1950-now, Germany:  "Stay Behind" Forces and Neo-Nazism

By Martin A. Lee, author of The Beast Reawakens.

Friedhelm Busse, one of the youngest members of the Hitler Youth, is now an elder statesman among hard-core neo-Nazis.  In the early 1950s, he joined Bund Deutscher Jugend, an elite, CIA-trained paramilitary organization composed largely of ex-Hitler Youth, Wehrmacht and SS personnel in West Germany.  They trained to engage in acts of sabotage and resistance in case of a Soviet invasion.  This "stay behind" unit drew up a death list that included future Chancellor Willi Brandt and other leading Social Democrat party members. 

      The Bund's cover was blown in 1952, when the West German press learned the CIA was backing a neo-Nazi death squad.  Embarrassed U.S. officials tried to cover up their involvement.  The "stay behind" forces quickly regrouped with help from the CIA, which recruited thousands of ex-Nazis.

      Another Gehlen protégé, Gerhard Frey, also emerged as a post-Cold War neo-Nazi leader.  A wealthy publisher, Frey currently bankrolls and runs Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), a neo-Nazi party.  Even before forming the DVU in 1971,  Frey received support from Gehlen, Bonn's powerful spy chief.  In late 1990s, the DVU scored double-digit vote totals in eastern Germany's state elections, where the whiplash transition from communism to capitalism resulted in high unemployment and widespread discontent.  Embittered by the disappointing reality of unification, a lost generation of youth comprise a Nazi Party in waiting. 

      The CIA's ghoulish tryst with the Gehlen Org is evident today in a European neo-fascist movement that traces its ideological lineage back to Hitler's Reich through Gehlen operatives who served the CIA.

Source: Intellectual Capital, May 25, 2000. www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue377/item9461.asp