The Colonel’s Corner - The Devil’s Chessboard Part 4

1:20:44

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Transcript

0:00 Hello, Bridget. Good evening. How are you? Good. I just want to put this out there since I've been listening to Baby Shark all day. If I just start singing it, don't think I'm crazy. Oh, that's funny. It's still showing the preview over on Rumble, but it might just be the lag. Yeah, I've already hit the go live. Okay. All right. All right. We're going to get started and sorry about the delay today.

0:31 but higher duties called. All right, we're in May of 1945. Alan Dulles and OSS Chief Bill Donovan met in Frankfurt with Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson, who had just been named Chief U.S. War Crimes Prosecutor by the new president, Harry Truman. During the meeting, Dulles

0:58 underlined the various ways that he could be of use as Jackson prepared the cases, including providing German witnesses for the prosecution as well as secret enemy documents. Jackson was delighted by Dulles' offer of assistance, noting in his diary that he was a godsend. Donovan further reinforced the relationship with Jackson's team

1:25 by putting a number of OSS agents on his staff. Now, keep in mind, Allen Dulles has already prepared to ratline Nazis out. And just like he did with JFK's assassination, he worms his way in to basically controlling Nuremberg. And that's what people need to understand, both Allen Dulles and Wild Bill Donovan. They infiltrated the staff.

1:55 of Nuremberg. Jackson after having agreed to this began realizing that he had fallen into an OSS trap. It became clear to the Nuremberg prosecutor that Donovan and Dulles harbored ulterior motives and agenda that did not always mesh with the interest of justice. The tensions between

2:29 Donovan and Jackson began to grow in July when the OSS chief moved to take over what Nuremberg prosecutors referred to as the trial's economic case. As Wall Street lawyers, Donovan and Dulles considered themselves uniquely equipped to take charge of the case against the industrialists and bankers who had financed Hitler's regime. And they were the lawyers from the people whose money

2:59 financed Hitler's regime. But such a role would have given the two OSS men the ability to control the legal fate of German business figures who had strong ties to their own Wall Street circles. Robert Jackson was close to RFK, excuse me, to FDR.

3:31 was a part of FDR's Justice Department. He had taken on corporate interests like the Mellon family and fought tax evasion and antitrust battles. Well aware of the corporate conflict of interest that Donovan and Dulles brought to the Nuremberg case, Jackson stunned the OSS chief by informing him that he would not be leading the prosecution of Hitler's financiers at Nuremberg.

3:59 Jackson quickly discovered that his concerns were well-founded. As the trial start date approached that fall, Donovan began communicating with Goring and Slatt, whom he recognized as the two most financially astute men among those accused. Goring had amassed huge economic power under Hitler's regime, organizing state-run mining, steel, and weapons enterprises.

4:24 and taking control of heavy industries in the country overran by the Nazis. Slatt, for his part, had remained Hitler's banker. That's what he was referred to as. He had remained a well-respected figure in New York, London, and Swiss banking circles, even after selling his soul to Hitler. Slatt later fell out with Hitler and spent the final days of the war.

4:53 in the VIP section of Dachau where prisoners received lenient treatment. And other books that I have read said that was basically arranged in order to make him look like he was falling out of favor with Hitler, but was basically in bed with him the entire time. It would just give him some type of leverage at any post-war forum like Nuremberg.

5:22 The banker knew where much of the Nazi Germany's assets were hidden, which continued to make him valuable. Behind the scenes, Donovan took the shameless step of working out a deal with these two prominent defendants, offering them leniency in return for their testimony against other accused Hitler accomplices. When the OSS chief informed Jackson and his legal team that he had cut a tentative deal with, of all people,

5:51 Goring and Slatt, the prosecutors, were aghast. Telford Taylor, Jackson's assistant prosecutor, later called Donovan's actions ill-conceived and dangerous. Goring was a surviving leader and the symbol of Nazism. To put him forward as a man who could tell the truth about the Third Reich and lay bare guilt of its leaders, as Donovan appeared to expect, was nothing short of ludicrous.

6:19 On November 26, a few days after the trial began, Jackson wrote a letter to Donovan making it clear that their views were far apart and there was no role for the OSS chief on Nuremberg's team. By the end of the month, Donovan was gone. But Allen Dulles was much more subtle in his art of power than Wild Bill Donovan. He would continue to play a crafty role in the dispensation of justice or just the opposite.

6:48 not only during the first trial, but through the 11 subsequent Nuremberg trials, which stretched from 1946 to 49. In all, some 200 accused German war criminals were prosecuted at Nuremberg, and hundreds more would be tried in military and civilian courts in the following decades. But due to Dulles' carefully calibrated interventions, a number of Europe's most notorious war criminals, men who should have found themselves

7:17 In the dock at Nuremberg, where they almost certainly would have been convicted of capital crimes, escaped justice. Some were helped to flee through rat lines through Franco's Spain, the Middle East, South America, and even to the United States. Others were eased into new lives of power and influence in post-war West Germany, where they became essential confederates in Dulles' growing intelligence complex.

7:47 And of course, that's where Operation Gladio, because the Nazis were on, I don't know if you guys know, but there's two basic structures set up at NATO, one on the civilian side and one on the military side. And the civilian side for about the first 20 years was all of the leading people, for the most part, were Nazis, as was Reinhard Galen running the Galen organization.

8:17 That basically gave roots to Operation Gladio. Near the end of 1945, Dulles returned home to New York, where on December 3rd, a few days before leaving government service, he was asked to talk about post-war Germany at a meeting of the Council of Foreign Relations. He felt at home in the council's headquarters.

8:41 on Park Avenue, and his remarks were frank and unfiltered. The first Nuremberg trial had just begun, and Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech was months in the future, but Dulles had already sounding, was creating the theme of a future Cold War. The United States must not go too, this is, let's see, the United States must not go too far in its efforts to cleanse Germany of its Nazi past.

9:10 Dulles told the meeting, quote, most men of the caliber required to run the new Germany suffer a political taint, unquote. He went on to say, we have already found out that you can't run railroads without taking in some Nazi party members. Dulles went on to explain it was essential to ensure a strong West Germany. Signs of Soviet aggression were already glaringly apparent, except that it wasn't.

9:42 The promises at the Allied leaders' Yalta conference said that the Russians were acting like thugs and probably had 10 million people enslaved. For Dulles, the wartime alliance that had defeated Hitler was already dead. In fact, he had been planning throughout the war for this moment when the Western powers, including elements of the Third Reich,

10:14 would turn on Moscow. On October 1st, 1946, after nearly a year-long trial, the fates of the 21 Nuremberg defendants were finally read aloud in the stuffy courtroom. Three were acquitted, including Slat, the banker. Seven received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. Many, like convicted Nazi criminals in the early Cold War years,

10:42 A number of the Nuremberg defendants sentenced to prison were later beneficiaries of politically motivated interventions and early release. Few of the some 5,000 convicted Nazis were still in prison after 1953. So basically you have, many of them had life sentences and the, well, some of them were even sentenced to death that were still.

11:12 in the prison that weren't hung. And it was commuted to life in prison. And then those sentences were basically time served eventually when the cameras were off. A number, let's see, a number of the interventions on behalf of fortunate war criminals can be traced to Allen Dulles. 11 of the original Nuremberg defendants did face swift and final justice.

11:44 Sentenced to hang by the neck until dead, among them was Goring, whom not even Bill Donovan was able to save. He had predictably proclaimed his innocence to the end. The only motive which guided me was my ardent love for my people. This proved too much even for his fellow defendants. Hitler's former vice chancellor, Franz von Poppen, who angrily confronted Goring,

12:14 Later during a court lunch break, quote, who in the world is responsible for all this destruction if not you? You haven't taken the responsibility for anything, unquote. Goring just laughed at him. Goring feared death by the noose and he requested a soldier's honorable exit by firing squad. When this last request was denied, Goring resulted.

12:40 to the favorite Nazi means of self-annihilation, cracking a glass capsule of cyanide with his teeth. For men who had callously dispatched millions to death, the Reich's high officials proved sensitive about their own method of departure. According to Telford Taylor, it was likely that one of Goring's American guards, an army lieutenant by the name of Jack Tex Willis,

13:08 who smuggled the poison capsule into the condemned Nazi cell. Years after Tex Willis' own death, his widow showed a visitor a small trove of treasures, including a solid gold Mont Blanc fountain pen and a Swiss luxury watch, both inscribed with Goring's name, that had been given to him in exchange for his instant death. Goring's invasion

13:37 of the gallows proved wise the following morning the 10 remaining men who had been sentenced to death filled one by one into the area adjacent to the courtroom where scaffolding was with a cracked plaster wall and glaring lighting it had hosted basketball games

14:04 The chief hangman, a squat, hard-drinking army master sergeant from San Antonio by the name of John Woods, was an experienced executioner with numerous hangings to his credit. But due to sloppiness or ill will, the Nuremberg hangings were not professional at all. The drop was not long enough, so most of the condemned dangled in agony at the end of their ropes for long stretches of time before they died. Field marcher

14:33 Field Marshal Wilhelm Kettel, Hitler's war minister and second highest ranking soldier after Goring, to be tried at Nuremberg, suffered the longest, thrashing around for 24 minutes. When the dead men were later photographed, they looked particularly ghoulish, since the swinging trapdoor had smashed and bloodied their faces as the men fell. Another flaw.

15:03 most likely intentional julius stretcher defiant to the end screaming a piercing high hitler as he began climbing the wooden steps of the scaffolding as the noose was placed around his neck he spat at woods the bolsheviks will hang you one day he said the short drop failed to kill him woods was forced to descend from the platform

15:32 Grab his swinging body and yank. After the first executions, the American colonel in charge asked for a break. The soldiers on the execution team paced nervously, smoking and speaking among themselves. But after it was all over, Woods pronounced himself perfectly satisfied. He said, quote, never saw a hanging go-offs any better, unquote.

16:01 The hangman never expressed any doubt about his historic role at Nuremberg. Quote, I hang those 10 Nazis and I am proud of it, unquote. Woods would later, a few years later, electrocute himself while repairing machinery at a military base in the Marshall Islands. That's how he died.

16:29 The sectors of Germany occupied by the U.S. and its allies tried to quickly forget the war. Hollywood musicals and cowboy adventures flooded the movie theater in West Germany, but in the Soviet-controlled East, it was not so merry. In the early post-war period, there was a barrage of dark movies, one of them, Murders Among Us.

16:58 grappled disturbingly with the Nazi ghost that still haunted Germany. Produced in 1946, the Soviet-run studio in East Berlin, Murders Among Us, was directed by a once promising young filmmaker who had made his own moral compromises in order to continue working under Hitler. His film reverberates with guilt. In the film,

17:29 A German surgeon who had served with the German army returns to Berlin after the war. The city is a monument to rubble. It seems to have been deconstructed stone by stone. The filmmaker needed no studio backlot or special effects. Demolished Berlin was his soundstage. The character who wants to forget everything he has witnessed during the war.

18:02 wanders drunk and obliviated through the city's ruins, but his past won't release him. He comes across his former commander, a happily shallow man who, despite the atrocities he ordered during the war, he has returned to a prosperous life as a factory owner. Don't look so sad, the actor tells the doctor as they pick their way through the rubble. Every error

18:32 offers its chance if you find them. Helmets from saucepans are saucepans from helmets. It's the same game you must manage. The doctor's bitterness deepens as he observes Berlin being profitably revived by the very men that destroyed it. One day fortified with liquor, he comes across a lively nest of vermin scurrying among the rubble. Rats, rats everywhere. The city is alive again.

19:02 By the end of the film, the main character, the doctor, has emerged from his drunken stupor and has begun to consider a path of action. How do you make a better world after a reign of terror like Hitler's? Should he kill a man? Should he try to bring him to justice? Murder Among Us ends on a hopeful note.

19:34 Former Nazi behind bars, no longer looking smug, but stricken. Why are you doing this to me? He screams as images of his victims float ghost-like around him. When the movie was produced, the first Nuremberg trial was still underway, and it looked to the world as if justice would indeed prevail. But as the years went by, a surprising number of men was not brought to justice, thanks to officials like Dulles.

20:03 Many remained free. Alan Dulles' most audacious intervention on behalf of the major Nazi war criminals took place in the later days of the war. The story of the relationship between Dulles and SS General Karl Wolf, Himmler's former chief of staff and commander of the Nazi security forces in Italy. It was a long and tangled relationship, but perhaps it's best.

20:34 To begin at the particularly dire moment for Wolfe, on April 26, 1945, less than two weeks before the end of the war, that morning, soon after arriving at the SS command post in a quaint town nestled in the foothills of the Italian Alps on the shores of Lake Como, Wolfe was surrounded by a well-armed unit of Italian partisans.

21:01 The partisans had established positions around the entire SS compound, a luxurious state that had been seized by the Nazis from the Locatelli family, which was a wealthy dynasty of cheese manufacturers. Wolfe had no way to break through the siege and his capture seemed imminent. As chief of all SS and Gestapo units in Italy, Wolfe was a well-known figure to the Italian resistance.

21:30 who blamed him for the reprisal killings of many civilians in response to partisan attacks on Nazi targets, as well as for the torture and murder of numerous resistant fighters. He fell into the partisans' hands. The SS commander was not likely to make it out alive. He was a former advertising executive. He understood the power of imagery. The SS chief made Wolf

22:03 Himmler made Wolf his principal liaison to Hitler's headquarters, where he quickly became a favorite. Hitler enjoyed showing off Wolf at his dinner parties and made sure that he was by his side during war's tense moments when German forces invaded Poland and Hitler prepared to join his troops at the front. Wolf is quoted as saying,

22:32 To my great, and I openly admit joyful, surprise, I was ordered to the innermost Hitler headquarters. Hitler wanted me to have me nearby because he knew that he could rely on me completely. He had known me for a long time and rather well. The desperation of his situation was underlined the following day when Benito Mussolini, Italy's once all-powerful dictator,

23:01 whose status had been reduced to that of Wolf's ward, was captured by partisans at a roadblock on the northern tip of Lake Como while fleeing with his dwindling entourage for Switzerland. Taken to a crumbling but still grand city hall nearby, he was assured that he would be treated mercifully. Don't worry, the mayor said, you will be all right.

23:35 Mussolini was later quoted as saying, I am crucified by my destiny when he was visited by a chaplain. When his captors asked him why he had allowed the Germans to exact harsh retribution on the Italian people, Mussolini said that it was beyond his power. My hands were tied. There were very, very little possibility of opposing General Albert.

24:05 Kessling Ring, who was the field commander of the German armed forces in Italy, and General Wolfe and what they did. Again and again in conversation with General Wolfe, I mentioned the stories of people being tortured and other brutal deeds that had come to my ears. One day, Wolfe replied that it was the only means of extracting the truth, and even the dead spoke the truth in his torture chambers. In the end, Mussolini found no mercy.

24:35 He and his mistress, Claretta Pataki, who insisted on sharing his fate, were machine gunned down and their bodies were put on display in Milan. Mussolini's body was subjected to particular abuse by the large, frantic crowd. One woman fired five shots into his head, one for each of her dead five sons.

24:59 The bodies were then strung up by their feet from the overhanging girders of a garage roof, where they were subjected to further indignities. When he heard about Mussolini's gross finale, Hitler, who near the end had told Mussolini that he was perhaps the only friend I had in the world, ordered that his own body be burned after he killed himself. General Wolf knew that he too faced a mercy.

25:30 merciless end if he fell captive in Italy. But unlike Mussolini, the SS commander had a very dedicated and powerful friend in an Indian camp. That was Alan Dulles. Alan Dulles received an urgent phone call in his burnt office from Max Weibel, his contact in Swiss intelligence. Weibel reported that Carl Wolf was surrounded by partisans in his villa.

25:59 There was a great danger they might storm the villa and kill Wolf. The SS general was the key to Dulles' greatest wartime ambition, securing a separate peace with Nazi forces in Italy before the Soviet army could push into Austria and forward into Italy. With the communists playing a dominant role in the Italian resistance, Dulles knew that blocking the advance of the Red Army into northern Italy

26:29 was crucial. Dulles and his intelligence colleagues had been secretly meeting with Wolf and his SS aides since late February, trying to work out a separate surrender of the German forces in Italy that would save the Nazi officers next and win the OSS bymaster glory. The negotiations for Operation Sunrise, as Dulles optimistically christened his covert peace project,

26:58 was highly delicate. Exposure would spell disaster for both men. According to Wolfe, during the diplomatic courtship, Dulles identified himself as a special representative and personal friend of FDR. In fact, by negotiating with the SS General, Dulles was clearly in violation of FDR's policy of unconditional surrender. Just days before, Wolfe was trapped in his villa.

27:29 Dulles had been expressly forbidden by Washington to continue his contact with Wolf. Meanwhile, the SS commander's secret diplomatic efforts both dovetailed and competed with numerous other Nazi peace initiatives coming Dulles' way, including that of his boss, Heinrich Himmler, who was also shrewd enough to realize that the German war effort was doomed.

27:57 and tried to cut his own deal. In his backroom dealings with Dulles, Wolfe at times found himself an emissary of the Nazi high command and at other times a traitorous agent working at cross purposes. Wolfe, now surrounded by Italian resistance fighters at his villa, his end seemed near. And with it, all the painstaking and duplicitous efforts undertaken by the two men

28:26 the previous two months on behalf of Operation Sunrise. Dulles had too much at stake to let this happen. Alerted to Wolfe's predicament, he flew into action, mounting a rescue party. Dulles knew that risking brave men to save a Nazi war criminal in the interest of his own unsanctioned peace mission was an act of brazen insubordination that would cost him his intelligence career if he was caught.

29:00 So, he had a loyal subordinate, Garrow Von Schultz Botternich, to oversee the rescue. Dulles would later say, I told him that under the strict orders that I had received, I could not get in touch with Wolf. He listened silently for a moment. Then he said that since the whole Operation Sunrise affair seemed to have come to an end, he would like to go on a little trip for a few days.

29:32 I noticed a twinkle in his eyes, and as he told me later, he noticed one in mine. I realized, of course, what he was going to do, and he intended to do it on his own responsibility. Hold on just a second. I think my rumble feed just, like, crapped out. Hold on just a second. Oop. Let me see if I can get that back up and going.

30:24 I'll try it in a few minutes. All right. When it came to saving Wolf, Dulles' assistant shared his boss's zeal. He was from a high-ranking European family and a relative of the Stennis family, whose fortune had helped finance Hitler. The Gabernitzes had broken with Nazis early on.

30:58 And Dulles helped funnel their money to safe havens outside of Germany, as he had done for many wealthy Germans, including those who remained loyal to the Nazi regime before and after the war. Dulles and Gabernitz were also tied together in their political views. They both believed the moderate members of Hitler's regime must be salvaged from the war's wreckage and incorporated into post-war Germany.

31:29 But the extremely generous standards of Dulles and Gabernich, even Karl Wolf, qualified as a redeemable Nazi. After being dispatched, he was accompanied by a Swiss secret agent, Weibel, jumped on an Italian-bound train arriving at the Swiss border later that evening when they were met by one of Dulles' top agents, Don Jones.

31:59 a man well known to the Italian resistance fighters in the border area by his nickname, Scotty. Gavernich thought that Scotty, a man who risked his life each day fighting SS soldiers, would balk at the idea of saving the general who commanded them. But he was on board as well. A convoy of three cars set off to Lake Como. One vehicle carried the OSS.

32:28 Agent Scotti and three Swiss intelligence operatives. The second was filled with the Italian partisans and a third conveyed to SS officials Dulles had recruited to ease the convoy's passage through German-controlled areas. It was one of the most bizarre missions in wartime Europe, a joint U.S.-German rescue mission for a high-ranking Nazi general. As the convoy

32:59 proceeded to the lake. Partisans opened fire on the cars. Scotty bravely jumped out of one of the vehicles, stood in the headlights, praying that the resistance soldiers would recognize him and stop shooting. Fortunately, they did. There was more gunfire and even a grenade attack later on. But finally, the rescue team arrived at the villa.

33:24 After talking their way past the partisan's blockade as well as the SS guard, they entered the villa and found General Wolfe in full SS uniform as if he had been expecting them all along. He offered the rescue party some of his favorite scotch, volunteering that the whiskey had been exappropriated from the British by Rommel during the North African campaign.

33:50 It was after two in the morning when the caravan arrived safely back with their special passenger who had changed into civilian clothes for the journey. Gavernich was anxiously awaiting the rescue team's return in the railroad station cafe. He had no intentions of greeting Wolf in public. But when the SS general heard that Dulles' aide was there, he bounded over to him and shook his hand.

34:19 I will never forget what you have done for me, he declared. Dulles and Gavernage would learn that the SS man had a strange sense of gratitude. In the coming years, Wolf would be a millstone around their necks. Gavernage, who had been in the same clothes all night, took a train to his family's villa. He listened to the 7 a.m. radio broadcast, which was filled with news.

34:51 of Mussolini's capture and other dramatic bulletins from Lake Como. Gavernich kept expecting to hear news of General Wolfe's rescue by a U.S.-led team of commandos. He was determined that his boss' name be kept out of the story. It would have made a lovely headlines in the paper, he later said. German SS general rescued from Italian patriots by an American consul.

35:20 It took Wolf several days of high-stakes diplomacy before his maneuvers finally resulted in the surrender of German forces on the Italian front on May 2, 1945. By then, Hitler was dead, the German military machine was all but collapsed, and it was just six days before the capitulation of the Axis forces in Europe. Operation Sunrise saved few lives and had little impact on the course of the war.

35:48 It did succeed, however, in creating a new set of international tensions that some historians would identify as the beginning of the Cold War. Dulles and Wolf's maneuvers aggravated Stalin's paranoid disposition. While he was still alive, Roosevelt, whom Stalin genuinely liked and trusted, was able to reassure the Soviet leader that the US had no intentions of betraying their alliance. But after FDR's death, Stalin fears

36:17 of a stab in the back where the surrender on the Italian front was signed by Germany and American commanders only grew more intense. His suspicions were not unfounded. After the separate peace was declared, some German divisions in Italy were told not to lay down their arms, but to get ready to fight the Russians alongside Americans and British.

36:44 Even Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman, who would become a dedicated cold warrior, took a dim view of Operation Sunrise and tried unsuccessfully to shut it down. Truman later wrote in his memoirs that Dallas unauthorized diplomacy stirred up a tempest of trouble for him in his first few days as president. Operation Sunrise would become Alan Dulles' creation myth.

37:10 the legend that loomed over his entire intelligence career, for the rest of his life. The spymaster would energetically work the publicity machine on the secret surrender, generating magazine articles and more than one book and attempting to turn the tale into a Hollywood thriller. It was, according to the story that Dulles assiduously spun, throughout the rest of his life, a feat of daring personal diplomacy. Time magazine wrote,

37:39 Of course, that was under the ownership of his close friend, Henry Luce, who could always be counted on to give Dulles good press. He trumpeted Operation Sunrise as one of the most stunning triumphs in the history of the secret wartime diplomacy. Karl Wolf was Alan Dulles' kind of Nazi. Like Hitler and Himmler, Dulles admired Wolf's gentlemanly comportment and found him

38:09 good looking. He struck Dulles as a man with the right sort of pedigree. Wolfe liked to present himself as a high-level administrator who was unsullied by the inhumane operations of his government. He was not one of the Nazi party, vulgar anti-Semites, he would later insist. He took pride in rescuing the occasional Jewish prisoner from the Gestapo dungeons, a banker, a tennis celebrity, for instance.

38:37 Eichmann sneeringly referred to Wolf as one of the dandy officers of the SS who wore white gloves and didn't want to know anything about what was going on. Wolf was financially a savvy fixer, a man whom the Nazi hierarchy could rely on to get things done. Wolf originally pursued a career in banking before entering advertising. There were unlimited opportunities.

39:03 in the Nazi movement for a polished blonde warrior like Wolf. His business background gave Wolf cachet with the SS where the skills were in short supply. It was Wolf who was put in charge of Himmler's important circle of friends. And if you guys don't know what that is, that's covered heavily in Antony Sutton's book of Wall Street and Hitler.

39:32 and where they were money laundering money to Germany. It was a select group of some three dozen German industrialists and bankers who supplied the SS with a stream of slush money, most of that from London and New York. Himmler was no businessman, and I took care of banking matters for him, Wolf would later say. The corporate donors were given special access to pools of slave.

40:00 They were also invited to attend high-level meetings and special Nazi ceremonies. It was said that Wolf took such good care of the wealthy contributors at the 1933 Nuremberg rally that they were pampered more than Hitler himself. The privileged circle of friends was even taken on private tours of Dachau and other concentration camps escorted by Himmler and Wolf.

40:30 Presumably, the SS shut down the camp's crematoria during the distinguished visits so they didn't have to smell the unpleasant smell. Dulles and Wolfe harbored similar political motives. Both viewed the Soviet army's advance into Western Europe as a catastrophe, but they also shared business interests throughout the war.

40:54 Dulles used his OSS command post in Switzerland to look out for Sullivan and Cromwell's business clients in Europe, stopping the war before their clients' manufacturing and power plants were bombed. And some people argue they weren't bombed on purpose. Under the terms of Operation Sunrise, Wolf specifically agreed not to blow up the region's hydroelectric plants, which generated power and water from the Alps.

41:23 Most of these installations were owned by multinational holding corporations called Italian Superpower Corporation. It just so happens to have been incorporated in Delaware in 1928. Italian Superpower's board was evenly distributed between American and Italian utility executives.

41:48 By the following year, the power company was swallowed up by bigger J.P. Morgan finance cartel. The ties between Italian superpower and Dulles' financial circle were reinforced when, towards the end of the war, the spymaster's good friend, New York banker James Russell Forgan, took over as his SS boss in London. Forgan was one of the Italian

42:16 superpowers directors. Dulles concluded that Wolfe was, in effect, a member of his international club, a man with similar views, connections, and willingness to do business. It was a calculation of power. Operation Sunrise was, for both of them, a bold, high-wire career move. After he decided that Wolfe was a dependable partner, Dulles went to great lengths to rehabilitate his image.

42:46 In his reports back to OSS headquarters, he framed Wolf in the best possible light as a moderate and probably the most dynamic German personality in North Italy. Although some US and British intelligence officials suspected him as serving as an agent of Hitler and Himmler and trying to drive a wedge between the allies, Dulles insisted that

43:10 the German general was acting heroically and selflessly to bring peace to Italy. Dulles knew from the beginning that working with Wolfe was an extremely risky proposition, not just because the Allies strict prohibition to doing it. Even many years later, when the evidence against Wolfe had grown to damning proportions, the old spy refused to pass judgment on him. The conclusion about Wolfe must be left to history, Alan Dulles wrote about Operation Sunrise.

43:44 rise in his memoirs, he was delaying a judgment that for many had long since become obvious. When Wolf was later confronted with the obscenity of the Nazi leadership war crimes, he would inevitably plead ignorance, claiming he occupied such a lofty perch in Hitler's regime that he did not learn about the death camps until the final days of the war.

44:09 When that tactic failed, he would claim that he had been powerless to stop the mass slaughter or he would fall back on legalisms and other technical evasions. But the stain on Wolfe were not so easily erased. Karl Wolfe, who would go down in history as one of the unknown giants of Hitler's Reich, was content to operate in the shadows.

44:37 He played a prominent administrative role in Hitler's assembly line. He was, as Time magazine later branded him, a bureaucrat of death. The Nuremberg trials would firmly establish the principle that administrators of murder, not just the actual executioners, could be found guilty of war crimes. Although he was not a central cog in the daily operations of the Holocaust like Adolf Eichmann,

45:03 Wolf, as Himmler's top troubleshooter, frequently intervened to ensure smooth efficiency at the labor camps. During the Nuremberg trials, a highly incriminating letter written by Wolf would emerge that made it clear how important his intervention could be in keeping the trains rolling to the death camps. In July of 1942, after the trains hauling Polish-Jewish to Treblinka,

45:31 gas chambers was temporarily halted because of germans military demand for rail cars wolf appealed to a nazi transportation official for help after the rail shortage was successfully resolved wolf sent off a heartfelt thank you to getting them back on track i was especially pleased he wrote to receive the information that for the last 14 days a train has been leaving daily

45:58 With 5,000 members of the chosen people. And that in this way, we are in a position to carry out the population movement at an accelerated tempo. Population movement to a death camp. Wolf also played a key administrative role.

46:21 in a series of medical experiments on human subjects at the notorious Dachau camp in 1942 and 1943. The research was conducted by Luftwaffe's doctors, who were intent on deciding how to increase the survival rates of German pilots. It was supported by Himmler, who fancied himself a man of science. In the first round of experiments, human guinea pigs called by the SS from Dachau's ranks.

46:52 of the damned were forced inside a low oxygen chamber to determine how long pilots could fly at high altitudes before passing out. Inside the chambers, victims would grasp for air, crying out, and finally collapsing. It was up to the doctor in charge of the experiments whether the victims would be revived.

47:17 A subsequent round of medical experiments at Dachau was aimed at best ways to revive German aviators if they were rescued after crashing into frigid North Sea. Camp inmates were forced to stand naked in freezing weather up to 14 hours. Others were submerged in tanks of ice water for at least three hours at a time. The subjects of the initial freezing experiments all died, but then the doctors added a new twist.

47:47 They rewarmed their victims in a hot bath and then revived them further with animal heat provided by female gypsies. The victim, after being nearly frozen to death, suddenly found his naked body in the embrace of four women that brought him back to life. Wolfe should have been sitting in the dock of Nuremberg as part of the first round of defendants.

48:13 but it was the cruder and less connected executioner, Ernest Kaltenberner, who would hang for the sins of the SS. Nor was Wolfe in the following year when the doctor's trials began, though he would have been singled out by prosecutors as one of the principal masterminds behind the experiments. Throughout the Nuremberg proceedings and the legal challenges that confronted him in later years,

48:41 Wolfe was watched over by his guardian, Dulles and Gerald Von Slaltz-Gabernet, who made sure that the sword of justice never came down with its full might on Carl Wolfe. Among a few lives saved by Operation Sunrise Peace Gamut, as it turned out, was that of Wolfe himself and a few other officers that conspired with him.

49:08 On May 13, 1945, shortly after Sunrise's surrender, Carl Wolfe celebrated his 45th birthday at the villa of the Duke of Pistoia in Bolzano, a royal estate he had requisitioned as his final SS command post. Before his lunch party began, Wolfe relaxed on the villa's terrace with his SS aide and Sunrise partner, Eugene Dahlman.

49:37 who had served as an interpreter for Hitler and Himmler in Italy. It was a rather pleasant sight for them. As the two men gazed at Wolf's children and Dolman's dog running in the rose garden, Dolman, who could hear American tanks rumbling nearby, could not let himself enjoy the scenery.

50:08 I have a feeling that this is going to be your last birthday in sunny Italy, he said to the general. Wolf said back to him, you are not going to wind up in these lovely surroundings and basically you're not going to ruin my birthday. Shortly afterwards, Wolf's wife, a tall blonde beauty and former countess who had left her aging aristocratic

50:39 husband for her um general came onto the terrace and announced lunch dolman's instincts as usual proved correct as wolf and his guests staff officers in dress uniforms sip champagne they suddenly heard the growl of tanks outside the americans while wolf said in a deflated voice

51:06 The soldiers in the white helmets of military policemen burst through the doors carrying machine guns and herding Wolf's children in. Wolf was aghast, protesting indignantly that Alan Dulles, the president's personal representative in Switzerland, had promised him honorable treatment. But the military police officers were unimpressed. Put your things in a small case. We're leaving. The general bid farewell to his wife and children outside the villa.

51:35 And a mob of Italians gathered to also send the SS officers off by pelting them with rocks and rotten eggs. The two Nazi VIPs were then stuffed inside an American Jeep and whisked away. First to Bolzano's dungeon and then to another city with a sprawling film studio in Rome that the Allies had transformed into a POW camp.

52:03 Wolf began invoking Allen Dulles' name to anyone that would listen. The question of whether Dulles had promised Wolf immunity from war crime prosecution in return for his Sunrise collaboration would nag the intelligence chief for many years. Dulles would repeatedly insist that he had never asked for protection and it wasn't offered. According to Dulles, the SS commander had maintained all along that he was not a war criminal.

52:32 In truth, Wolfe's growing confidence as he successfully dodged prosecution over the following years derived from the fact that Dulles had in fact offered him immunity. Two of the Swiss intermediaries involved in the negotiation would later confirm that that was the arrangement. Dulles' negotiating team went so far as to promise Wolfe that he and other decent members of the NYPD

52:59 Nazi high command would be allowed to participate in West Germany's government. Wolf was even given to believe that he might be awarded an education post. Dulles threw his cloak of protection over Wolf from the very start. The SS general spent the first days of his confinement as a privileged guest of the U.S. military. He had been warned

53:26 that he might have to spend some time behind bars to deflect any criticism of preferential treatment. But Wolf enjoyed VIP treatment, receiving better food than the rest of the prisoners, and even allowed to wear his full uniform and a gun. In August, he was transferred to a small U.S.-run POW in Austria, a lakeside resort.

53:52 According to a highly embarrassing article that ran in the New York Herald Tribune, Wolfe enjoyed a pleasant summer by the lake with his family. That summer was the period of greatest jeopardy for Wolfe as the Nuremberg prosecutors selected their first list of defendants and the world outcry for justice was at its peak. Justice Robert Jackson and the allied legal staff considered Wolfe a primary target.

54:22 that named him as one of the major war criminals. With Hitler and Himmler both dead, Wolf was among the highest Nazi officials to survive the war. Determined to keep Wolf out of the defendant's dock, however, Dulles went so far as to bury incriminating evidence, including one particular damning OSS report that blamed the Nazi general not only for the wholesale slaughter of populations,

54:48 and the collective reprisal against Italian citizens, but also for the torture and murder of OSS agents in Bolzano SS headquarters. The feelings against Wolf was running understandably high, even in the OSS, where the SS general was suspected of personally interrogating American intelligence officers.

55:12 But Dulles betrayed his own men, blocking the OSS report on Wolfe from ever reaching the Nuremberg staff. Instead, it was Dulles' portrait of Wolfe as a moderate and gentleman that was sent to the legal team, with a recommendation that he not be prosecuted. Dulles succeeded in keeping Wolfe off the Nuremberg defendants list. The general would appear at the trial as a witness, testifying on behalf of his fellow war criminal.

55:44 Herman Goring. But the Nuremberg prosecutors was preparing for a new round of trials. And as the war crimes tribunal were organized in Italy and other countries that had fallen under the boot of Nazi occupation, Wolf was still found himself behind bars.

56:04 Realizing that the general was still not safe from prosecution, Dulles arranged for him to be diagnosed with a nervous disorder and in the spring of 1946 was transferred to a psychiatric institution in Austria. Wolf knew that Dulles had engineered the diagnosis to shield him from prosecution, but he also suspected it as a way to prevent me from talking.

56:29 The general knew that he continued to have great leverage over Dulles, and if he revealed the immunity deal that the two men had worked out, his career would be over. Wolfe also was privy to another Sunrise dirty secret, the extent to which the separate peace pact was a cold betrayal of the U.S. and Britain to their Soviet allies. In fact, Dulles was so concerned about what Wolfe might be telling his interrogators behind bars.

56:56 that he began to have the conversations taped. Wolfe's imprisonment stretched on and he grew increasingly frustrated and began talking more freely about a mutual understanding that he had with Dulles. Wolfe increasingly vocal behavior was not lost on Dulles and other American and British authorities involved in the Sunrise deal. At one point, his jailers quietly offered him an open door to freedom.

57:23 But Wolf did not want to live the rest of his life on the run, hiding out in either Argentina or Chile. He was determined to hold the Sunrise Cabal to their deal. He wanted to be fully exonerated and allowed to regain a position in the new Germany. In February of 47, Wolf played his trump card, writing a letter to President Truman in which he boldly revealed the terms of the Sunrise Agreement.

57:52 Wolf informed Truman that in return for cooperation on the secret surrender, I received from Mr. Dulles and his secretary an explicit promise of freedom for himself and his fellow meritorious SS collaborators on the Sunrise deal. It was now time Wolf informed Truman to honor the bargain. The German POW

58:17 followed up his letter to Truman with an equally emphatic note to Dulles, in which he managed to strike a tone that was both courtly and threatening. Wolfe insisted Dulles must come to his aid and that of his entire Sunrise Squadron to win the honorable release from captivity. His direct appeal to Dulles is not only my right, but my nightly duty.

58:43 By negotiating secretly with the U.S. spymaster, Wolf reminded him, he had saved your honor and reputation at the risk of our lives. Wolf stirred the pot further by sending a similar letter to Major General Lyman Lemitsker, who had worked closely with Dulles on Operation Sunrise, to include attending the meeting. Lemitsker

59:11 shared Dulles' strong anti-Soviet sentiments, and he had colluded with the OSS officials to keep the secret talks with Wolf going forward, even after Roosevelt and the Allied command thought they had pulled the plug on Sunrise. After the German surrender, the ambitious Lemitsker had also worked with Dulles to promote Sunrise in the press as an espionage triumph.

59:40 When Wolfe's letter reached Lemitzger, he was stationed at the Pentagon, where he had been appointed to the position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lemitzger would ultimately rise to become the Army Chief of Staff under President Kennedy, where once again his career would be fatefully linked with Dulles. As soon as Lemitzger received

1:00:06 The letter from Wolf, who appealed to him as one general to another to make sure Sunrise Steel was honored, Lemesger smelled trouble. As his letter to Dulles, Wolf's appeal to Lemesger melded the German courtesy with a flash of steel. Wolf signed off in a clear warning, telling Lemesger that he was hoping to resolve the situation as comrades before he was forced to air his grievances publicly.

1:00:32 Lemesker fired off a letter to Dulles, who was in Switzerland at the time, telling him that he was anxious to discuss the matter with him. Thus began a series of carefully warded letters and private discussions between the two most prominent Americans who were associated with the Sunrise deal. Dulles, who was savvy enough to never put his agreement with Wolfe in writing, warned Lemesker to be very careful in communicating with Wolfe.

1:01:02 He has proved to be clever, tricky, and wily. The spymaster appeared to have a certain amount of professional respect for the Nazi. The circumspect communication between Dulles and Lemesker led to a flurry of behind-the-scenes efforts on Wolfe's behalf. The last thing anyone wanted was a sensational trial, as Dulles put it, where Wolfe would undoubtedly spill his guts about Sunrise. In March of 1948, Wolfe was transferred to a detention center in Hamburg.

1:01:32 And instead of being tried for war crimes, he was put through the denazification hearing in a German court. Dulles supplied Wolfe's defense team with a glowing affidavit saying, in my opinion, General Wolfe's action materially contributed to bringing an end to the end of the war in Italy. The ever loyal Gavernet showed up as a character witness.

1:02:02 In person, the German court was impressed by the defendant's influential friends. Found guilty of a minor charge of being a member of the SS with knowledge of criminal acts, Wolf received a four-year sentence. Through Dulles' lobbying efforts, the sentence was reduced to time served. And in June of 49, Wolf walked out of the men's prison at Hamburg every man.

1:02:28 Gavernix and other Sunrise intermediaries were there to celebrate the war criminals' release. It seemed like old times, and we missed you greatly, he wrote Dulles. And that's where we will stop for today. Funny how Lyman Lemonsker always shows up in these stories. Go ahead, SR. Thank you, Colonel, and thank everyone for attending here on Spaces and on...

1:03:08 rumbling and suffering through some of the things we're going through over there we really appreciate it um what really got me here when you started talking about wolf there were two two things i was thinking about right off the top and why dullis took a liking to this man and the reason i could come the biggest reason i could come up with is you need a poster boy

1:03:33 We all have poster boys. The Marine Corps has poster boys. The Army has poster boys. That's the way it works. That's how you recruit. But along with that comes Wolf. And what really surprised me about Wolf when we're working towards getting him free from all of this stuff is he knew he would have to go to Argentina or Chile to hide out.

1:04:02 How did he know that? Because that's where the large majority of them went. That's where the colony of dignity was in Chile. That guy that created that was a Nazi too. Where the pedophiles all hung out and they turned it into a torture camp after Pinochet took over. It was ran by Nazis. And of course, we know all of them went to a whole collusion.

1:04:31 club of them went to Argentina. That's why. But what's not mentioned in here and part of Sunrise, and I don't know why because it's well known if you're looking at Gladio. To me, the most significant part of Sunrise is the werewolf units were named after General Wolf. He ran the werewolf units.

1:05:00 with Reinhard Galen on the Eastern Front. He was one of the top dogs in that entire operation. And the sunrise, that's why Lyman Lemesker is even mentioned there. He was General Eisenhower's chief logistician and Operation Sunrise is the name of the meeting in Northern Italy that took place in order to turn.

1:05:26 Operation Gladio Stay Behind units called Werewolf units over to Alan Dulles. That was one of the major factors in that entire thing. So Dulles made the promise that if that network was turned over to the Americans and Brits, that they would make sure that he survived and that he turned out just fine, which he did.

1:05:56 But what I just read to you was the birth of Operation Gladio. Megan, go ahead. What astounds me about this chapter or this part, going back over all the other X spaces that you've hosted with all the Gladio stuff and whatnot, is if you just take a small look.

1:06:30 around the environment today and every last bit of this is playing out right freaking now and it makes me sick to my stomach to think that people that we want to see their heads on the chopping block are gonna get away with it it just it it i mean is is nobody paying attention to freaking history

1:06:55 Most people don't pay attention to real history because they think they're satisfied with the history that they were taught. And unfortunately, that history is not accurate at all, as we found out. But I don't think the people today are gonna get away with it. They have been getting away with it for the last 75 years. I do not think that we're leaving any of them

1:07:25 not held accountable. And what most people, they have their own personal list of people that they want to see indicted. But what most people don't understand is the people that we see their face, the Fauci's and the lawyers, they're not the people.

1:07:52 that will kill you. Not that Fauci's inventions didn't kill you, but they're not going to pick up a gun or a knife and kill you. They have an entire cadre of people inside the United States that are their assassins. And by sealing the border and doing these ice raids and

1:08:20 Doing all of the indictments of the money laundering and the people that are in America that have, in fact, in many cases, already killed Americans is a critical first step before you can go up the ladder. And most people want to start at the top, but you can't. Those people.

1:08:48 aren't going to be the ones that pick up a gun. The people that are going to pick up a gun are the MS-13s that are trafficking the drugs. And so under drug trafficking and all of this other stuff, these people are being rounded up so that there's not going to be this, will there be a few false flags? Potentially, but they had cells here in America all across the country.

1:09:16 And the ongoing operations right now is cleaning that up. And so I think once they get to the point where they feel like they have at least made major dents in all of these cells around the world or around the country, that you're going to see them start moving up the chain. Go ahead, Megan. And I'm going to I'm just going to say this as a red blooded.

1:09:47 patriot, veteran, American, 100%. It is refreshing for someone that I actually, I view you as a, I don't know how to put this, somebody in authority that is willing to point these facts out. And with going through all of these chapters and the books and everything that you've done, it is proven that

1:10:17 You got to get rid of the roots before you can chop up the tree. And people need to really stamp that in their freaking minds instead of just wanting to go for the big guys, which, like I said, we know from history that does not work.

1:10:38 Thank you again for your you're you're you're you're you're definitely on point. And I'm glad to hear someone actually say it that way because it needs to be put on a platform and put on blast. So thank you, Colonel. Sure. So you and I, you know, anybody that believes in the Second Amendment and protects themselves, we would be just fine if all hell broke out tomorrow.

1:11:04 But the preponderance of Americans would not. And that's why I think that step is critical is to get rid of as many of, and the exposure is just crazy. I mean, with all of the antifa cells and rounding them up, which is all part and parcel of this. You have them on both sides. So anyway, SR, go ahead.

1:11:32 Thank you, Colonel. I think I can help Megha in searching for the words in my own opinion anyway. You're a natural born leader, Colonel. That's the difference. There's no other way to describe it. People hear what you have to say. They take heed and they say, wow, she does have a point. And guess what? She's showing me why. It's a huge difference.

1:12:03 I don't know about natural born, but I always have been a person that kind of walked to my own drumbeat. And the military gave me the ability to learn how to be a leader. And it was an amazing journey. That is the one thing that I will be, that my education, I will be,

1:12:33 forever grateful for they do do a good job if you have the fundamental ethics and integrity to be a good leader because the skills that

1:12:51 And the responsibility, I mean, especially in the Air Force. I know the Army and Marines are very different. You spend the first four years as grunts. And yes, some people get promoted faster than others. But for the most part, the Army and the Marines on the enlisted side want people that know how to kill people. I mean, that's their job. In the Air Force, that's not the case.

1:13:17 When you're an enlisted person in the Air Force in maintenance or whatever, they spend a lot of time training you to be very technically competent in very complex systems. And they do everything they can to keep you in the military because they invest so much money in you.

1:13:37 And this is not a slam on the Marines in the Army, but especially in the Marines, what I learned later on when I was on the joint personnel team for personnel integration at the Department of Defense level is that the Marines specifically have a very closed reenlistment rate. For example, in the Air Force,

1:14:05 You, anybody that wants to re-enlist can re-enlist. There has been times during downsizing and stuff like that when that wasn't the case. But the majority of my 30 years, that was not the case. You had every single, they just went out of their way giving you bonuses to re-enlist and all of that stuff. Because again, you work on highly technical things and they empower you to be a leader.

1:14:33 a lot earlier. And in the Marines, they have a large number of trigger pullers. That's what they do. They kill people. And there's only so many people that they need in leadership positions. And so for every 50 that comes in, you may get a re-enlistment quota for, I don't know, 10% to be able to

1:14:59 re-enlist in your second term. And then after that, there's still a kind of a calling process. But for the most part, that first cut is critical. And I was dumbfounded by that. I mean, it makes perfect sense because you have a large need of people at the lower ranks that are combat troops.

1:15:27 That's not the case. In the Air Force, we send our pilots to war, not our enlisted people. So, and that's not all the way true. I mean, obviously PJs and them guys and TACPs, we do have wartime people on the enlisted side. But for the most part, the large portion of the enlisted population in the Air Force are.

1:15:51 always located. We're forward, we're in the theater. I mean, I was in the theater, but you're at a base repairing airplanes. You're not on the front lines. And it's just remarkable how different the services are in that respect. So luckily for me, my cousin had already joined the Air Force, so I did too. And the rest of that is history.

1:16:21 Why are you so mad? Go ahead. I'm just going to say this, Colonel. I appreciate your humility and being humble. There are and I think you know this. There are certain things about leadership that cannot be taught. And it is more of a morality thing. And I I'm going to blow your horn since you won't do it.

1:16:52 My morality comes from God. That's exactly what I'm talking about. That in itself is an aspect of leadership that is not taught, that is a given gift by God. And I appreciate your continued service to this country and the legacy that you are leaving. It's amazing.

1:17:21 And I appreciate you. Thank you. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. What I want to say here is you're absolutely right about the Marine Corps. Even though I was in the data processing side of the house and doing all these things with computers, I was never, ever relieved of grunt duties. Yeah. You still got to go through the process. Yep. Regardless if you want to or not. Yep.

1:17:52 So in that sense, you're absolutely right. So thank you. I just wanted to add to that.

1:17:58 Yeah, and what was amazing to me on this joint team that I was on, I was on it for quite a while because it took forever. And then they decided to ditch it because the army was so backwards that they'd never catch up with the other three services. So it was hilarious. They spent millions and millions and millions of dollars trying to build this joint personnel system that we could have all told them was doomed from the get-go because the army is like,

1:18:27 30 years behind everybody else technology-wise. And there was just no way that the system was ever going to work. But one of the things I found out being in aircraft maintenance in my prior life, it was funny because we were looking at all of the career fields, like everybody, like the Navy has flight ops.

1:18:52 the Marines have flight ops, the Army has flight ops, and the Air Force has flight ops. So we all have aircraft. And so some of the things down in the weeds level we were looking at is how every service has different entrance standards for enlisted people coming into the service initially. Like, for example, when I took my ASVAB,

1:19:17 I got like 90s. There's four categories and I got like 90s in all of them. So I could pretty much do anything I wanted to. I just wanted to be in aircraft maintenance. But the actual Air Force minimum requirement was like you had to get 70 in one area. And I think the other areas, the minimum was 30. The Marines to be aviation enlisted.

1:19:46 doing the exact same job in the Air Force, had to have higher standards than the Air Force. And that blew me away. But anyway, it was just, it was really, really weird. So anybody else have anything? Thank you for sticking with me. What I will do sometime this weekend is re-record for Rumble so we don't miss this chapter.

1:20:18 on the Rumble side for posterity reasons, just a shorter version of it. But anyway, all right. If no one else has anything else, we're gonna go ahead and call it a night. I appreciate you guys being here and I will be back at normal time tomorrow. Take care, everybody.

Entities here

Nazi Party50 Operation Sunrise25 Italy25 West Germany25 Allen Dulles25 Karl Wolff25 Nuremberg25 Nuremberg trials23 United States20 Strategic Services Unit18 World War II12 William J. Donovan12 Heinrich Himmler11 Italian Resistance10 Hermann Goring10 Soviet Union10 Switzerland10 Robert Jackson9 Adolf Hitler9 U.S. Air Force9 Lake Como7 Lyman Lemnitzer7 United Wa State Army7 Benito Mussolini6 United States Marine Corps6 United Kingdom5 Dachau5 Hjalmar Schacht5 Gustave Gilbert5 Harry S. Truman4 Operation Gladio4 West Berlin4 Garrow von Schulthess-Bottlenich4 Eugen Dollmann4 Otto Skorzeny4 John Wooden4 Soviet Intelligence3 Donald Jones3 Argentina3 Chile3

Claims made here

Harry S. Truman appointed Robert Jackson documented ▶ 0:31

“but higher duties called. All right, we're in May of 1945. Alan Dulles and OSS Chief Bill Donovan met in Frankfurt with Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson, who had just been named Chief U.…”

Allen Dulles recruited Robert Jackson documented ▶ 0:58

“underlined the various ways that he could be of use as Jackson prepared the cases, including providing German witnesses for the prosecution as well as secret enemy documents. Jackson was delighted by …”

William J. Donovan recruited Robert Jackson documented ▶ 0:58

William J. Donovan covered_up Nazi Party host_asserted ▶ 1:25

“by putting a number of OSS agents on his staff. Now, keep in mind, Allen Dulles has already prepared to ratline Nazis out. And just like he did with JFK's assassination, he worms his way in to basical…”

Allen Dulles covered_up Nazi Party host_asserted ▶ 1:25

Robert Jackson exposed William J. Donovan documented ▶ 1:55

“of Nuremberg. Jackson after having agreed to this began realizing that he had fallen into an OSS trap. It became clear to the Nuremberg prosecutor that Donovan and Dulles harbored ulterior motives and…”

William J. Donovan attempted_coup_against Robert Jackson documented ▶ 2:29

“Donovan and Jackson began to grow in July when the OSS chief moved to take over what Nuremberg prosecutors referred to as the trial's economic case. As Wall Street lawyers, Donovan and Dulles consider…”

Robert Jackson removed_from_power William J. Donovan documented ▶ 3:31

“was a part of FDR's Justice Department. He had taken on corporate interests like the Mellon family and fought tax evasion and antitrust battles. Well aware of the corporate conflict of interest that D…”

William J. Donovan recruited Hjalmar Schacht documented ▶ 5:22

“The banker knew where much of the Nazi Germany's assets were hidden, which continued to make him valuable. Behind the scenes, Donovan took the shameless step of working out a deal with these two promi…”

William J. Donovan recruited Hermann Goring documented ▶ 5:22

Robert Jackson removed_from_power William J. Donovan documented ▶ 6:19

“On November 26, a few days after the trial began, Jackson wrote a letter to Donovan making it clear that their views were far apart and there was no role for the OSS chief on Nuremberg's team. By the …”

Allen Dulles covered_up Nazi Party documented ▶ 6:48

“not only during the first trial, but through the 11 subsequent Nuremberg trials, which stretched from 1946 to 49. In all, some 200 accused German war criminals were prosecuted at Nuremberg, and hundre…”

Allen Dulles funded Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 7:47

“And of course, that's where Operation Gladio, because the Nazis were on, I don't know if you guys know, but there's two basic structures set up at NATO, one on the civilian side and one on the militar…”

John Wooden assassinated Hermann Goring documented ▶ 12:14

“Later during a court lunch break, quote, who in the world is responsible for all this destruction if not you? You haven't taken the responsibility for anything, unquote. Goring just laughed at him. Go…”

Jack Tex Willis covered_up Hermann Goring book_quoted ▶ 12:40

“to the favorite Nazi means of self-annihilation, cracking a glass capsule of cyanide with his teeth. For men who had callously dispatched millions to death, the Reich's high officials proved sensitive…”

John Wooden assassinated Wilhelm Keitel documented ▶ 14:33

“Field Marshal Wilhelm Kettel, Hitler's war minister and second highest ranking soldier after Goring, to be tried at Nuremberg, suffered the longest, thrashing around for 24 minutes. When the dead men …”

John Wooden assassinated Julius Streicher documented ▶ 15:03

“most likely intentional julius stretcher defiant to the end screaming a piercing high hitler as he began climbing the wooden steps of the scaffolding as the noose was placed around his neck he spat at…”

Karl Wolff member_of Nazi Party documented ▶ 20:03

“Many remained free. Alan Dulles' most audacious intervention on behalf of the major Nazi war criminals took place in the later days of the war. The story of the relationship between Dulles and SS Gene…”

Heinrich Himmler appointed Karl Wolff documented ▶ 22:03

“Himmler made Wolf his principal liaison to Hitler's headquarters, where he quickly became a favorite. Hitler enjoyed showing off Wolf at his dinner parties and made sure that he was by his side during…”

Italian Resistance assassinated Benito Mussolini documented ▶ 24:35

“He and his mistress, Claretta Pataki, who insisted on sharing his fate, were machine gunned down and their bodies were put on display in Milan. Mussolini's body was subjected to particular abuse by th…”

Italian Resistance assassinated Claretta Petacci documented ▶ 24:35

Max Weibel recruited Allen Dulles documented ▶ 25:30

“merciless end if he fell captive in Italy. But unlike Mussolini, the SS commander had a very dedicated and powerful friend in an Indian camp. That was Alan Dulles. Alan Dulles received an urgent phone…”

Allen Dulles recruited Karl Wolff documented ▶ 26:29

“was crucial. Dulles and his intelligence colleagues had been secretly meeting with Wolf and his SS aides since late February, trying to work out a separate surrender of the German forces in Italy that…”

Allen Dulles recruited Garrow von Schulthess-Bottlenich documented ▶ 29:00

“So, he had a loyal subordinate, Garrow Von Schultz Botternich, to oversee the rescue. Dulles would later say, I told him that under the strict orders that I had received, I could not get in touch with…”

Allen Dulles laundered_money_for Nazi Party documented ▶ 30:58

“And Dulles helped funnel their money to safe havens outside of Germany, as he had done for many wealthy Germans, including those who remained loyal to the Nazi regime before and after the war. Dulles …”

Garrow von Schulthess-Bottlenich recruited Donald Jones documented ▶ 31:59

“a man well known to the Italian resistance fighters in the border area by his nickname, Scotty. Gavernich thought that Scotty, a man who risked his life each day fighting SS soldiers, would balk at th…”

Karl Wolff member_of Nazi Party host_asserted ▶ 33:24

“After talking their way past the partisan's blockade as well as the SS guard, they entered the villa and found General Wolfe in full SS uniform as if he had been expecting them all along. He offered t…”

Erwin Rommel looted United Kingdom host_asserted ▶ 33:24

Karl Wolff recruited Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 33:50

“It was after two in the morning when the caravan arrived safely back with their special passenger who had changed into civilian clothes for the journey. Gavernich was anxiously awaiting the rescue tea…”

Karl Wolff carried_out_attack Italy host_asserted ▶ 35:20

“It took Wolf several days of high-stakes diplomacy before his maneuvers finally resulted in the surrender of German forces on the Italian front on May 2, 1945. By then, Hitler was dead, the German mil…”

Operation Sunrise targeted_for_regime_change Soviet Union host_asserted ▶ 35:48

“It did succeed, however, in creating a new set of international tensions that some historians would identify as the beginning of the Cold War. Dulles and Wolf's maneuvers aggravated Stalin's paranoid …”

Karl Wolff ordered_assassination_of Soviet Union host_asserted ▶ 36:17

“of a stab in the back where the surrender on the Italian front was signed by Germany and American commanders only grew more intense. His suspicions were not unfounded. After the separate peace was dec…”

Harry S. Truman removed_from_power Operation Sunrise host_asserted ▶ 36:44

“Even Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman, who would become a dedicated cold warrior, took a dim view of Operation Sunrise and tried unsuccessfully to shut it down. Truman later wrote in his memoirs th…”

Allen Dulles founded Operation Sunrise host_asserted ▶ 36:44

Allen Dulles exposed Operation Sunrise host_asserted ▶ 37:10

“the legend that loomed over his entire intelligence career, for the rest of his life. The spymaster would energetically work the publicity machine on the secret surrender, generating magazine articles…”

Henry Luce funded Time-Life host_asserted ▶ 37:39

“Of course, that was under the ownership of his close friend, Henry Luce, who could always be counted on to give Dulles good press. He trumpeted Operation Sunrise as one of the most stunning triumphs i…”

Karl Wolff member_of Nazi Party host_asserted ▶ 38:37

“Eichmann sneeringly referred to Wolf as one of the dandy officers of the SS who wore white gloves and didn't want to know anything about what was going on. Wolf was financially a savvy fixer, a man wh…”

Karl Wolff headed Nazi Party host_asserted ▶ 39:03

“in the Nazi movement for a polished blonde warrior like Wolf. His business background gave Wolf cachet with the SS where the skills were in short supply. It was Wolf who was put in charge of Himmler's…”

Nazi Party laundered_money_for West Germany book_quoted ▶ 39:32

“and where they were money laundering money to Germany. It was a select group of some three dozen German industrialists and bankers who supplied the SS with a stream of slush money, most of that from L…”

Karl Wolff financed_via Nazi Party host_asserted ▶ 39:32

Karl Wolff spied_on Dachau host_asserted ▶ 40:00

“They were also invited to attend high-level meetings and special Nazi ceremonies. It was said that Wolf took such good care of the wealthy contributors at the 1933 Nuremberg rally that they were pampe…”

Allen Dulles funded Sullivan & Cromwell host_asserted ▶ 40:54

“Dulles used his OSS command post in Switzerland to look out for Sullivan and Cromwell's business clients in Europe, stopping the war before their clients' manufacturing and power plants were bombed. A…”

Karl Wolff carried_out_attack Italian Superpower Corporation host_asserted ▶ 40:54

James Russell Forgan member_of Italian Superpower Corporation host_asserted ▶ 41:23

“Most of these installations were owned by multinational holding corporations called Italian Superpower Corporation. It just so happens to have been incorporated in Delaware in 1928. Italian Superpower…”

Italian Superpower Corporation front_for JPMorgan Chase host_asserted ▶ 41:48

“By the following year, the power company was swallowed up by bigger J.P. Morgan finance cartel. The ties between Italian superpower and Dulles' financial circle were reinforced when, towards the end o…”

Karl Wolff spied_on United States host_asserted ▶ 42:46

“In his reports back to OSS headquarters, he framed Wolf in the best possible light as a moderate and probably the most dynamic German personality in North Italy. Although some US and British intellige…”

Allen Dulles covered_up Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 42:46

Karl Wolff covered_up Holocaust host_asserted ▶ 43:44

“rise in his memoirs, he was delaying a judgment that for many had long since become obvious. When Wolf was later confronted with the obscenity of the Nazi leadership war crimes, he would inevitably pl…”

Karl Wolff carried_out_attack Holocaust host_asserted ▶ 45:03

“Wolf, as Himmler's top troubleshooter, frequently intervened to ensure smooth efficiency at the labor camps. During the Nuremberg trials, a highly incriminating letter written by Wolf would emerge tha…”

Karl Wolff ordered_assassination_of Holocaust documented ▶ 45:31

“gas chambers was temporarily halted because of germans military demand for rail cars wolf appealed to a nazi transportation official for help after the rail shortage was successfully resolved wolf sen…”

Luftwaffe carried_out_attack Dachau host_asserted ▶ 46:21

“in a series of medical experiments on human subjects at the notorious Dachau camp in 1942 and 1943. The research was conducted by Luftwaffe's doctors, who were intent on deciding how to increase the s…”

Karl Wolff carried_out_attack Dachau host_asserted ▶ 46:21

Ernst Kaltenbrunner assassinated Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 48:13

“but it was the cruder and less connected executioner, Ernest Kaltenberner, who would hang for the sins of the SS. Nor was Wolfe in the following year when the doctor's trials began, though he would ha…”

Allen Dulles covered_up Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 48:41

“Wolfe was watched over by his guardian, Dulles and Gerald Von Slaltz-Gabernet, who made sure that the sword of justice never came down with its full might on Carl Wolfe. Among a few lives saved by Ope…”

Karl Wolff recruited Eugen Dollmann host_asserted ▶ 49:08

“On May 13, 1945, shortly after Sunrise's surrender, Carl Wolfe celebrated his 45th birthday at the villa of the Duke of Pistoia in Bolzano, a royal estate he had requisitioned as his final SS command …”

United States carried_out_attack Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 51:06

“The soldiers in the white helmets of military policemen burst through the doors carrying machine guns and herding Wolf's children in. Wolf was aghast, protesting indignantly that Alan Dulles, the pres…”

Allen Dulles covered_up Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 52:03

“Wolf began invoking Allen Dulles' name to anyone that would listen. The question of whether Dulles had promised Wolf immunity from war crime prosecution in return for his Sunrise collaboration would n…”

Allen Dulles pardoned Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 52:32

“In truth, Wolfe's growing confidence as he successfully dodged prosecution over the following years derived from the fact that Dulles had in fact offered him immunity. Two of the Swiss intermediaries …”

Allen Dulles funded Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 52:59

“Nazi high command would be allowed to participate in West Germany's government. Wolf was even given to believe that he might be awarded an education post. Dulles threw his cloak of protection over Wol…”

Karl Wolff spied_on United States host_asserted ▶ 54:48

“and the collective reprisal against Italian citizens, but also for the torture and murder of OSS agents in Bolzano SS headquarters. The feelings against Wolf was running understandably high, even in t…”

Karl Wolff spied_on Hermann Goring host_asserted ▶ 55:12

“But Dulles betrayed his own men, blocking the OSS report on Wolfe from ever reaching the Nuremberg staff. Instead, it was Dulles' portrait of Wolfe as a moderate and gentleman that was sent to the leg…”

Allen Dulles covered_up Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 55:12

Allen Dulles covered_up Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 56:04

“Realizing that the general was still not safe from prosecution, Dulles arranged for him to be diagnosed with a nervous disorder and in the spring of 1946 was transferred to a psychiatric institution i…”

Allen Dulles spied_on Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 56:29

“The general knew that he continued to have great leverage over Dulles, and if he revealed the immunity deal that the two men had worked out, his career would be over. Wolfe also was privy to another S…”

Karl Wolff spied_on Soviet Union host_asserted ▶ 56:29

Karl Wolff exposed Operation Sunrise host_asserted ▶ 57:23

“But Wolf did not want to live the rest of his life on the run, hiding out in either Argentina or Chile. He was determined to hold the Sunrise Cabal to their deal. He wanted to be fully exonerated and …”

Karl Wolff exposed Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 57:52

“Wolf informed Truman that in return for cooperation on the secret surrender, I received from Mr. Dulles and his secretary an explicit promise of freedom for himself and his fellow meritorious SS colla…”

Karl Wolff exposed Lyman Lemnitzer host_asserted ▶ 58:43

“By negotiating secretly with the U.S. spymaster, Wolf reminded him, he had saved your honor and reputation at the risk of our lives. Wolf stirred the pot further by sending a similar letter to Major G…”

Lyman Lemnitzer covered_up Operation Sunrise host_asserted ▶ 59:11

“shared Dulles' strong anti-Soviet sentiments, and he had colluded with the OSS officials to keep the secret talks with Wolf going forward, even after Roosevelt and the Allied command thought they had …”

Lyman Lemnitzer member_of Joint Chiefs of Staff host_asserted ▶ 59:40

“When Wolfe's letter reached Lemitzger, he was stationed at the Pentagon, where he had been appointed to the position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lemitzger would ultimately rise to become the Army Ch…”

Gustave Gilbert covered_up Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 1:01:32

“And instead of being tried for war crimes, he was put through the denazification hearing in a German court. Dulles supplied Wolfe's defense team with a glowing affidavit saying, in my opinion, General…”

Allen Dulles covered_up Karl Wolff host_asserted ▶ 1:01:32

Karl Wolff pardoned Nazi Party host_asserted ▶ 1:02:02

“In person, the German court was impressed by the defendant's influential friends. Found guilty of a minor charge of being a member of the SS with knowledge of criminal acts, Wolf received a four-year …”

Otto Skorzeny member_of Argentina host_asserted ▶ 1:03:33

“We all have poster boys. The Marine Corps has poster boys. The Army has poster boys. That's the way it works. That's how you recruit. But along with that comes Wolf. And what really surprised me about…”

Augusto Pinochet overthrew Chile host_asserted ▶ 1:04:02

“How did he know that? Because that's where the large majority of them went. That's where the colony of dignity was in Chile. That guy that created that was a Nazi too. Where the pedophiles all hung ou…”

Colonia Dignidad front_for Argentina host_asserted ▶ 1:04:02

Otto Skorzeny headed Werwolf host_asserted ▶ 1:04:31

“club of them went to Argentina. That's why. But what's not mentioned in here and part of Sunrise, and I don't know why because it's well known if you're looking at Gladio. To me, the most significant …”

Otto Skorzeny member_of Reinhard Gehlen host_asserted ▶ 1:05:00

“with Reinhard Galen on the Eastern Front. He was one of the top dogs in that entire operation. And the sunrise, that's why Lyman Lemesker is even mentioned there. He was General Eisenhower's chief log…”

Lyman Lemnitzer appointed Dwight D. Eisenhower host_asserted ▶ 1:05:00

Operation Sunrise traded_network_to Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 1:05:00

Allen Dulles funded Otto Skorzeny host_asserted ▶ 1:05:26

“Operation Gladio Stay Behind units called Werewolf units over to Alan Dulles. That was one of the major factors in that entire thing. So Dulles made the promise that if that network was turned over to…”