RISE OF THE FOURTH REICH: ‘Sleepwalking Into Fascism’, Why CIA/NATO’s Foreign Policy Has Been Consistent for the Past 77 years

Source – strategic-culture.org

‘…In this series we have seen a picture that has painted NATO, the CIA, and fascists including outright Nazis all working for the same apparatus and essentially the same goal: to overthrow democratically elected leaders and replace them with dictators and fascist right-wing governments….profits of the narcotics trade are used in turn to fund right-wing terrorist activity globally, using the model of NATO’s Gladio. The “great heroin coup” by the CIA and co. was about having complete control over the profits of heroin for this very purpose”

Sleepwalking Into Fascism: Why CIA/NATO’s Foreign Policy Has Been Consistent for the Past 77 years

By Cynthia Chung

The West should have the respect to admit the truth in its complicity to much of the world’s woes during this Cold War period.

Sleepwalking Into Fascism: Why CIA/NATO’s Foreign Policy Has Been Consistent for the Past 77 years

[This is the final installment to a five-part series. Refer here for Part 1, Part 2 goes over how Ukrainian Nationalism was bought and paid for by the CIA post-WWII, Part 3 goes over NATO’s Operation Gladio, Part 4 goes over the role of the CIA and NATO in the global heroin trade, Miami as the new center of International Fascism and how President Kennedy’s murder is connected to this.]

Thus far in this series we have seen a picture that has painted NATO, the CIA, and fascists including outright Nazis all working for the same apparatus and essentially the same goal: to overthrow democratically elected leaders and replace them with dictators and fascist right-wing governments. In Part 4, it was discussed how the profits of the narcotics trade are used in turn to fund right-wing terrorist activity globally, using the model of NATO’s Gladio. The “great heroin coup” by the CIA and co. was about having complete control over the profits of heroin for this very purpose.

It is here that we will resume our story.

Snow is Now Black

Bertrand Russell discussed in his book “The Impact of Science on Society” (1952) that the subject which “will be of most importance politically is mass psychology,” that is, the lens in which an individual views “reality” and “truth.” Russell is very clear, such “convictions” are not generated by the individual themselves but rather are to be shaped by the State.

Of course, individuals are not encouraged to think about an absolute truth or reality, rather they are encouraged to think on a much smaller scale, on individual “facts,” for this is much easier to control and shape and also limits “problematic” thinking such as the ponderance on cause and effect.

Russell, in his “Impact of Science on Society,” goes on to talk about how one could program a society to think snow is black rather than white:

“First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

This is of course a program for the most ambitious “reframing” of “reality,” however, as we see today, we do not need to start before the age of ten for other sorts of “reframing,” and nowhere does this seem to be the most successful and effective with any age group than the West’s “foreign” policy. For snow is something that we see and experience regularly. It is much more difficult to “reframe” something familiar, however, something that is “foreign” has always been a rather blurred and undefined concept for millennia, and thus is a much easier candidate for the State to “reframe” as our collective “reality,” our collective “existential fear.” And thus, for most of history, our understanding of who is our “friend” and who is our “foe” has rarely been determined by the people themselves but rather their governing structure.

Such a governing structure is free to determine for us what is “truth” vs “falsehood” what is “fact” vs “fiction,” because the people, despite all the abuse and exploitation from such a governing force still look to this very thing to protect and shield them from the frightful “unknown.”

Better the Devil you know? In this case, ignorance is most certainly not bliss…

However, the “facts” emboldened by the State have shown themselves to not be so “fact-based” after all, thus we now commonly see from the angels of justice; the flawless, omnipotent, and anonymous “fact-checkers” that “truth” is becoming increasingly not a matter of “right” or “wrong” but rather, about semantics, priorities and what one chooses to emphasise.

For instance, the very real neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine (refer to Part 1 and Part 2), has now been “reframed” by the media to either 1) acknowledge that there are indeed actual neo-Nazis in Ukraine but that they are also nationalists and thus fighting for all of Ukraine, 2) to claim that they are “reformed” neo-Nazis that have apparently been domesticated and are now respectable defenders of Ukraine, 3) Ukraine has a Jewish President and thus such a thing is somehow fundamentally impossible.

The thing is, we have heard this story before, 77 years ago…

Better the Devil You Know?

In 1998, the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), at the behest of Congress, launched what became the largest congressionally mandated, single-subject declassification effort in history. As a result, more than 8.5 million pages of records have been opened to the public under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246) and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act (P.L. 106-567). These records include operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA, the FBI and Army intelligence. IWG issued three reports to Congress between 1999 and 2007.

A research group was put together to compile and organise key elements of this massive newly declassified database, the result was the publication of “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” in 2005 published by the National Archives.

Part of the content declassified reveals how the FBI and CIA knowingly worked with Nazi war criminals right after WWII and in several cases before the war was even over.

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (1):

“The U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) shared the CIA’s view that the pursuit of Nazi war criminals was incompatible with meeting the demands of the Cold War…‘At this time, 1952, the apprehension of war criminals is no longer considered a mission of CIC,’ the 430th Detachment wrote to higher headquarters in the U.S. Army in Austria, adding, ‘It is also believed that the prosecution of war criminals is no longer considered of primary interest to U.S. authorities’…” [emphasis added]

What was causing this abrupt turnabout within certain corridors of the United States to shield Nazi war criminals, and in many cases, those that were not even in service to the United States? Why were these Nazi war criminals so quickly pardoned and judged “harmless” to the world now that they had lost the war?

The reason for this decision by the FBI and CIA was because combating Soviet communism had become not only the first priority in a post-WWII world, but it appeared the only priority of these security agencies, who went so far as to publicly declare that their job did not include going after German war criminals, even if they happen to be residing within the United States (2).

And thus, as long as the Nazis were focused on solely the destruction of the Soviet Union, they were now to be considered as indispensable “allies” to the cause of the so-called “free world.”

However, what this series has shown is that that was most certainly not the case and instead terrorism and tyranny, such as Operation Gladio, McCarthyism and COINTELPRO, were unleashed onto the “free world” such that anything that did not fit within the agreed upon narrow script was to be scrubbed and purged. This included human rights activists and political leaders. No one was allowed to challenge the script that had now been chosen for them. What was the script? A gradual move towards fascist right-wing governments, all for our apparent protection against Soviet communism. Those political leaders who would stand in the way of this were summarily executed by the hit-squads of Gladio including Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, Turkey’s Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, President Kennedy, Alfred Herrhausen, and Enrico Mattei.

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (3):

“In 1953, when a congressional request to determine whether Eichmann [one of the leading Nazi organisers of the holocaust] was hiding in the Middle East… the CIA explained to interested U.S. senators that it was no longer responsible for tracking down Nazi fugitives, even the notorious Eichmann. ‘While the CIA has a continuing interest in the whereabouts and activities of individuals such as Eichmann,’ explained a CIA officer with the approval of the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, ‘we are not in the business of apprehending war criminals hence in no position to take an active role in this case.’ The senators apparently accepted this mission statement…[and thus with no further information on Eichmann] the inquiry was suspended in 1954.” [emphasis added]

Incredibly, the 430th Detachment added to this “not in the business of apprehending war criminals,” in their note to the higher headquarters in the U.S. Army in Austria that:

“Therefore, it appears the Salzburg police authorities should be advised that the arrest of [Adolf Eichmann] and [his] transfer to CIC is no longer desired.” (4) [emphasis added]

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (5):

“United States commanders did not fully agree with the decision of Detachment 430 to wash its hands of the responsibility for dealing with Eichmann. Nazi war criminals remained on a watch list, and if the Austrians were to pick up Eichmann, he would have to be ha

handed over to the CIC. But there would be no new U.S. efforts to track him down.”

Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust – the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent.

Eichmann was tasked with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during WWII.

Eichmann once lamented to SS colleagues that only 6 million Jews were murdered under his supervision. (6)

On May 23, 1960, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion rose in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to make a stunning announcement “Adolf Eichmann, one of the greatest Nazi war criminals, is in Israeli custody.”

Nearly two weeks earlier, Eichmann had been captured by Mossad agents in Argentina on May 11th, 1960. He was living under the alias Richard Klement for a decade after the war.

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (7):

“Eichmann’s abduction came as a complete surprise to the U.S. government. The Israelis had given no warning to the CIA (the principal point of contact between the Israeli intelligence community and Washington since 1951) that they had tracked down the most famous living Nazi war criminal and would summarily bring him to justice.

…the Israeli capture of Eichmann did more than refocus attention on those men who had managed to elude justice in the chaos of the immediate-postwar period; for the CIA, this unexpected event would force a re-examination of some of the former Nazis it had recruited in the rush to produce intelligence results in the 1950s. Some of Eichmann’s associates, it turned out, had worked for the CIA…

Why did the CIA have any postwar relationships at all with individuals who had worked alongside Adolf Eichmann in persecuting and exterminating millions of people? Under what circumstances could individuals with these records be considered acceptable agent material? Leaving aside the moral dimension for a moment, what operational value could these veterans of the war against the Jews have had in the clandestine struggle with the Soviet Union? The organization for which they worked, the SD and later the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), was the intelligence arm of the SS and of the Nazi Party. Like most intelligence services in totalitarian regimes, the SD was more the watchdog of ideology than of truth. The fact that some of these men were in the anti-Jewish office of this already ideological service should have made their intelligence credentials even more suspect.” [emphasis added]

However, this very obvious fact did not deter the U.S. government from sponsoring Reinhard Gehlen, chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence service, in a CIA backed surveillance apparatus established in West Germany; called the Gehlen Organisation (1946-1956) which subsequently became the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) from 1956-1968 to which Gehlen was the founding president.

West Germany was told it needed to be kept on a short leash for its Nazi crimes and ambitions during WWII, such that they were occupied for nearly 10 years by British, French and American militaries. Yet, at the same time, a high-ranking “former” Nazi was to be in charge of their security and intelligence?!?

West Germany’s occupation only ended on May 5th, 1955 after West Germany agreed to join NATO in 1954. It was only after West Germany’s agreement to join NATO that they were permitted to have a military force of up to a half-million men and resume the manufacture of arms.

In other words, it was only after West Germany agreed to seal its fate with the rest of the NATO countries in an eternal stand-off with the Soviet Union that they were then granted their crumb of “freedom.”

The rights of Germany were not being restricted because of its Nazi war crimes, as the CIA and NATO clearly showed they were so ready to pardon in its war criminals. The reality was that Germany was being used as the bulwark against the Soviet Union, and the German people were now going to pay the price for the crimes of its Nazi leaders. It would be the German people who would have to bow their heads in subservience while “former” Nazis were given first class treatment by the CIA and co. (much of this paid by the American taxpayer I might add).

Timothy Naftali writes in “U.S. Intelligence and The Nazis” (8):

“Materials released by the CIA and the Defense Department under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 permit a thorough analysis of the origins, implications, and results of the U.S. government’s postwar sponsorship of Reinhard Gehlen and of the organization that became the Bundesnachrichtensdienst (BND), the West German Secret Service, in 1956.

Four broad conclusions emerge…First, despite being the principal source of funding for Gehlen’s activities for close to eleven years, the U.S. government never achieved the control of Gehlen’s operations that it had expected, sought, or should have had. Second, Reinhard Gehlen often acted in bad faith in his dealings with the United States. He deceived a generation of U.S. intelligence officers about the details of his operations and violated the basic agreements that were designed to undergird the system of cooperation. Third, a substantial number of former members of SD Foreign Intelligence, the Gestapo, and the Waffen-SS were recruited into the organization when it was being funded by the U.S. government. Gehlen’s recruitment of these individuals was not done at the behest of the U.S. government; however, after Washington learned about Gehlen’s use of war criminals, it opted to do nothing about it.

Finally, the CIA did not hold Gehlen and his organization in high regard as intelligence assets. The Agency’s major goals in the Gehlen affair were to facilitate U.S. penetration of a future West German intelligence community…” [emphasis added]

As a result, the German people would never be allowed to be sovereign. They were to be the eternal losers of WWII, and they would have no choice but to do the will of their masters at the CIA and NATO headquarters, the latter of which would have its fair share on its staff of “former” Nazis who would go on to become high-ranking commanders in NATO after WWII.

NATO’s Dubious Allegiance

It was not just the CIA who was willing to work with “former” Nazis as part of America’s post-WWII foreign policy; such as the case of Nazi affiliated Unit-B’s Mykola Lebed and the CIA’s AERODYNAMIC (discussed in Part 2), where Stefan Bandera Nazi affiliated-ultra-nationalist propaganda continued to be heavily promoted in Ukraine during the Cold War years with CIA funding. This ultra-nationalist radicalisation of certain groups of Ukrainians was justified for the very plain fact that it encouraged hatred of the Soviet Union. Ukraine would also be a bulwark of sorts but viewed as much more expendable than the Germans.

One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and… there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.” (9)

This philosophy was seen very clearly in NATO’s choice of staff.

Adolf Heusinger, who served as the Operations Chief within the general staff of the High Command of the German Army in the Nazi German Armed Forces from 1938 to 1944. He was then appointed acting Chief of the General Staff for the Nazis.

Heusinger, like Gehlen, would never be tried at the Nuremberg trials. Instead, he was given control over the newly established West German army, as general of the Bundeswehr from 1957 to 1961. He then became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961-1964. This overlapped with the period of heightened assassination attempts against de Gaulle, to which NATO’s Operation Gladio was implicated (see Part 3).

Hans Speidel, a Nazi general, was one of the major military leaders of West Germany during the early Cold War. He was a principal founder of the Bundeswehr. He was a major figure in the German rearmament and oversaw the Bundeswehr’s integration into NATO. (10) He became a military advisor to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the Supreme Commander of NATO’s ground force in Central Europe from 1957-1963.

According to an article in Der Spiegel (11), which cited documents released by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (foreign intelligence agency of Germany) in 2014, Heusinger and Speidel may have been part of the Schnez-Truppe, a secret illegal army that veterans of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS established in Germany in 1949 in order to repel an attack by the Soviet Union.

You would think such a thing were unlikely or even impossible, but the truth was that such a secret illegal army made up of Nazis post-WWII follows NATO’s Operation Gladio to the script.

Johannes Steinhoff, Luftwaffe fighter pilot during WWII and recipient of the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross (the Nazi military’s highest award), became the German Military Representative to the NATO Military Committee in 1960, served as Acting Commander Allied Air Forces Central Europe in NATO from 1965-1966, as Inspector of the Air Force 1966-1970 and as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1971–1974.

Johann von Kielmansegg, General Staff officer to the High Command of the Wehrmacht 1942-1944, was lieutenant general of NATO’s Supreme Command of Allied Land Forces Central Europe in Fontainebleau and NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe from 1967-1968.

Jurgen Bennecke was also a general in the Wehrmacht and was NATO’s Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces Central Europe from 1968-1973.

Ernst Ferber, a Major in the Wehrmacht and group leader of the organizational department of the Supreme Command of the Army (Wehrmacht) from 1943-1945 and recipient of the Iron Cross 1st Class, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe from 1973-1975.

Karl Schnell, battery chief in the Western campaign in 1940, later First General Staff Officer of the LXXVI Panzer Corps in 1944 and recipient of the Iron Cross 2nd Class, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe from 1975-1977.

Franz Joseph Schulze, a Lieutenant in the reserve and Chief of the 3rd Battery of the Flak Storm Regiment 241 and recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross in 1944, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe from 1977-1979.

Ferdinand von Senger und Etterlin, Lieutenant of 24th Panzer Division in the German 6th Army, adjutant to Army High Command, was NATO’s Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe 1979-1983.

[Note: This is not a complete list of “former” Nazis who served under NATO.]

Thus, from 1957 to 1983, NATO had at least one if not several high ranking “former” Nazis in full command of multiple departments within NATO.

The position of NATO Commander and Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe (CINCENT Commander in Chief, Allied Forces Central Europe – AFCENT) was a position that was filled SOLELY by “former” Nazis for 18 YEARS STRAIGHT, from 1965-1983.

Can you see a pattern forming yet?

As previously mentioned in this series, in the context of this, NATO’s recent twitter scandal posting the Black Sun Nazi occult symbol this past international women’s day, might not have been a slip-up after all…

Fact Checking the “Fact-Checkers” on Ukraine

Before we go through the situation of Ukraine today, I wanted to share with you a very relevant story of how the CIA buys News.

Udo Ulfkotte was a well-known German journalist and author of numerous books. He worked for 25 years as a journalist, 17 of which were for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), including his role as editor. In his 2014 book “Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys News,” Ulfkotte goes over how the CIA along with German Intelligence (BND) were guilty of bribing journalists to write articles that either spun the truth or were completely fictitious in order to promote a pro-western, pro-NATO bent, and that he was one of those bought journalists.

In an interview, Ulfkotte describes how he finally built up the nerve to publish the book, after years of it collecting dust, in response to the erupting 2014 crisis in Ukraine stating:

“I felt that the right time had come to finish it and publish it, because I am deeply worried about the Ukrainian crisis and the possible devastating consequences for all of Europe and all of us…I am not at all pro-Russia, but it is clear that many journalists blindly follow and publish whatever the NATO press office provides. And this type of information and reports are completely one-sided”. [emphasis added]

In another interview Ulfkotte stated:

“it is clear as daylight that the agents of various Services were in the central offices of the FAZ, the place where I worked for 17 years. The articles appeared under my name several times, but they were not my intellectual product. I was once approached by someone from German Intelligence and the CIA, who told me that I should write about Gaddafi and report how he was trying to secretly build a chemical weapons factory in Libya. I had no information on any of this, but they showed me various documents, I just had to put my name on the article. Do you think this can be called journalism? I don’t think so.”

Ulfkotte has publicly stated:

“I am ashamed of it. The people I worked for knew from the get-go everything I did. And the truth must come out. It’s not just about FAZ, this is the whole system that’s corrupt all the way.” [emphasis added]

Udo Ulfkotte has since passed away. He died January 2017, found dead in his home, it is said by a heart attack. His body was quickly after cremated, thus preventing any possibility of an autopsy from occurring. His book has been made pretty much impossible to find available for purchase at this point.

Today’s situation concerning media reporting on Ukraine does not seem to be any different, if anything, it is much much worse.

To bolster support for the Ukrainian military, Kiev has churned out a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring public and official support from Western countries.

Ukraine’s propaganda strategy earned it praise from a NATO commander who told the Washington Post, “They are really excellent in stratcom — media, info ops, and also psy-ops.” The Post ultimately conceded that “Western officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.”

Dan Cohen for Mint Press News writes:

“Key to the propaganda effort is an international legion of public relations firms working directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to wage information warfare. According to the industry news site PRWeek, the initiative was launched by an anonymous figure who allegedly founded a Ukraine-based public relations firm…

According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz.

The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UK’s government. Ingham previously worked for Britain’s Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms.”

Thus, Ingham who has been a member of the UK government and continues to have very high-level connections within the British government, is playing a leading role in shaping how the Ukraine war is being represented.

Dan Cohen provides a thorough explanation of how these “PR firms” have been responsible for reporting and spreading fabricated news and that even when such reports are found conclusively to be untrue, they continue to use them nonetheless. These PR tools include propaganda graphics, which are created in order to encourage radicalisation and promotion of ultra-nationalist identity; using xenophobic and racist language (not just to Russians), outright praise of Ukrainian neo-Nazis as heroes, the idolisation of Nazi affiliated Unit-B leader Stefan Bandera, and the encouragement of violent acts against other individuals (see Cohen’s article for examples).

Why would someone like Ingham be involved in something like this? Well, if you have already read Part 2 to this series, you will see that this is just a continuation of a several decades-long script.

If you have ever wondered who is behind the omnipotent “fact-checkers”, in the case of StopFake who have self-described themselves as such, they are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) aka the fully-rogue department of the CIA, the Atlantic Council, the International Renaissance Foundation (funded by Open Society Foundation’s billionaire George Soros), the British Embassy in Ukraine, the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the German Marshall Fund, among others.

StopFake was hired by Facebook in March 2020 to “curb the flow of Russian propaganda” but was found to be employing multiple figures closely tied to violent neo-Nazis. This has, however, not deterred Facebook from continuing to work with StopFake.

At the end of the day, it does not seem to matter how many times these arbiters of truth are found to be wrong, for U.S. officials have already admitted that they are literally just lying to the public about what is going on in Ukraine.