The Three Barons

by J. W Lateer

  Senator Cooper: You [Dodd] were a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when General Klein was before that committee. Did you attend the hearings?

  Dodd: No.

  Senator Cooper: [reading from a letter from Klein to Dodd] “I am ashamed of you [Klein is ashamed of Dodd]. What are you afraid of? You are the only one of my friends in the Senate who have remained silent.”

  Senator Cooper: Did Klein ever give you anything of value or contribute anything to your campaign?

  Dodd: Only a rug, but he did contribute to my campaign.

  Dodd: In exhibit 17, Dr. Carstens was the Under-Secretary of State for Germany. [under Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano] Carsten’s office subsidized or contributed heavily to the Wiesbaden Group which engaged me at the recommendation of Dr. Adenauer.

  General Julius Klein testifies:

  Counsel Fern: [On the Society for German-American Relations]; Who controls the society?

  Klein: I do not know.

  Fern: Who elects the directors of the Society?

  Klein: I do not know.

  Fern: When did you meet Senator Dodd?

  Klein: In the office of the Secretary of War Robert Patterson, during and after World War II, when Dodd was at Nuremberg.

  Fern: How often did you see him in 1945-1946?

  Klein: 20 to 100 times, including 2 to 10 times after he came back from Nuremburg. [This shows that Dodd was plotting nefarious activities even while a prosecutor at Nuremberg. No wonder he never once discussed events at Nuremberg].

  Fern: Can you give me a rough estimate of how often you saw him from 1946 to 1953?

  Klein: Quite often when he was a Congressman, between once a week to once a month.

  Fern: And from 1953 to 1959?

  Klein: About the same.

  Chairman Stennis: How often did you write or phone Senator Dodd about going to Germany?

  Klein: Less than 15. My staff did some, too.

  Klein: [In re his instructions to Dodd on going to Europe] All members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who were going to Europe got a similar memorandum [i.e. biographies of German officials] from me.

  Klein: In the Fulbright hearings, it was only Senator Fulbright who was critical of me and no one else. The “censure” or “hearings” about me [the 1963 Fulbright hearings] were being carried in the press behind the Iron Curtain. Radio Free Europe provided me with what was being said in Europe about this.

  Fern: [Reading from an exhibit] “Globke was the liaison man with whom I worked closely while working with Adenauer and Brentano.” [As described above, Globke was the main instigator of the ex-Nazi’s who regained their power in post-war West Germany, per author T H Tetens].

  Senator McCarthy: As I read it, you were in Germany when Senator Javits was in Germany. Is that correct? Did you want Senator Dodd to do whatever Senator Javits did?

  Klein: Yes. Senator Javits took an interest in my case because I was portrayed as a Jew and a Nazi-lover. Senator Javits took an interest because he was a prominent Jew.

  Fern: Why did you request Senator Dodd to see Hermann J. Abs?

  Klein: He is head of Germany’s largest bank. [Hermann Abs was involved with the Nazis and the Hitler regime in a gigantic way pre-World War II ].

  Chairman Stennis: Did you get the list of the people that Senator Dodd was supposed to see from the State Department or did Dodd give it to you?

  Klein: The State Department.

  Senator Cooper: General Klein, it is unclear from your testimony whether the list [of persons to see in Germany] was prepared by you, the State Department or Senator Dodd. Did you name the persons?

  Klein: Yes. Dr Globke also served under Hitler. I told Senator Dodd that Globke worked on the Israeli restitution treaty and was also the right-hand man to Adenauer. We [Dodd and I] talked about NATO and the Test Ban Treaty.

  Klein: He [Dodd] spoke to Chancellor Adenauer about me. Chancellor Adenauer brought up the subject of Senator Fulbright. He brings up the subject with everyone who sees him … I saw Chancellor Adenauer only 10 days ago when I was in Germany.

  Globke was to Adenauer what Sherman Adams [Ike’s closest advisor] was to Ike. Globke retired the same day that Adenauer retired.

  Klein: [On when he first met Dodd] I invited Senator Dodd to Chicago for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933 (he was in the FBI then). [This dates the FBI rabid anti-Communist clique back to 1933. This could have included Hoover, Dodd, Guy Banister, Rep. Charles Kersten, Rep. John W. McCormack and Father Joseph Cronin among others].

  Senator Cooper: In your activities as the public relations representative of the Society, were you called upon to promote any political positions of the German Government?

  Klein: No, but it is my personal position to advocate for the re-unification of Germany.

  Cooper: What about a political interest of the Republic which is not in the interest of the United States?

  Klein: My country comes first.

  Senator Stennis: Mr. Klein, you had a self-adulatory statement that you asked the committee to allow into the record, but before the committee ruled, you released this statement to the press. A great part of the statement was on Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. A great part of the rest of the statement was an attack on the witnesses who have appeared here at our committee. This statement calls people liars. It is not going to be part of this record and it is expressly rejected.

  Exhibit 5 A Memorandum from David Martin to Senator Dodd dtd. 12-2-1963.

  As you know, we have had to put these hearings off several times because of the priority accorded the hearings on State Department Security [the Otepka hearings]. However, I had a long talk with Leo Dobriansky about this matter the other day, and we are both agreed that the Kennedy assassination would make hearings on the subject of the Soviet murder apparatus particularly appropriate at this time. It is not a matter of accusing the Soviet Union of planning the assassination of the President or involvement in the assassination. But the basic point should be made that the Soviet Union does employ murder as an instrument of policy and that it does maintain a special apparatus for the purpose of implementing this aspect of its policy. From that point on, people draw their own conclusions or make their own assumptions.

  So, here we see the bottom line in Dodd’s activities. His expert in foreign affairs, David Martin suggests to Dodd that the two of them arrange hearings which will lead the American public to blame the Soviet Union for the assassination. From the legal perspective, participating in the cover-up of a murder before the murder occurs makes a person legally an accessory to murder.

  Notes:

  Dodd censure hearings are published by the U.S. Senate as: Investigation of Senator Thomas J. Dodd. : Hearings, Eighty-ninth Congress, second session ... pursuant to S. Res. 338, 88th Congress. PT. 1-2 by United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Standards and Conduct.Published 1966, beginning at p. 11.

  The New Germany and the Old Nazis (1961) by T.H. Tetens.

  The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family (1993) by Ron Chernow, p. 463.

  Chapter 38

  Former German Nazis,

  West German Officials and The Assassination

  This chapter is meant to be only a very brief summary of the significance of the role of certain Germans, mostly ex-Nazis, in the assassination of JFK. It is not intended to be an in-depth analysis, because their roles are discussed more specifically in other chapters.

  Some background on the JFK-Nazi connection is in order. In a book edited by Avi Beker, in a chapter describing German assets still in Switzerland at the end of World War II, an alarming statement is made. “As the Second World War in Europe was ending, the Allies insisted that all German external assets be turned over to them. This action reflected the considerable evidence that the Nazis were going to use these assets, much of them hidden, to finance a Third World War.”

  Again in Beker’s book, “At this stage, the Americans, worried abo
ut the Nazis’ postwar plans, warned the Swiss that their collaboration with the Nazis to protect their loot would enable them [the Nazis] ‘to preserve the power of the Nazi party and plan again for world domination’.” (Beker, p.142).

  In the London Daily Mail, May 9, 2009, a bit of shocking news is revealed.

  A document called the “Red House Report” gives a detailed account of a secret meeting in Strasbourg, Germany on August 10, 1944. The meeting was held at the Maison Rouge Hotel. In the secret meeting, top Nazi officials had gathered an elite group of German industrialists. They ordered these businessmen to begin planning a post-war economic recovery which would prepare the way for the Nazis’ return to power. They demanded that they should work for a “strong German empire.” In other words: the Fourth Reich. (See notes, dailymail website). There is overwhelming support for the theory that the EEU was planned as a European Fourth Reich for the Germans and as a vehicle for the Germans to dominate Europe. To the extent the Nazis succeeded in holding on to power in postwar Germany, the plan could have, at least in some sense, succeeded.

  Chancellor Konrad

  Adenauer

  Dr. Konrad Adenauer was West Germany Chancellor from September 15, 1949 to October 16, 1963. Adenauer served as Mayor of Cologne, Germany from 1917 to 1933. He was considered a Catholic activist politician and was at that time affiliated with the Center Party. During the years of the Weimar Republic, he was president of the Prussian State Council from 1921–33, which was the representative of the provinces of Prussia in its legislation. Though located very near France and the Netherlands, Cologne was nevertheless part of Prussia. Ironically, Adenauer sometimes expressed his dislike of the Protestant influence in Germany due to the role of Prussia.

  Adenauer was dismissed as Mayor of Cologne and jailed twice under the Hitler regime. He spent the Hitler years on the run from the Nazi bosses. His natural cunning undoubtedly helped him in avoiding the Nazi tentacles. He was even able to begin drawing his pension which he had earned from his years of public service.

  Following World War II, the first election to the Bundestag of West Germany was held on August 15, 1949. Adenauer had founded the Christian Democratic Party, which won that first election and emerged as the strongest party in West Germany. Adenauer became the new Chancellor.

  The Oder-Neisse boundary was never accepted by the Adenauer government as the eastern frontier of Germany. This refusal was mostly because of domestic political considerations. There were 10 million expellees in Germany who were demanding the right to return to their homes in the lost eastern provinces. Adenauer also considered this refusal as a way to avoid any negotiations with the Soviets or the Eastern Bloc. He knew the Soviets would never agree to change the Oder-Neisse line and so this rendered any attempt at negotiations moot. Privately, Adenauer considered these former provinces to be forever lost to Germany.

  In October 1950, Adenauer received a memorandum from four former Wehrmacht generals that stated there would be no German rearmament without the release of German war criminals. They also wanted a statement from the WWII allies that the Wehrmacht had not committed any war crimes. To appease Adenauer and the Generals, the commander of NATO, Dwight Eisenhower, issued a statement saying that the majority of Wehrmacht soldiers had fought honorably.

  Laws were passed in West Germany by 1951 which ended de-Nazification. Adenauer wanted to change the emphasis to reparations and compensation for victims. (These things never really happened, either). Former Nazis could now take jobs in the civil service except for certain cases which were ruled as egregious.

  In 1952 Joseph Stalin proposed an initiative whereby Germany would be unified as a neutral state, similar to the status of Austrian and Finland. This would lead away from the dangerous superpower confrontation in central Europe. This confrontation had caused several Berlin crises and led to the building of the Berlin Wall. Stalin’s idea was probably unrealistic. Unlike Austria and Finland, Germany had traditionally been the second largest economy in the world next to the U.S. Any major German policy would not be a neutral policy. It would be a German policy which carried its own center of gravity. Adenauer rejected this overture by Stalin and so did all of his cabinet and even opposition parties.

  Stalin came back with a second effort for his proposal. Many in the German public were open to Stalin’s idea. In retrospect, Adenauer was foolish to refuse a deal for German unification when it was available on the grounds that he couldn’t accept the eastern boundary, the Oder-Neisse line. When Germany was finally reunified in the 1980’s, it was with the Oder-Neisse line as the boundary. So nothing was gained by almost 40 more years of a divided Germany.

  In retrospect, the true reason for the opposition of Adenauer was his Catholic perspective. The big worry for the Catholic Church in Europe was the possible loss of France and Italy to Communism. A neutral Germany would, by definition, not be fighting Communism, which was a bottom line issue with the devout Adenauer.

  The West Germans began the drive to compensate Jewish victims of the Nazi’s by negotiating a treaty with Israel for this purpose. Germany agreed to pay compensation to Israel. Jewish claims were funded in something called the Jewish Claims Conference. This conference purported to represent the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany. Germany paid 450 million Marks to the claims conference and 3 billion Marks to Israel. Many radical groups in Israel opposed such an arrangement. This led to the assassination attempt by these Jewish groups against Adenauer. A package addressed to Adenauer exploded in the Munich police station on March 27, 1952. It was traced to Menachem Begin, a terrorist who would later become the Prime Minister of Israel.

  The problem was, of course, that a treaty was not needed with Israel. Why should any of the former Nazi regimes pay money to Israel as a substitute for paying actual victims individually. This amounted to a public relations gimmick. We could expect to find General Julius Klein or similarly two-faced Jewish activists to be involved in this concept. Klein was instrumental in arranging the first sit-down conference between West Germany and Israel. This West German-Israeli Reparations Treaty merely allowed West Germany to avoid signing any treaty with France, the U.S., the U.K. and other countries which would return the looted property of the Jews to the owners living in the Western countries. It was an unbelievably cynical device.

  But there were billions of dollars of sequestered assets in various countries which had been seized from Germany and Germans and were available to settle claims by Jews who had been the victims. Treaties were needed between the U.S., the U.K. and probably other countries.

  A reparations treaty was finally signed between the U.S. and Austria in 2000. There was an accord between the U.S. and Switzerland in 1946, but Switzerland reneged on their promises. Meanwhile, Jews around the world were never even allowed to recover their lost bank accounts in the former German and German-occupied countries, and of course they got nothing from the Communist Eastern countries. In 1953, the German Restitution Laws were passed. These allowed some victims to claim restitution. The law were written to sharply limit the number of people entitled to collect compensation.

  West Germany joined NATO in May, 1955. In November of that year the Bundeswehr was founded. In the 1956 Suez Crisis, Adenauer supported the Anglo-French-Israeli military action against Egypt. The Western Allies other than the United States considered President Nasser of Egypt to be basically a Communist. Adenauer feared that the U.S. response to Suez meant that the U.S. and the Soviets wanted to carve the world into two spheres of influence and that Europe would be the odd man out. In 1959, Chancellor Adenauer announced he would run for the Presidency of Germany, but pulled out because he feared that Ludwig Erhard would then become Chancellor. He reportedly thought little of Erhard.

  The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 weakened the image of the Adenauer government. In October 1962, there was a major scandal when five journalists working for Der Spiegel magazine were arrested for espionage because they published an article critical of the West Germ
an military. Adenauer defended the person responsible for the arrests. Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss denounced the journalists for being involved in treason.

  Being a Francophile, Adenauer put a great deal of faith and hope in a Franco-German partnership. He shared de Gaulle’s view that Britain would disrupt the EEC if it became a member. Adenauer tried to block Ludwig Erhard from becoming his successor, which had been his long-time goal, but he failed and in October 1963 Ludwig Erhard became the new West German Chancellor. Adenauer died in 1967 at age 91. Although some saw Adenauer as one of the greatest Germans in history, his critics summarized the actions of Adenauer by saying that Adenauer was basically just a “mean old man.”

  Was Dr. Konrad Adenauer complicit in the JFK assassination? It is difficult to exclude him since he was the number one champion of General Julius Klein in Klein’s role as the West German “shadow ambassador” and public relations man. Klein was definitely the “bag man” for assassination funds as well as the go-between with Senator Thomas Dodd and his West German ex-Nazi contacts.

  Adenauer was not a totalitarian-type ruler like Stalin or Hitler. He would not necessarily know about everything that went on in his country, no more than JFK knew which people in his government were out to murder him. But Adenauer spent his career covering up for the ex-Nazis both in his country and in his government. Due to his close relationship to these co-workers who had murdered 12 million people in cold blood, there could be no real moral definition as to what Adenauer would countenance or what he would forbid when it came to murder.

  Adenauer was a truly devout Catholic. His contemporary, Pope John XXIII, would have condemned the assassination of a fellow Catholic, just as JFK refused to approve the murder of the Diem brothers in Vietnam in part because they were fellow churchmen. But Adenauer was cunning and he had to suspect something was going on in his country. The murder plot for JFK was probably planned in large part by his own BND (West German Intelligence Agency). He must have given the plot at least tacit approval and turned a blind eye.