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UNHOLY ALLIANCE: A HISTORY OF NAZI INVOLVEMENT WITH THE OCCULT |
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11. Aftermath
With the dispersal of Nazi war criminals throughout the world -- aided and abetted by elements within the Catholic Church and the Central Intelligence Agency -- the cult of the Nazi Party was preserved. It would have been in any case, for -- like Satanism, the cult with which it is popularly associated -- its symbols and rhetoric have survived in the documentary films, newsreels, histories, novels, and in popular movies and television shows. The Nazi underground has been glamorized to a large extent, particularly by Hollywood. Such films as The Boys from Brazil and The Odessa File -- both based on best-selling novels -- help perpetuate the idea of a secret society of evil geniuses bent on world domination through mad science and single-minded politics; in other words, a typical cult (if a bit more successful and affluent than most). The Nazi image is a coherent one, much more comprehensible and identifiable than that of the armies and nations that opposed it during the war. It had a single symbol, the swastika, and a single leader, Hitler. It had an elite priesthood of murder and ritual, the elegantly black-clad SS with its silver death's head emblem. Nazi fashion and regalia have even survived today in the erotic fantasies of many sadomasochists and other fetishists, and it shares this peculiarity in common with satanism and "black magic." By comparison, American propaganda films made during the war show a casual, wise- cracking, gum-chewing, sloppy, unshaven, and generally disheveled GI as the epitome of Allied resistance to the Nazi threat. That was supposed to make Americans feel better. The enemy was impeccably dressed, spoke fluent English with an exotic accent (our boys knew about four words in German, two of them being "mach schnell"), never had a hair out of place, and had Continental manners even when torturing spies. And, of course, scenes of the concentration camps and the mass murder of Jews virtually never appear in these films as it took years before the Allies would officially admit that the death factories even existed. The anti-intellectual, deliberately unsophisticated pose of the typical American GI -- as depicted by Hollywood -- was supposed to be somehow equivalent to moral superiority: a troubling perspective that exists to this day in our entertainment media and even among our politicians and religious leaders. Brilliant students are portrayed in television sit-corns as hopeless, socially maladjusted "nerds" in vain competition with the handsome but brain-dead jocks who have become teen idols. Former vice president and convicted felon Spiro Agnew was famous for his attacks on what he called "pseudo- intellectuals," and a glance at former President George Bush's bedside reading would make a high school English teacher blush. Nixon himself, besieged on all sides by protesting college kids, had an abhorrence of the intelligentsia as revealed in his famous Watergate tapes. As the author once had occasion to remark to some survivors of China's Cultural Revolution in Beijing, intellectuals are treated as the enemy in every country: in China as Capitalists, in America as Communists. They agreed. Somewhere along the line, somewhere between Joe Goebbels and Joe McCarthy, Americans began believing -- and embracing -- their own propaganda. And those Americans for whom intellectual and cultural sophistication held certain attractions that could not be matched by Iowa corn-country square dances or homespun Bible Belt homilies found themselves having more in common with the Hollywood image of the typical SS officer than with the type of American GI portrayed by, say, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, or Henry Fonda. As a certain, subtextual cultural identification with the SS began to take place among our basically intelligent bur incompetently educated American youth it would not be long before political identification would occur ... with unfortunate consequences. As they filtered into South America, the escaping Nazi refugees brought with them their brotherhood, their talent for organization, and all their old loyalties. They had also become a criminal organization, one that was -- at least on paper -- being hunted down by the nations of the world. Branded as international criminals, it was no great moral leap from the name to the game. They became involved in the drug trade, arms dealing, and international terrorism. The unholy alliance between Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and fascist Italian terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie in Bolivia is just one example among many. Unlike other "patriotic" organizations that, forced underground, became criminal societies -- the Sicilian Mafia and the Chinese Tongs come readily to mind -- the Nazis did not abandon their core beliefs. They retained their religion of anti-Semitism and Teutonic superiority, and the rest of the world continued to identify Nazis this way. In Argentina, they began to reissue their primary tracts. Everything from Mein Kampf to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was republished in Spanish-language versions for the edification of the masses. Moreover, such men as Wilfried von Owen -- a senior aide to Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels -- would retire peacefully to Buenos Aires to write neo-Nazi tracts for publication in Europe. [1] The Nazis came to realize that not all South Americans were "subhumans"; many were the children of German, Swiss, and Italian immigrants who had come to South America over a hundred years ago during various migrations, just as they had to the United States. Although they were now the Spanish-speaking citizens of Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay (for instance), their blood was still "racially pure." South America had been a magnet for Nazi personalities even before the war began. Ernst Rohm, the SA commander who was murdered in the famous purge of 1934, spent several years training troops in Bolivia after the Beer Hall Putsch. Max Sollmann, one of the youngest participants in the Putsch and the future Lebensborn leader, lived for many years in Colombia after 1923, returning to Germany only in 1934. [2] Richard Walther Darre, the pagan high priest of the Third Reich, was born in Argentina. And, of course, Baron Sebottendorff himself traveled throughout Latin America in his incarnation as a Mexican consul. For those who find this odd it should be recognized that in Latin America generally, and in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile in particular, there is an element of the population that still considers itself "European" as distinct from the local "Indian" peoples. Europe is worshiped from afar as the natural homeland of these second-, third-, and fourth- eneration Italians, Germans, and others. European fashion, literature, music, and cuisine are preserved -- as if in a time capsule -- in major cities like Buenos Aires in Argentina; in Bolivia, the German population forms the cultural and economic elite of La Paz; and in Chile there is an entire region of the country -- centered in Valdivia -- where the local newspaper and even the street signs are in German; and where, during the war, the Nazi Party was firmly entrenched. This was the environment in which the fleeing Nazis suddenly found themselves. It was congenial, familiar, and in many cases all too anxious to accommodate men the rest of the world considered monsters but who were greeted as if they were a European government- in-exile. All this, coupled with the fact that many Nazis were cooperating with the American intelligence services and had the protection of the Church, ensured that even the local national governments would go out of their way to see to it that they were not inconvenienced by extradition requests, arrest warrants, and the other annoying demands of international law. Also, many Nazis came with their own funds: enormous sums of money that had been embezzled from the Party treasury or stolen from their Jewish victims. But South America was not the only place Nazis found refuge. Nazis -- particularly Nazi scientists -- were welcomed in certain Arab countries in North Mrica and the Middle East (Otto Skorzeny's assistance to the Nasser regime in Egypt is well known, for instance) and, of course, we had our own Nazi elite serving in the American space program including, but not limited to, Dr. Wernher von Braun. Many Nazis, including former SS officers, worked for American intelligence services in Europe after the war. And future President Richard Nixon himself assisted in the protection of known Nazis both in his home state of California and as vice president under Eisenhower. [3] And in Switzerland, perhaps one of the more outlandish Nazi survivals yet: admirers of Ostara publisher and Hitler mentor, Lanz von Liebenfels, who survived the war he midwifed and who died on April 22, 1954. The Abbey of Thelema Before we follow the ratlines of the Nazi Cult to North and South America, a glance at its European survivals will do us well. As I write these lines [1994], a neo-Fascist has just won a tremendous victory in the first-ever democratic election on Russian soil. Vladimir W. Zhirinovsky -- whose ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party won heavily -- has already met with right-wing political leaders (including a former SS officer) during a tour of Germany and Austria. He has even gone so far as to recommend that Bulgaria should annex Macedonia (shades of Anschluss!), a now-sovereign nation that was once part of Yugoslavia. [4] There are those who play down Zhirinovsky's potential for harm by citing his electoral victory as nothing more than a protest vote by the newly democratized Russian people who are fed up with a variety of other political leaders, including current President Boris Yeltsin. But then, they said similar things about Hitler. An entire book could be written about Russian occultism and its effect on the political life of Europe, from Blavatsky to Yuliana Glinka and Sergey Nilus to Rasputin, and to the most recent emergence of a millennia! cult in the Ukraine that predicted the world would end in November, 1993. But it might be better at the present time to keep our eyes on the more blatant of the Nazi survivals, and what better place to begin our study than with a modern-day Abbey of Thelema in the German-speaking district of Appenzell, Switzerland. The Swiss OTO is noteworthy for several things. In the first place, they are probably the best-organized and most profitably run Thelemic (i.e., Crowleyan) enterprise on earth. From all accounts, including but not limited to Mr. King's, [5] they perform the most perfect of all Gnostic Masses (an occult version of the Catholic Mass) to be found. Although, as someone who has witnessed many a Gnostic Mass in the States, the author must offer the proviso that virtually anything would be an improvement. Further, they run a guesthouse, a printing press, and operate their own apothecary specializing in "Paracelsian" remedies: an industry for which the Nazis would have given them high marks indeed. What calls our attention to the Swiss OTO, however, is an item recorded by Francis King in his Satan and Swastika, [6] in which he mentioned that -- in the first issue of its newsletter E.O.L. Mitteilungsblatt, dated June 9, 1954 -- the Abbey published a Memorial notice for Lanz von Liebenfels, calling him a "shining example of unswerving faith and the very highest virtue"! [7] That the best-run example of a Thelemic community should have openly praised one of the spiritual fathers of the Third Reich is a phenomenon that is troubling, ro say the least. That they are serious Thelemites and devotees of Aleister Crowley cannot be denied. How, then, do they manage to reconcile these two conflicting philosophies? This is a problem that vexes the student of modern occultism, because admiration of Crowley and his philosophy has emerged in organized Satanism, neo-Nazi political parties, racist hooliganism, alienated teenagers, and jaded rock-and-rollers alike. Crowley once wrote -- in an attack on Arthur Edward Waite, a former colleague in the Golden Dawn and the author of many books on occultism -- "Magick is a mirror, wherein who sees muck is muck." [8] One could perhaps also say, "Crowley is a mirror in which one who sees a Nazi, is a Nazi." As Crowley was certainly an anti-establishment sort of fellow, and as Nazism is about as anti-establishment as you can get in most countries, it would follow that Nazis might find a kindred soul in Aleister Crowley. Yet, one would think that the OTO of Switzerland -- an organization that is arguably the oldest continuous Thelemic Lodge in the world -- would know better. The implications are distressing. We may remember that the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) -- the German occult Order to which Crowley belonged and of which he became its somewhat disputed OHO (Outer Head of the Order) -- had splintered into various factions around 1925. One group went with Crowley. Another remained independent of Crowley and his religion of Thelema. Still another became the Brotherhood of Saturn, an organization that survived the war and also exists to this day. Recourse to a useful flowchart provided on electronic bulletin boards by something calling itself the "Boleskine Chapter of the Thelema Grand Lodge OTO" [9] indicates that the Swiss OTO has direct lineage to both Karl Germer and Theodor Reuss via Frater Paragranus (Josephus Metzger) declaring the latter to be OHO although whom it recognizes as OHO at this time is not clear. What is clear is that this Swiss lodge was once the private domain of Theodor Reuss himself, presumably when he went to Ascona in the waning years of his life and founded the same "Mysteria Maxima Veritas" Lodge. The Lodge continued under the leadership of Karl Germer as OHO even after Germer left for the United States, but after Germer's death it seems to dangle off the edge of the flowchart as the Order itself went through several sea changes with Kenneth Grant's Nu-Isis Lodge in England, Grady McMurtry's operation in the States, and various other offshoots such as Brazilian Marcelo Ramos Motta's version of the Order, which was successfully sued by the McMurtry gang in a United States court. [10] Germer had died without leaving a Templar heir, and the resulting fracas has served only to splinter this already heartily splintered organization still further. In conversations with the author, Grady McMurtry -- several years before his death in 1985 -- related that in 1941, before Jack Parsons totally lost control of his life, he initiated McMurtry -- then an army lieutenant -- into the OTO. McMurtry later served in the European Theater in some capacity and made Crowley's personal acquaintance in London at about the time Crowley was strategizing with the likes of Fleming, Wheatley, and Knight. Crowley elevated McMurtry to the IXͦ in the OTO hierarchical scheme -- the highest rank attainable save by those ruling as OHOs -- and McMurtry then returned to the United States after the war, still under Germer's leadership there. Once Germer died, however, several individuals calling themselves OHO began running their own OTO organizations. As recently as the 1980s, the American outfit now legally recognized as the OTO in the States claimed adherence to a set of vile regulations published in what is known as the Blue Equinox, i.e., Crowley's hardbound periodical that was usually published in white covers and which was, only once, bound in blue covers; hence its informal title. These archaic strictures are a legacy of Crowley's early German period, mixed with elements of a monarchical Victorian hangover, which have become incomprehensibly precious to those otherwise antiestablishment hippie types who constitute the leadership of the Order. That Crowley later repudiated the "Blue laws" and adopted the stridently libertarian views of the more succinct Liber OZ [11] -- which was published in London and California in 1939 as the world was being plunged into the Second World War -- seems clear to this author, who finds himself in general agreement with what has been written on the subject of Kenneth Grant, [12] who more than anyone seems best qualified to serve as OHO of the Order ... the cosmic wisdom of the American legal system notwithstanding. It was McMurtry and his adherents, however, who-on the basis of some rather thin evidence and the loose interpretation of some Crowley correspondence -- managed to convince a US District Court judge that his claim to rulership of the OTO was genuine. Thelema never had that much luck with worldly courts, and there is no reason to suppose that this case was an exception. McMurtry continued to work for the US government in various capacities before retiring to run the OTO in 1969 after the disastrous theft of vital documents and irreplaceable books from Germer's widow, Sascha (who was also beaten up in the process), in 1967. It seems that the perpetrator of this crime was believed to be yet another organization calling itself OTO, this time the "Solar Lodge of the OTO," implicated in the Charles Manson case which exploded with the Tate/La Bianca murders in August of 1969. As the above chronology makes clear, McMurtry remained so out of touch with the OTO that it would be two years before he learned of the attack on Sascha Germer and the theft of the OTO "family jewels." One cannot help but form scenarios in one's mind with such an embarrassment of paranoid riches at one's disposal. We have shown how Crowley was involved to some extent with the spymasters of MI5, including those famous personalities Dennis Wheatley, Ian Fleming, and Maxwell Knight, during World War II and particularly during the Hess affair. McMurtry, an Army officer, was initiated by Parsons at Cal-Tech in 1941 before going overseas to obtain greater initiations from Crowley himself during the war. McMurtry, who mustered out of the army with the rank of captain, went on to work as an analyst for the government while simultaneously teaching a course in poli sci at George Washington University in Washington, DC in the sixties. The scenario that presents itself is intriguing. One wonders if -- as the US federal government has been known to do with many other suspect organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers -- they had not infiltrated an agent into the American OTO who eventually became one of its leaders? After all, L. Ron Hubbard himself once claimed to have infiltrated the OTO for either LAPD, Naval Intelligence, or the FBI, depending on the source. [13] Was McMurtry on a similar mission, this time for the army or for some secret, frantic faction thereof? After all, Hess had flown to Scotland in 1941 -- the same year McMurtry joined Parsons's Agape Lodge in California. McMurtry then shipped out for Great Britain, where he met Crowley who was being considered at that time for a role in the debriefing of Hess. Did the fledgling American intelligence services want to know what the rather more professional British services were up to with Hess and Crowley? Was McMurtry then "reactivated" at the time of the Manson killings to investigate the possible involvement of the group calling itself the "Solar Lodge of the OTO"? Alas, there is absolutely no evidence at all to support what has been imagined in the preceding paragraph. None whatsoever. Not a shred. And, as there has been much litigation over the history, reputations, and legitimacy of the various OTO lodges, the author must demur at this point and instead refer interested readers to such sources as the first edition of Ed Sanders's The Family [14] for more detail on the so-called Solar Lodge of the OTO and other ancillary information. Chapter Ten in that edition is the relevant material; it has been deleted entire from later editions, including the recently released paperback update that boasts a photo of Charlie Manson on the cover ... replete with swastika tattoo. The litigious McMurtry gang at work? Also, please note that Chapter Five of the original is also missing. That was the material on the Process Church of the Final Judgment, a Scientology offshoot that was implicated in various crimes of a heinous nature in the late sixties and whose nefarious reputation has been resurrected by investigative journalist Maury Terry in The Ultimate Evil, a study of the links that may exist between the Son of Sam cult and the Manson Family via the Process Church. It should be remembered that the Process is in the line of descent -- should we say, apostolic succession? -- from Jack Parsons and hence of the OTO. (The wife of the founder of the Process even claims to be a reincarnation of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels!) [15] If any of the rumors, half-truths, and innuendo concerning the Process are ever proven, then it may be that Parsons actually succeeded in incarnating his Antichrist in California. To Live and Die in LA
During the height of the Satanic Cult Survivor hysteria in the late eighties and early nineties, an otherwise respectable doctor and professor -- a published author on psychotherapeutic technique and on the uses of hypnotism in psychotherapy -- D. Corydon Hammond was quoted in a two-part series of articles on the phenomenon (published in the New Yorker) [17] as saying that he believed the prevalence of satanic cults in America today was due to the influence of Nazis who had become initiated into satanism and black magic by a mysterious rabbi during the war. These Nazis then emigrated to the United States where they set up shop and organized the underground satanic movement that has been accused of the kidnapping and murder of children and young adults. While this may seem like another case of the blood libel in fin de siecle America instead of fin de siecle Europe or Russia, we should pause for a moment to digest what is being stated and who is stating it: 1. Mysterious rabbi initiates Nazis into black magic and satanism. (This complies with most anti-Semitic literature of the past thousand years or so, except for the Nazi part, which is a new twist. During the Middle Ages Jews were believed to be sorcerers and demonolators and most grimoires of the period contain Hebrew prayers and writing as part of their rituals.) 2. These Nazis then disappear into the fabric of American life after the war, presumably along the same ratlines that served so many other war criminals. 3. They form underground cells of satanic composition. 4. They begin to prey on unsuspecting Christian children, abusing them sexually and murdering them in horrible, unspeakable ways. (The blood libel, in all its pristine ugliness.) 5. They even breed children for use as human sacrifices in their rituals. A nice twist on the Lebensborn concept and one even the Nazis didn't think of. 6. This theory is put forth by a respected psychotherapist who teaches at the Utah School of Medicine. The "blood libel" was a technique used to instigate pogroms against the Jews in Europe, in modern times used effectively in pre-Revolutionary Russia and, of course, by Julius Streicher in the pages of his anti-Semitic rag Der Sturmer. Simply stated, the blood libel accused the Jews of murdering Christian children in horrible ways as human sacrifices during secret ceremonies in the temples. Whether the children had, in reality, been murdered by anyone even vaguely Jewish was not important. Whether the children had been murdered at all was irrelevant. Whether there were any missing children or not was not the issue. The blood libel -- or the ritual murder charge, as it was also known -- was an invention of yellow journalists who, working for the government or for some right-wing faction, published these unfounded, inflammatory stories in a deliberate attempt to instigate pogroms against the local Jewish population. The attempts usually worked. Thousands of Jews were murdered by angry mobs many times over many years before the Holocaust began by using this technique. In the present-day version of the blood libel, however, we seem to lack a readily identifiable social or ethnic group as a convenient target. Satanists are few and far between and relatively invisible. So, comparatively speaking, are Nazis. What, then, is the value of the blood libel if there are no social outcasts to destroy? Well, perhaps there are. One of the world's most famous -- positively archetypal -- social outcasts is the aforementioned Charles Manson. Manson has perhaps concretized evil for an entire generation. Accused, tried, and convicted of ordering the Tate/La Bianca murders of 1969, Manson remains in prison at the time of this writing, consistently denied parole year after year as he serves a life sentence for the murders. Although much about Manson remains a mystery, there is enough evidence to show that he borrowed at least some of his act from Scientologists during one of his previous prison terms, and even wrote an article for the official Process magazine. Manson told his followers that he wanted to instigate a race war between blacks and whites in America, believing that he and his Family would survive the holocaust by hiding out in the desert. After the smoke cleared and the blood dried, they would then come roaring out of the desert to take charge of what was left of the planet Earth. Noting Manson's anti-Semitism and his hatred of blacks, it's easy to see how he figured the race war would end. Mason has claimed to be both Jesus Christ and the Devil, a claim that seems ludicrous at first glance but is easy to understand once one knows that the Process believed that Jesus, Satan, and Lucifer were equal members of a triune power of the universe. This quasi- gnostic belief is nothing new -- it is, after all, warmed-over Manichaeism -- but in modern dress it can seem scandalous and fantastic. As he spent more and more time in prison after the Tate killings, he became infected with Nazi ideology, probably via the Aryan Brotherhood, which serves as a violent, all-white "gang" both within the prison system and without. As is well known, he eventually carved a swastika into his forehead, and formed a relationship with James N. Mason of the Universal Order, [18] an offshoot of the American Nazi Party of George Lincoln Rockwell. Mason eventually realized that Manson was the latest incarnation of Adolf Hitler, and began to devote all his time to promoting Charlie's philosophy among his neo-Nazi brethren. It is no exaggeration to say that the Manson killings stupefied the entire nation. A lovely, pregnant, blond actress who starred in B-movies but who had never harmed anyone was hideously mutilated and slain in her own home by a band of men and women who also slashed and killed her houseguests. Ironically, although all the perpetrators were white Gentiles -- "racially, they are all tops" according to Mason -- the image of the short, long- haired, bearded Manson ordering the death and mutilation of Sharon Tate could have come from the pages of Der Sturmer or Ostara as an example of a subhuman species violating the pure Aryan Woman. Manson as agent provocateur? Indeed, his idea was to frame the blacks for the murders. Thus, the blood libel at work. But link Manson with Nazis and the Process, and you have a perfect formula for a different sort of blood libel. In middle-America's confused understanding of world history and current events, what image could be more potent than a Charles Manson/Nazi/Satanist conspiracy to destroy American youth? Add that little extra fillip of anti-Semitism in Dr. Hammond's analysis (that the Satanic Nazis learned their occultism from a rabbi) and you have it all. Mysterious Men In Black with vast occult powers, rampaging sexual urges, and demonic bloodlust corrupting and murdering America's children with reckless abandon. Who can be trusted? Obviously, only mainstream fundamentalist religious groups; only patriotic, right-wing political groups. The more conservative, the better. These individuals have no fear of the man waving a large cross and shouting the name of Jesus, of God and Country. They fear ... the Others. Streams of Satanic Abuse Survivors have gone running to therapists with newly retrieved "memories" of these ritual murders, contributing to a growing national hysteria (at least on the talk shows). While none of these "victims" remembers the names or addresses of the actual persons involved in the killings and the abuse, or can in any other way identify the perpetrators, the horror these "victims" feel is still palpable. They want justice. They want to punish someone. But in these politically correct times, at whom can one point a finger? Certainly not at the Jews. Nor at any other ethnic or religious group (unless one considers these mysterious satanists members of a religious group; they are not to be confused with members of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan). Alas, one must be content to be a victim without an identifiable -- and hence punishable -- victimizer. The whole point about these alleged satanic organizations is that they are well organized, highly secretive, perform their rituals in remote settings, and breed their own children for sacrifice so that there are no birth records and certainly no death records, either. In other words, they commit the perfect crimes, and if it wasn't for this suddenly vast array of "survivors," we would never even know the cult existed. Unfortunately, all the hype concerning Satanic Cult Survivor Syndrome has obscured the fact that neo-Nazi cults, embracing some form of occultism inherited from their SS forebears, do exist and do intend harm -- violent harm -- for most members of the human race. In fact, it is almost a mistake in some cases to speak of neo-Nazi cults, for the Nazi era is still very much with us and has been lovingly preserved by unrepentant war criminals in safe havens in Argentina, Brazil, Chile ... and the United States. While Dr. Hammond's thesis may be a bit extreme, there can be no doubt that Nazis escaped to America, and that they brought their cult of race mysticism and swastika worship with them. Combined with the legendary Nazi hatred for Judaism and Christianity, this cult is still blatantly pagan although it would be an exercise in hyperbole to consider it "satanic" in any strict, ideological sense. Nazis do not worship the Devil as such; for them, as for other pagans of various persuasions -- including the benign Wicca movement -- the Devil is purely a Judeo-Christian concept. Only someone still in the thralls of some form of Judeo-Christianity would consider going to all the trouble to worship Satan. Yet, the various gods and goddesses that compose traditional Nordic paganism are viewed as demons by the Catholic Church. They were certainly "false gods," and to worship them would have been enough to send anyone to the stake during the Inquisition. Witches' Sabbaths are not Black Masses, but participation in them was reason enough for execution. Hence, Himmler's sympathy for the witches who were destroyed by the Church during the Middle Ages; they were, after all, fellow travelers to the Nordic Armanen brothers and the Celtic Druids. Thus, the difficulty in drawing lines of demarcation where the Church sees none. To the conventional Catholic point of view, witches and Druids and Nordic pagans are of a piece with satanists: in the Church's eyes they all worship the Devil. The writings and speeches of Nazi apologists like Walther Darre, Alfred Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler, Baldur von Schirach, and Hitler himself make it clear just what the Nazi platform was on organized religion and the future of Aryan spirituality. They understood the concept of "spirit" to be racially determined. Thus, there was a "Jewish spirit" as distinct from an "Aryan spirit." The spirit was, therefore, a function of the blood. Previous authors, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, had written that one could somehow "become Jewish" simply by associating with Jews long enough; for Chamberlain and others, race was not the determining factor in what the later Chinese ideologues would term "spiritual pollution"; rather, the environment itself was the critical element. Although Hitler greatly admired Chamberlain, he insisted that the German spirit was a vastly different creature than the Semitic spirit, and that racial purity determined spiritual purity. In this way, all possibility of individual, personal spiritual advancement was denied. One was either born perfect, or one's soul was doomed from the outset. And there was no mystery about who was who: your birth certificate told the story. There was no such thing as a "human spirit": there was only a racial spirit. And should a German woman have sexual intercourse with a Jew only once, her soul would become polluted forever and her children -- even if engendered by an Aryan male -- would always contain a taint of Jewish corruption; hence the racial Nuremberg Laws which forbade sexual intercourse (let alone marriage) between Jews and non-Jews in Hitler's Germany. When the Nazis escaped along the ratlines to the Americas, they brought these beliefs with them. They remained as indispensable a part of their spiritual repertoire as Mein Kampf or the Protocols. And they functioned as silent masters behind a legion of front men in the host countries, financing the publication of what most of the world would consider "hate literature" but which to the Nazis remain their sacred scriptures. These men were in urgent need of something similar to what the Chinese call "reeducation" or what the cult fighters call "deprogramming," but the world did not understand the Nazi Party (and particularly the SS) as a cult and was not equipped to deal with the problem; and the continued threat f Communism and the need for an overwhelming solution to the Communist "problem" made these veteran anti-Communists valuable men to have as intelligence agents, saboteurs, and military advisers wherever the Communist threat was present. That is why we witness a resurgence in Latin America, for instance, of every form of Nazism, from political parties that parade the swastika and other runic designs as official emblems to pogroms against various ethnic minorities -- usually the Native American populations -- to totalitarian forms of government that were established to defeat the greatest enemy of Nazism after the Jews, International Communism. A casual observer might decide that these political coruscations are isolated incidents, the black-leather fantasies of a handful of crazed and chronic underachievers trying to get our attention. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The flashy neo-Nazi groups of Latin America perform a valuable service for the old war criminals in hiding. They take the public's political temperature, so to speak, while at the same time taking the heat off the Kamaradenwerk. And a major player in that underground Nazi network -- the ratline par excellence -- was Otto Skorzeny. Hitler's Commando Skorzeny's career as the creator of Hitler's elite commando force -- trained in foreign languages, sophisticated weapons, and demolition devices, various forms of aircraft including experimental planes, and combat and assassination techniques -- is celebrated all over the world. It was Skorzeny, after all, who performed the impossible rescue of Benito Mussolini from under the nose of his captors. It was Skorzeny who dressed members of his force in American uniforms in one of the last battles of the war and thus contributed to many American deaths by means of the artful deception. And it was Skorzeny who inherited the responsibility for maneuvering the stolen Nazi art treasures out of Germany and occupation hands into Spain, Portugal, and eventually to South America. These art treasures formed the capital with which Skorzeny financed Die Spinne (The Spider) his version of ODESSA (the Organization of former SS Officers), and with which he aided the escape and survival of many of his former colleagues, including (but not limited to) Eichmann and Mengele. Skorzeny never stood trial at Nuremberg when he was easily one of the most important war criminals ever to survive the Occupation. Instead, he made himself useful to American intelligence and, later, to West German industrialists and reconstituted Nazis enjoying the protection of Adenauer. He figured prominently in the Peron regime in Argentina and was even entrusted with bringing Evita's body from Italy to Argentina after the death of her husband. Skorzeny was a fanatic Nazi who kept the pagan faith throughout his career until his death from cancer in 1975. His involvement with the regimes of Farouk and Nasser in Egypt went so far as to include creating an Egyptian Gestapo staffed almost completely with former SS officers, a measure that received wholehearted support from CIA Director Allen Dulles, who was at that time involved with Reinhard Gehlen in developing an anti- communist espionage service within the ranks of the CIA. It is evidence of this kind of collusion between the CIA and former SS officers, Nazi financiers, and concentration camp doctors that has given rise to speculation about Nazi mind-control methods being developed under CIA auspices in the decades after the war (with a nod to Dr. Hammond). The commando unit Skorzeny created under Hitler remained largely intact after the war and formed the network of SS men around the world -- financed by Nazi money hidden in various European and South American treasuries -- that contributes to the survival of Nazi ideology today, more than fifty years after the end of World War II. With so much support being given to these men by various governments -- including America's -- is it any wonder that Nazism is enjoying a kind of spiritual rebirth all over the world? Estimates range as high as seventy thousand former SS officers -- members of Himmler's elite Black Order, initiated with pagan ritual into his version of the Masons and Jesuits rolled into one -- remained at large after the war. As such, it constitutes one of the largest -- and best- funded, best-trained, best-equipped, and best-connected -- cults in the world today. And the second generation is being trained and indoctrinated in the streets of London, Berlin, New York, Buenos Aires ... and in secret, heavily armed estates like Colonia Dignidad. The Ratlines
To appreciate the ease with which lines of communication and transportation were set up between the Nazis in Europe and their support groups in South America, one only has to look at the history of South America in the twentieth century, particularly during the war years. Beginning in the 1930s, there were waves of German immigration coming to the continent. At first, these were German Jews fleeing the newly established Aryan state. Then, Nazi diplomats began replacing their Weimar counterparts in embassies from Bogota to Buenos Aires, and forming relationships with local Nazi parties in these countries. Of all the South American nations, those most likely to welcome Nazi influence were Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia. All of these countries had high concentrations of German- speaking people in influential areas of government and commerce. Bolivia, for example, had a relatively open immigration policy and visas could simply be purchased. The Bolivian airline, LAB, was owned and operated by Germans, a situation that Allen Dulles would fight hard to change as it posed a strategic threat to US interests. Of course, Ernst Rohm had worked in Bolivia in the 1920s as a military adviser. Bolivia also had -- and probably still has -- a homegrown Nazi Party: the Organizacion Nacional Socialista Americana (American National Socialist Organization) or ONSA. [20] Chile, by comparison, had no less than three Nazi Parties when the war broke out, [21] plus was host to an exiled Bolivian Nazi Party; this is one of the reasons why Chile remained the only country in South America that did not declare war on Germany. One of these parties, the National Socialist Movement (Movimiento Nacional Socialista or MNS), founded by Jorge Gonzalez von Marees in 1932, was an attempt to build Nazism with Chilean characteristics (to paraphrase an old Maoist slogan). The members of this party were actually referred to as Nacis, but by 1937 the movement became disaffected with Hitler and, although still remaining basically anti-Semitic and nationalistic, it severed its relations with other Nazi and Fascist organizations in Chile. It attempted a coup against the administration of President Alessandri, but was brutally suppressed when fifty of its members were murdered without a trial. Eventually, the Nacis threw in with presidential candidate Aguirre Cerda and helped him win by a narrow margin, so their influence was not altogether imaginary. We will look at more modern -- and more lethal -- Nazi movements in Chile in the next chapter. But by far the most blatantly pro-Nazi and pro-Fascist government in South America was that of Argentina's Juan Peron. A critical link in the Nazi ratline, Peron's government bent over backwards to accommodate fleeing Nazis and, as recent revelations have shown, more than one thousand such war criminals managed to find safe haven in Peron's Argentina. [22] Prior to Peron's accession to power in 1946, however, Argentina had become a focal point for Nazi strategy in the region. The Party Leader (Parteileiter) for South America was headquartered in Buenos Aires. [23] The Party Leader was at least nominally in charge of all SS, SA, Arbeitfront, Hitler Youth, and Gestapo activities in the entire region. In Berlin, the Nazi Party had a separate section and a secretary-general for the Nazi Party of South and Central America. To better appreciate this policy, one merely has to imagine -- for instance -- the sheer audacity of having a United States Republican Party of Pakistan, for instance, or an American Democratic Party of Rumania. We who tend to think of our political parties as purely domestic affairs have to rearrange our thinking when it comes to understanding the Nazis, who saw themselves as eventually ruling over the entire globe. In this, they were not too different from their mortal enemies, the Communists, who organized in foreign countries but who owed their allegiance to Moscow. The essential point of departure, however, is that the Communists were consciously international while the Nazis were national. The Nazi Parties in South America were not independently operated affairs, not even on paper. They were simply divisions of the greater Nazi Party in Germany, and all the same rules applied (i.e., as regards race, religion, etc.). A full- blooded Native American Peruvian, for example, would have no more chance of joining the Nazi Party in La Paz or Sucre than would someone one-quarter Jewish in Berlin. Argentina had a Nazi-style party in power for a while in 1943 when the Grupo de Ojiciales Unidos or GOU executed a neat coup that resulted in a short-lived, pro-Fascist military dictatorship. [24] Previously, the Uriburu government of 1930-32 had attempted to create a self-consciously Italian Fascist government there, with mixed results that ended in failure. While Argentina remained passively pro-Nazi and pro-Fascist during the war (and only declared war on Germany at the last possible moment), it did not succeed in becoming the Nazi dream state until 1946. Juan Domingo Peron had served as a military attache to Mussolini's Italy before the war broke out and liked what he saw. Like so many other Latin American generals, he found the totalitarian power structure of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany appealing. Even more, the swaggering machismo of Il Duce and the flashy black uniforms and jackboots of the SS helped to form a persistent idea among Latin military leaders of what a real army and a real government should look like. That is, they admired the surface manifestations of the movement and the brutally simple approach to administrative problems favored by the right-wing totalitarian regimes. No one could accuse the platforms of either Fascism or Nazism of being hard to understand; Communism, by comparison, was largely intended to be a "scientific" approach to government and economics and required learning a whole new vocabulary and doing at least some reading. There wasn't much reading required of the aspiring Fascist or Nazi. Even Hitler, it is said, did not read most of the books he owned but scanned pamphlets which contained brief quotations from the literary and philosophical giants of German history. He could thus quote these dead white gentlemen as if he had read their entire works. [25] This was the approach favored by the right-wing extremists who saw themselves as men of action rather than as political philosophers. Many who write on the Nazi scene in South America have disparaged the movement. They claim that Nazism could never gain a real foothold in South America because the history and culture of that society is so different from that of Germany or Italy. [26] For one thing, because the population is so diverse, a racial program could never succeed. For another, long exposure to North American forms of democracy would mitigate against the creation of a purely nationalistic political force. Unfortunately, this perception of South American politics is only partially correct. It is true that the populations of many Latin countries are racially diverse; that does not stop those of white skin from looking down on those with dark skin. It also does not stop those of largely European ancestry from discriminating against those of Native American blood. The vast destruction of indigenous peoples taking place in the Amazonian rain forests is but one example of this callous disregard for those of different race. South America is as class-conscious as any other region; at times, even more so. Family connections are everything, from Colombia in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south. One's last name can prove an entree to the country club, or a permanent ban from the seats of power and influence. As for North American democracy, the people of Latin America know all too well how it has been used against them; the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973 was only one example. One could cite Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador as others, not to mention the repeated attempts to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro of Cuba. Thus, Nazi sensibilities became popular among the vested interests in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador, and virtually everywhere in South America that boasted an elite ruling class that was almost invariably white and non-Indian. While it was difficult in some countries to organize an anti-Semitic party due to the tiny and relatively uninfluential Jewish populations there, the emphasis was switched to anti-Communism. And, as Communists began to organize among the lowly and dispossessed (usually Native American) peoples of Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and the rest of South America, anti-Communism took on some racist characteristics. Christianity -- particularly Roman Catholicism -- is a strong force in Latin America, perhaps less so now than during the 1940s and 1950s, when religious laws in many countries were virtually indistinguishable from federal laws (legislation pertaining to marriage, divorce, and abortion come readily to mind); but nonetheless, the Church still wields moral power and its "liberationist" priests and nuns are well loved by the poor. Thus, in Latin America, the Nazis faced some of the same philosophical and cultural hurdles that they encountered in Christian Germany. Yet, while pious Catholicism is the norm among the poorer and middle-class populations of Latin America, occultism was popular among the elite and the educated classes. They indulged in everything from spiritualism to Gnosticism to ritual magic and Rosicrucianism, particularly in the urban areas. This, coupled with some native occult beliefs such as Santeria, Macumba, and a host of other practices that are the product of African and Native American religions mixing with imported Roman Catholicism, produced an atmosphere that was conducive to cults and nontraditional religious sects. Further, many otherwise intelligent Latinos of the author's acquaintance express surprise at the vehemence which the name of Hitler or the subject of Nazis arouses in many a norteamericano. While many Latins would not automatically embrace der Fuhrer, they do tend to see him as a brilliant, if flawed, statesman who could not have been the demon the "northern" press makes him out to be. While most of the population would resist Nazism as a foreign import, if nothing else, and a not very useful alternative to democracy or Communism, the oligarchies of these countries tend to admire Nazism as a philosophy dear to their hearts: an ideology where might is right, and will power (plus automatic weapons) is everything. And, since members of the Church -- including individual priests, nuns, and bishops -- have recently become involved in anti-government protests and conspiracies from Central to South America, at times even siding with Communist and Socialist extremists against right-wing dictatorships ... well, then, who needs the Church? For these reasons the Nazi Party remains as antagonistic as ever to Christianity. While some Christian prelates may see in the Nazi Party a useful bulwark against the greater evil, Communism, by far the most popular priests and bishops in Latin America are the antigovernment preachers and martyrs. And now, with the collapse of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, the Party must reevaluate its usefulness to a host of military regimes. The ongoing struggle of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas in Peru, for instance, is a boon to those aging Nazi antiterrorism consultants who still ply their trade in the South. While the antigovernment forces in South America may eventually change their program from doctrinaire Communism or Maoism due to lack of support abroad, they will persist in their policy of overthrowing the relative handful of powerful families in charge of the Latin American economies. And then, of course, there is the drug trade. Imagine Nazis and their sympathizers are rarely boring. At the very least, they are revolting and perhaps even ridiculous. At best, they are surreal. One such case is that of Carlos Lehder Rivas, [27] a former kingpin of the Medellin drug cartel of Colombia: neo-Nazi, multimillionaire drug lord, convicted felon, prosecution witness against former Panamanian President and Santeria practitioner Manuel Noriega, and huge John Lennon fan. Lehder's father was a German engineer who managed to emigrate to Colombia before the end of the war. Carlos Lehder himself was born in 1947, the product of a union between his German-born father and Colombian mother. His parents divorced shortly after Carlos was born, and his mother took him to New York City, where he eventually wound up selling pot in the Bronx as a teenager before getting arrested for grand-theft auto at the age of twenty-six. He had been stealing cars since he was eighteen. By 1975, he was out of jail and back in Bogota. Three years later, and Carlos Lehder was one of the richest men in the world. He had understood that the key element in any narcotics operation was transportation, and -- with his newly acquired pilot's license -- he set up a marijuana transport system that was the marvel of South American criminal enterprises. Not content with being a mere drug trafficker, however, Carlos Lehder decided he wanted to run the country. By 1983 he had formed a political party -- the Movimiento Civico Latino Nacional (MCLN) -- a rabidly nationalist, anti-American, anti-Communist, and neo-Nazi party in which Hitler was extolled as "the greatest warrior in history," [28] and Lehder's own open involvement in the drug trade was nothing less than a means of toppling the imperialist forces (the United States) and destroying their influence in Latin America. He opened a resort hotel, the Posada Alemana (German Inn), a pastiche of Bavarian-style architecture, with a statue of Lehder's idol, John Lennon, as centerpiece of the hotel's disco: a club which blared a constant stream of Beatles music at all hours of the day and night. The statue itself is worthy of attention for here Lennon is depicted in the nude, wearing only a Nazi helmet, holding a guitar, and with a bullet hole in his heart! How the peaceful, antiestablishment and pro-love pop singer and composer was linked with Nazism in Lehder's mind is anyone's guess; perhaps Mr. Lennon's marriage to a Japanese woman was enough to convince the drug dealer that Lennon's sympathies were with the Axis powers? In any event, Lehder's many speeches to the press and to crowds of curiosity-seekers in his hometown of Armenia consistently invoke this theme of Nazism and the drug trade, equating cocaine with the atomic bomb: the secret weapon of the Nazis in their ongoing struggle against capitalism and American imperialism. Most DEA agents regarded these speeches as the ravings of a coked-up narcotraficante ... but then there was that little matter of a military coup in Bolivia, a coup masterminded by drug-runner and former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie with the assistance of a secret Masonic organization based in Italy. The Butcher of Lyon Barbie -- like so many other rabid Nazis -- had been a devout Catholic in his youth, joining several Catholic youth groups in and around his childhood home of Trier, close to the borders of France and Luxembourg on the Mosel River. Trier was the scene of many violent clashes between the French and the Germans during and after the First World War, and later between the Nazis and those who opposed them during the chaotic thirties. At some point, Barbie experienced a kind of spiritual crisis and -- on April 1, 1933 -- he joined the Hitler Youth at the age of nineteen. The previous month, Hitler had offered to compromise with the Church, calling it an essential part of German folk (volk) heritage. While previously the Church was certain that it would suffer severely under the Third Reich because of the latter's aggressive neo- paganism, this new attitude was welcomed with relief and many clergymen jumped on the bandwagon. This might have been the reason young Barbie decided to throw in with the Nazis, but his real motivations are unknown. Several months later, after the signing of the German-Vatican Concordat on July 20, 1933, the bishop of Trier scheduled a rare public showing of that cathedral's famous Robe. The Robe is supposedly that which was worn by Christ on his journey up Golgotha to be crucified.
Nazi dignitaries attended the showing, along with contingents of uniformed SA (Storm Troopers). The showing lasted for several months, during which pilgrims from allover Europe made their way to the cathedral for this once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of one of the Church's most holy relics. It is one of those scenes one rarely sees in the movies: an ancient Catholic cathedral, files of altar boys swinging censers, red-robed prelates chanting in Latin before a sacred relic ... and columns of Storm Troopers in swastika armbands as the honor guard! While there is evidence that Barbie may have secretly joined the Nazis even before 1933, [30] it is certain that by 1934 he had already attained a position with the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst or Secret Service, a division of Himmler's SS. Eventually, his work for the SD progressed to the point that Obersturmfuhrer Barbie became Gestapo chief of the French city of Lyon in November 1942. It is from that point on that his record of barbarity and cruelty -- a record that earned him the nickname "Butcher of Lyon" -- was begun. Barbie was responsible for sadistic, horrific crimes against the Jews, Communists, and the French Resistance. He took a particular delight in interrogations, and eyewitness accounts of his participation in the torture of men and women in the basement cells of Montluc Prison are enough to turn anyone's stomach. In the case of Maquis leader Andre Devigny, for example, Barbie ordered his pet Alsatian to attack the defenseless prisoner, a man who had already been subjected to "savage beatings, the cold-water treatment of the baignoire, injections, and red-hot irons placed on the soles of his feet." [31] The dog began by ripping Devigny's clothing from his body with his fangs and then continued by tearing the man's flesh from his bones. Miraculously, Devigny survived this encounter with Barbie and went down in French Resistance history as the only prisoner ever to escape from Montluc Prison. Unfortunately, the use of trained, vicious dogs as interrogation and torture tools also survived and was implemented with gusto in the Nazi fortress and cult center in Chile known as Colonia Dignidad. (See Chapter Twelve.) At the end of the war, and with a price on his head and a warrant for his arrest, Barbie managed to find employment with American intelligence in Germany, specifically for the US Counter Intelligence Corps, or CIC. [32] As a Nazi turned informer and spy, Barbie entered into such illustrious company as Reinhard Gehlen, Otto Skorzeny, and SS Colonel Freddy Schwend. Barbie soon proved very useful to his American handlers, developing an intelligence network that extended from penetrations within French intelligence all the way to Eastern European emigre groups and intelligence services there. But Europe got too hot for Barbie. Wanted by the French for war crimes committed in Lyon, Barbie knew his days of enjoying the patronage of his American superiors were drawing to a close. The Americans could not afford to let Barbie fall into French hands, for fear that he would reveal American intelligence operations against them. (To the Americans, the French intelligence service was riddled through with Communists and could not be trusted. They spent almost as much time spying on their Allies as they did keeping tabs on the Soviet Union.) So, they arranged his escape along the ratline to South America; and for this purpose they used the offices of a Croatian priest, Dr. Krunoslav Draganovic, himself a war criminal and Fascist (a member of the dread pro-Nazi Ustase) wanted by the Yugoslav authorities but who enjoyed the protection of the Vatican nonetheless. [33] Like Barbie, Fr. Draganovic was also in good company. He was not the only Catholic priest in Yugoslavia accused of war crimes. The atrocities committed under the aegis of the Fascist State of Croatia -- formed in 1941 under Ante Pavelic -- outdid even the Nazis for sheer brutality. While the Jews were certainly on the list, so were the approximately two million Eastern Orthodox Serbs, who were forced either to convert to Roman Catholicism ... or be put to death. Even conversion was no guarantee of safety, as many new converts (men, women, children) were dragged from their first Mass and executed on the streets outside the churches. One Franciscan priest was even the commandant of a Croatian concentration camp. [34] Actions such as these mitigate against Vatican protestations of innocence, or the equally disingenuous argument that an accommodation had to be reached with the Nazis to prevent further bloodshed or the murder of innocent Catholics. These were the people Draganovic represented and for which an arrest warrant was issued, although he never served any time in prison and was never even tried in a court of law. This is the man who arranged Barbie's escape for the CIC. After a series of adventures, Barbie found himself (and his entire family) a new home in Bolivia in 1951 with a visa made out in the name of Father Roque Romac (the pseudonym of yet another Croat war-criminal priest, a Franciscan who ministered to his newfound flock in the area of Cochabamba) and for a while Barbie was the perfect bourgeois businessman. Then, forming and cementing relationships with the underground Nazi cult in South America -- and among men such as Skorzeny, Freddy Schwend, Eichmann, and many others -- Barbie, as "Klaus Altmann," began to carve out a position of influence in the various shifting military regimes in La Paz. It will be remembered that Bolivia had been host to German immigrants for years before the war began, and was a target of US intelligence efforts (notably under Dulles) to neutralize their influence on Bolivia's political life. [35] Barbie fell in with the German emigre community, and -- linking up with wheeler- dealer Freddy Schwend and, eventually, Italian pro-Fascist terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie -- found himself a lucrative position as a lieutenant colonel in Bolivian Intelligence! [36] Schwend and Barbie began running guns between Bolivia, Peru, and Chile using their contacts in the Kamaradenwerk (the informal association of ex-SS officers organized by Luftwaffe ace and Hider pet Colonel Hans Ulrich Rudel) and among the more fascist of the various Latin American governments who became their clients and, occasionally, their suppliers as well. The gun trade eventually led them into the drug trade, where the abilities of Barbie as a military organizer were enhanced by the arrival of Stefano delle Chiaie. Delle Chiaie enjoyed a serious reputation abroad as a master terrorist who had been responsible for a series of lethal bombings throughout Italy in the late sixties. He had also been involved in an aborted military takeover of the country in 1970, and had to flee Italy for the relative safety of Franco's Spain. It was in Spain that he met -- and cultivated -- "El Brujo," Argentina's own version of Rudolf Hess: Jose Lopez Rega, self-professed Rosicrucian, Peronista, mystical advisor to Isabel Peron, founder of the notorious AAA death squads ... and member of Propaganda Due, P-2, the supersecret Masonic society dedicated to the overthrow of the Italian government and its replacement by a Fascist regime. [37] Lopez Rega was an intimate of such men as P-2 founder Licio Gelli who spent many of the postwar years in exile in Argentina, plotting to restore pro-Fascist, anti- communist governments in South America as well as in Europe and using his own version of Hider's "dangerous element," the initiatory secret society P-2, as his vehicle for bank manipulations and the subversion of governments. As we shall see in the next chapter, delle Chiaie would also become involved with Michael Vernon Townley, the American terrorist and spy who planned and organized the assassination of former Allende minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. on behalf of Chile's secret police, DINA. Townley, of course, was a frequent visitor (and adviser) to Colonia Dignidad. With all this talent cropping up in Bolivia, it was inevitable that the phenomenon known as "narco-terrorism" would be born. Elements of Italian, Argentine, and Bolivian mercenaries -- trained and led by former SS officers -- formed the security detail (known as the melodramatically nomenclatured Fiances of Death) for Bolivia's drug smugglers and even warded off violent attacks from Colombia's rival Medellin cartel. For some time it seemed that Barbie and his friends could not reach any higher and then came July 1980 and the Garcia Meza military coup, masterminded in part by Klaus Barbie and Stefano delle Chiaie and funded by Argentine intelligence and the shadowy P-2. The coup ushered in a new period of severe and brutal military repression in the country, as perhaps could be expected of a government created and managed by drug smugglers, terrorists, Fascist cultists, and Nazi war criminals. Carlos Lehder's inspiration had obviously been the Meza/Barbie coup, and Nazi gatherings took place rather openly in La Paz complete with swastika banners and raucous singing of the "Horst Wessel Song" in Bolivian clubs and bars. Barbie continued as chief of "internal intelligence" and delle Chiaie went abroad to forge links between the government of Bolivia and such legendary homicidal madmen as Major Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador, the man who ordered the assassination of Bishop Romero. At home, Barbie concentrated on removing all opposition to his growing narcotics trade ... with the approval and assistance of the government. Eventually, though, the sadistic dream had to end. Delle Chiaie was fingered in the bombing, in August 1980, of the railway station in Bologna, Italy, in which eighty-four passengers died. He dropped from view, narrowly escaping capture. The foreign press had already identified Barbie as the "Butcher of Lyon" wanted by the French government. And, slowly, Barbie's spiderweb world began to unravel. A civilian government was elected in Bolivia by a population finally driven to outrage by the excesses of the Cocaine Army and in February 1983, Barbie was extradited to France to stand trial almost forty years after the end of World War II. Barbie's story is instructive for two reasons. In the first place, it demonstrates the danger and continuing threat of the Nazi underground against political regimes all over the world. In the second place, Barbie remained a committed Nazi: a man who bought into the cult of Nazism with his whole heart and soul and who never, ever, lost faith with the religion of Hider, Himmler, Hess, and Rosenberg. The racial conceits; the anti-Christian, pro-pagan ideology; the anti-Communist crusade ... it was all present in Barbie's reign of terror in Bolivia and included the other organizers of neo-Nazi intrigue, Skorzeny and Rudel. Drugs, guns, murder-for-hire, military coups, instruction in Nazi torture and interrogation techniques, Nazi nightclubs and the "Horst Wessel Song" ... these are all the hallmarks of what is often mistakenly referred to as "neo-Nazism." There was nothing "neo-" about Klaus Barbie. He was the genuine article. And there was nothing "neo-" about Colonia Dignidad, the latest in a long line of concentration camps and cult centers courtesy of the Third Reich.
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