that members of the Brotherhood began to quarrel over money during the 1960’s, and this seemed most probably true. But the leader of the rebellion against Bormann was described as the commander of U-235. He was said to have brought his vessel to Argentinian waters, discharged a cargo of stolen Nazi treasures, scuttled the U-boat, converted the cargo to money, and bought a large estate. U-235 had carried the bulk of Bormann’s treasures and gold to Mar del Plata, according to this report, in the spring of 1945. But U-235, I found in German records, was logged as having been sunk in the Kattegat on April 14, 1945, about three months’ sailing from where she was supposedly discharging cargo off the Latin-American coast. She had been mistakenly attacked by a German torpedo boat, T-17, so that it was not even a question of an Allied claim of a “kill.” The sinking had resulted in a full naval inquiry, and Allied naval officers had made a careful check later to guard against any deliberate covering up of an escape. U-235 was an early Type VIIC submarine built at Kiel in 1942, and not the best vessel to shuttle across distances involving a round trip of 8,000 miles. Even traveling at top speed on the surface, the journey would have taken ten weeks out and return, at a time when U-boats were being sunk at a savage rate. Even then she would have had to refuel after each 6,000 miles. To make sure that the report had not perhaps confused the digits of U-235, I checked the records on other submarines in the series. U-234 was surrendered and finished her service in the U.S. Navy, U-233 was depth-charged and sunk by U.S. Navy destroyer escorts in July 1944. U-236 was bombed by the RAF on May 4, 1945. And so on.

  I was dealing on the one hand with impressive-looking reports in which facts piled upon facts tended to lead to wrong conclusions. On the other hand, there were reports from parts of the world where “official intelligence agencies” could run up any report for the right sum of money. The smell of crisp green dollars had started a race among persuasive gentlemen from foreign ports, all promising to produce Bormann or his memoirs or both.

  The skepticism aroused by these tipsters and pimps would, of course, benefit real fugitives. This was the unforgivable ingredient. The public became bored. Governments became wary about issuing requests for extradition. The guilty could withdraw behind the smoke screen.

  Just when it became hard to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and one became fatigued and disgusted, the fanatical element among old Nazis could be relied upon to revive all one’s suspicions. It was Cairo all over again. One heard the rumors, listened to convincing tales, became cynical, and then suddenly a lunatic like Leers would spill the beans.

  This happened while I was plowing through the reports that included volumes of economic studies on Latin America today. The Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche reported “an extraordinary scandal … dealt with reluctantly in the West German press. Nazi war criminals have been warned not to visit certain countries because of the danger of prosecution.”

  Eight hundred Germans, rendered safe at home by new legal loopholes, had been reminded they were still wanted for wartime murders by the French courts. The legal-aid department of the Bonn Foreign Ministry under Dr. Johannes Gawlik (Inspector-Director for occupied Czechoslovakia during Nazi overlordship there) conveyed the list to the German Red Cross with the label: Very Confidential. While the Frankfurt State Procurator was searching for mass murderers, the Bonn Foreign Ministry was tipping them off.

  The scandal broke because a bulletin published by Front-Line Fighters of the 45th Infantry Division in Linz, once considered by Hitler to be his home town, listed ten men who “for political reasons are urged not to visit France….” Among the names was that of Alois Brunner (not to be confused with another of the Eichmann group, Anton Alois Brunner, who was executed in Vienna for war crimes). Brunner had represented the Eichmann extermination program in Greece and Czechoslovakia, where he was still on the “Wanted” list. He had worked for the postwar secret-service conducted by the Gehlen Org and was reported last in Syria. The Swiss paper commented: “This is not the first time that Bonn has hindered rather than helped the search for Nazi war criminals. It can find them to warn them, but it cannot find them to arrest them.”

  There were legal devices by which wanted men could evade justice within Germany, as Kirkpatrick had foreseen. Many dossiers I saw in Europe that summer of 1972 dwelt on the problems of extradition and advocated that immigration officials at points of entry in countries like France should be continually reminded to watch for ex-Nazis traveling as businessmen. The French counter-espionage chief, Jean Rochet, of Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, had no sympathy for Communists but expressed his concern at the way the West European nations tolerated war criminals sought in East Europe and Russia. Other agencies, like Amnesty International, had a bias the other way, and were more concerned with Nazi-type operations in Catholic countries against Che Guevara types and revolutionary priests.

  Somewhere between cases representing the extremes of right and left, there were ordinary victims of German malfeasance. Russian officials from various art centers, for instance, won Western support for their complaints that Bonn was hiding looted treasures until the expiration of its own thirty-year statute of limitations with regard to stolen goods. Professor Kanetzka, of Leningrad University, went to West Germany to plead the case for returning art works looted from the imperial palaces, including the contents of the Tsar’s “Amber Room.” The hoard had been shipped to Germany on Bormann’s orders. The Moscow Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church began regotiating for the return of what he described as the largest and most valu
able collections of art treasures and religious relics, handed over to the West German government by the United States in 1956. The Patriarch’s attorney in Bonn, Dr. Georg Stein, said he believed the federal government would keep the collection hidden until 1974, when it would not have to be returned without official authority.

  The stolen treasures were locked and sealed in the vaults of the municipal art museum in the Ruhr town of Recklinghausen. No precise list of the contents was ever made public. When the enterprising correspondent for the Times of London, Anthony Terry, discovered the location of the looted art in 1972, he was told the collections from Russian sources had been entrusted to German troops for safekeeping by a member of the Estonian church. This man proved to be a Nazi stooge appointed by Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s Commissioner for the East European territories. “Nobody in their right mind,” argued Stein, “could claim such a man was acting legally for the church.” He was warned by the West German Foreign Office: “You are interfering in a matter of utmost priority. Chancellor Kiesinger made arrangements for the collections to be safely stored and the records sent where they could not be easily found.”

  The self-righteous position taken by West German officialdom exasperated some critics. To others, like Terry, it was evidence of long-term planning. “They believe their own lies,” he said to me. “They’re letting the major Nazis back into public life. The poor little bastards who did nothing more than guard the death camps are kept in jail as tokens.” And he referred me to the scandal in France over Klaus Barbie-Altmann. While the Gestapo man prospered in Latin America, flying back to Munich when it suited him, the French were unable to get him extradited. Now another row had blown up, over his French collaborator, Paul Touvier. Touvier had been hidden by the Catholic Archbishop of Lyon in return, it was alleged, for Nazi funds obtained from looting. He was sentenced in his absence as a war criminal by a French tribunal and his presence in Lyon under church protection came to light only in 1972. An appeal to let him live out his remaining years in peace was made by the French philosopher Gadeon Marcel, who later issued an apology: “I was weak enough to believe Touvier’s plea that he repented.”

  This question of repentance hangs over the reports that many important fugitives were sheltered by Catholic institutions. It is impossible to dismiss so many accounts from reasonably dependable sources. Protection was given, if not to Bormann himself, certainly to others during their flight and later survival.

  The position taken by church dignitaries was not necessarily approved by the Pope of the time. Yet in all these accounts there is a recurrent theme, which found yet another echo in 1972 when Cardinal Duquaire, challenged to explain why he also sheltered Touvier, said: “I did not forget the Nazi atrocities but I was moved by sentiments of pity and charity.”

  Charity and pity … Papal silence on Nazi liquidation of “inferior” races, but loud papal condemnation of Communism; church blessings on the Nazi collaborators in annexed states like Croatia, but only ruthless suppression by Croatian thugs of Partisans fighting to expel German invaders. There are ugly contradictions here which need, indeed demand, an explanation.

  What terrors might have been terminated if a pope had spoken out against Germany’s well-publicized plans? The speculation was revived years later by American Catholics, disturbed by its relevance to current events. The draft encyclical protesting Hitler’s policies was commented upon by the National Catholic Reporter in these terms:

  “An encyclical, condemning racism and anti-semitism, was commissioned in 1938 by Pope Pius XI, but it was never published…. Considering that Hitler had only begun to move into fullscale persecution of the Jews, and had not yet begun planned extermination; considering that Italy had only begun to copy Germany’s racial laws; considering the persecution of the Jews throughout history; considering the difficulty, especially in Europe, of launching a similar widescale attack on Catholics; and considering the moral weight of the papacy, especially at that point in history—considering all this, we must conclude that the publication of the encyclical draft at the time it was written may have saved hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of lives…. Such a statement would have been welcome then as today, particularly in America where Catholics, particularly Catholic working people, have been set against blacks. An earlier hard-hitting statement on racism might have meant that we should have less racially motivated strife in the U S today.”

  The magazine added that the encyclical appeared to have been suppressed because of the excessive anti-Communism of the Superior General, which blinded him to the dangers of Nazism. It concluded: “This type of anticommunism is too common among American Catholics who have fought the left so hard they have been taken in by the right in Germany, Italy, the U S and Vietnam.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The past can teach lessons if we know with some precision what happened in the past. In the case of such a complete breakdown in civilized standards as that occurring within our lifetime in an area touching upon Western culture at all points and thus calling into question all our claims to moral and intellectual superiority, it is unlikely that we can get within even spitting distance of the truth. The large group of men and women who commanded such immense power that they came close to governing us by bestial rules did not and could not vanish overnight. If Germany had developed the atomic bomb before the U.S., as German scientists were first to develop jet warplanes and rockets and missiles, then the Nazi theories we dismiss today as lunatic would in fact have prevailed. The horror is still too close for proper examination. It is certainly far too close to living dignitaries for us to hope to discover even a little of the truth with regard to the Nazi fanatics who found ways to survive. A few facts leak out here and there, confused by a good deal of fantasy. Governments that once shared their knowledge have become secretive. Vested interests, in the prosperity of a nation or of a single commercial group, prevent the pooling of information. Yet there are large international institutions that, by their claim to moral detachment and divine guidance, have an obligation to open their books. This is especially true of the Catholic church. Seen at this distance, the church and fascist-type governments are too much of a coincidental partnership to be airily dismissed. The communal pastoral letter of June 1933 published by Germany’s Catholic bishops expressed their desire “not to hinder the National Resurgence of the New Reich.” An early innocence about the true nature of fascism cannot be quoted as a justification, for statements of this kind run like a leitmotiv through the political history of the first half of this century.

  There were intrigues among foreign powers and between individuals that were part of the diplomacy practiced for centuries. There were plots of such asininity that they could have been conceived only by real leaders outside of fiction, behaving as real leaders usually do in reality but not always in history textbooks.

  Any curiosity about the Vatican’s part in the postwar adventures of major Nazi war criminals is inevitable. Now, a quarter-century later or more, many Catholic critics within the church are asking more searching questions.

  In the Bormann puzzle, there are too many pieces bearing the Catholic imprint to be ignored. If some of these pieces seem too dramatic even for fiction, this is the nature of the world we live in. Sometimes the fantasy does not confuse the facts quite as much as we might think.

  Help was given to many escaping men and women by Catholic intermediaries. This seemingly odd generosity toward self-proclaimed enemies of the church should be balanced against the few but nevertheless brave German Catholic resistance groups. Young priests in Latin America nowadays often lead demands for social and economic change. In the controversy provoked in France by the case of the Gestapo hangman, the Bishop of Reims described how Cardinal Gerlier refused to incriminate “Communist” resistance agents although he was offered the lives of two priests in exchange. Klaus Barbie-Altmann had issued a statement from his 1972 hideout in Bolivia that he had enjoyed the protection of the church. But at least Cardinal Gerlier stoo
d up to the killer’s threats and announced publicly: “The Jews are my brothers.”

  This said, the number of escapees given sanctuary in Catholic institutions is yet stupefying. Martin Bormann appeared to find safe haven during the last months of Gerda’s fatal illness in the pastoral valley between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alps. This region is strongly Catholic, and perhaps some thought had been given to the possibility of redemption. Gerda returned to the church in her last hours and placed her children with Catholic instructors.

  Her letters, which are now matters of public record, earlier spat venom against Christianity as well as Jews. And her husband’s first action on being appointed leader of the party chancellery had been the odious directive to the Gauleiter of June 6, 1941 with regard to relations between the Nazis and Christianity:

  “National Socialist and Christian conceptions are incompatible. The Christian churches build upon men’s ignorance. By contrast [National Socialism] rests upon scientific foundations. When we speak of belief in God, we do not mean, like the naïve Christians and their spiritual exploiters, a manlike being sitting around somewhere in the universe. The force governed by natural law by which all these countless planets move in the universe, we call omnipotence or God. The assertion that this universal force can trouble itself about the destiny of each individual being, every smallest earthly bacillus, can be influenced by so-called prayers or other surprising things, depends upon a requisite dose of naïvety or else upon shameless professional self-interest…. The people must be increasingly wrested from the churches, and their instruments the priests.”