FTR#298—Update on German Corporate Control over the American Media—(One
30-minute segment) (Sources are noted in parentheses.)
This program supplements an ongoing series, dating to December of 1998.
Mr. Emory believes, in all humility and
with no small degree of embarrassment, that the future of civilization may well
depend on the successful dissemination and assimilation of the information
contained in this series. (Other broadcasts in this series are FTR#’s 122, 123, 152[side a], 177, 189, 194, 218,
224, 226, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 245, 250, 251, 261, 263, 274, 275.)
1.
Beginning
with a story about an award being given to Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Middelhoff, the program highlights some interesting aspects
of German corporate control over the American media. “In a quiet watershed of Jewish
philanthropy, the honoree at a UJA-Federation benefit dinner next month will be
Thomas Middelhof, the chief executive of Bertelsmann,
a German media conglomerate that published Nazi propaganda for Hitler’s army.
Those who choose Mr. Middelhoff, to be honored at the
Steven J. Ross dinner on May 15 stress that Mr. Middelhoff
was born after the war and has investigated Bertelsmann’s past and made what
reparations he could . . . . The $1,000-a-plate Ross dinner, at which Matthew
Bronfman’s brother Edgar Bronfman Jr. was a previous honoree, attracts some of
the most prominent corporate and media figures in New York.
This year, Tom Brokaw, the NBC News anchor, will be the master of ceremonies
and Stephen M. Case, the chairman of AOL Time Warner, will present the award .
. . . Elie Wiesel, a writer
and Holocaust survivor, will deliver the key-note speech. Last fall, random
House, which is owned by Bertelsmann, pledged $1 million to the Holocaust
Survivors’ Memoir Project, for which Mr. Wiesel is
the honorary chairman. Mr. Wiesel is the honorary
chairman. Mr. Wiesel said he agreed to speak because
he trusted Mr. Middelhoff. ‘While it was in the end
Random House that gave the money for the survivors’ memoirs, the agreement was
with Bertelsmann, and it was Middelhoff who made the
commitment,’ Mr. Wiesel said . . . . Not long after
Mr. Middelhoff became chief executive in 1998,
critical stories about Bertelsmann’s war history appeared in The Nation
magazine and a Swiss magazine. Mr. Middelhoff then
created an independent commission, headed by the historian Saul Friedlander, to
look into the company’s past. In January 2000, the commission found that
Bertelsmann had not opposed Hitler, as the company had previously claimed.
Rather, it said, the company had ties to the Nazis, and was the largest
supplier of reading material, including Nazi propaganda, to the German
military. Three months later, Bertelsmann announced that it would contribute to
the German fund to compensate workers used as slave labor in the Nazi era.”
(“Past Collides With Closure as Jews Honor a German” by Tamar Lewin; New York Times; 4/30/2001;
p. A18.)
2.
The giving
of this award to Middelhoff is ironic and grotesque
in a number of different respects. (Much of the series on German corporate
control over American media is devoted to Bertelsmann and there is an abundant
amount of information on the firm in the other programs in this series.) The
available evidence strongly suggests that Bertelsmann is part of the Bormann
organization. The economic and political component of a Third Reich gone
underground, the Bormann organization controls corporate Germany
and much of the rest of the world. [It was created and run by Martin Bormann,
the organizational genius who was the “the power behind the throne” in Nazi
Germany.] The Bormann group is a primary element of the analysis presented in
the For the Record programs. For
more about the Bormann organization, see: FTR#’s 87, 90, 99, 102, 120, 122, 123, 125, 127, 134, 145, 152, 155, 158,
177, 179, 180, 187, 189, 193, 194, 195, 200, 215, 216, 218, 219, 224, 226, 232,
233, 234, 235, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 245, 248, 250, 251, 261, 272, 273, 274,
275, 276, 278, 283, 286, 292, 293, 294.)
3.
FTR#298 reviews some of the salient aspects of the
Bertelsmann firm. They highlight the grotesque quality to the granting of the
award to Middelhoff. “Issuing more than 20 million Bertelsmann
was the largest supplier to the army and supplied the SS.”
(“Bertelsmann’s Nazi Past” by Hersch Fischler and John Friedman; The
Nation; 12/28/98; p. 1;
accessed at www.thenation.com.)
4.
“When Bertelsmann applied after the war
for a second publishing license, it was turned down by occupation authorities.
[Bertelsmann patriarch Heinrich] Mohn had ‘forgotten’
to mention that he had been a ‘passive’ member of the SS, as well as a
supporter of the Hitler Youth and a member of the prestigious National
Socialist Flying Corps, according to de-Nazification
files in the central state archive in Dusseldorf.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)
5.
As
indicated in the New York Times article cited above, when the information about
the firm’s Nazi past was printed in The
Nation, Middelhoff formed an “independent”
commission to investigate it. One of the appointees to that commission was Dirk
Bavendamm (Bertelsmann’s official historian), whose
work and views call into question the degree of separation that the company has
effected from its Third Reich heritage.
6.
“His book Roosevelt’s
Way to War (Roosevelt’s Weg zum Krieg) was published in 1983.
Rewriting history, he stated that Roosevelt, not Hitler
had caused World War II. He also wrote that American Jews controlled most of
the media,’ and he claimed they gave a false picture of Hitler. Did the book impress
[Heinrich’s son Reinhard] Mohn,
then the majority shareholder of Bertelsmann? The firm hired Bavendamm as its house historian, and in 1984 he completed
a historical study, 150 Years of Bertelsmann: The Founders and Their Time—with
a foreword by Mohn. A year later, Bavendamm
edited the firm’s official history, which set forth the untrue story that the
firm had resisted the Nazis and had been closed down by them. Mohn also asked Bavendamm to
write the authorized history of the Mohn family,
published in 1986 under the title Bertelsmann, Mohn, Scippel: Three Families—One Company. In a second book, Roosevelt’s
War (published in 1993, reissued in 1998), Bavendamm
accuses the U.S. President of enacting a plan to start World War II. In the
same book he suggests that Hitler’s threats in early 1939 against European
Jewry were a reaction to Roosevelt’s strategy against Germany.
After the revelations about Bertelsmann’s Nazi past appeared, the company
announced that it had asked ‘the historian and publicist Dr. Dirk Bavendamm to look at the new information and begin to
reinvestigate the role the publishing house played in those days’ and defended
his work.”
(“Bertelsmann’s Revisionist” by Hersch Fischler and John Friedman; The
Nation; 11/8/99; p. 1;
accessed at www.thenation.com.)
7.
In that
context, it is interesting to speculate about Bertelsmann’s motives in backing
the survivors’ memoir and contributing to the fund to compensate victims of the
Third Reich. (Public relations considerations are probably paramount in this
regard.) It is also interesting to note that the Bormann organization, to which
Bertelsmann appears to belong, wields considerable in Israel
and within that country’s support network abroad. “Since the founding of Israel,
the Federal Republic
of Germany had
paid out 85.3 billion marks, by the end of 1977, to survivors of the Holocaust.
East Germany
ignores any such liability. From South America, where
payment must be made with subtlety, the Bormann organization has made a
substantial contribution. It has drawn many of the brightest Jewish businessmen
into a participatory role in the development of many of its corporations, and
many of these Jews share their prosperity most generously with Israel.
If their proposals are sound, they are even provided with a specially dispensed
venture capital fund. I spoke with one Jewish businessman in Hartford,
Connecticut. He had arrived there quite
unknown several years before our conversation, but with Bormann money as his
leverage. Today he is more than a millionaire, a quiet leader in the community
with a certain share of his profits earmarked, as always, for his venture
capital benefactors. This has taken place in many other instances across
America and demonstrates how Bormann’s people operate in the contemporary
commercial world, in contrast to the fanciful nonsense with which Nazis are
described in so much ‘literature.’ So much emphasis is placed on select Jewish
participation in Bormann companies that when Adolf Eichmann was seized and taken to Tel Aviv to stand trial,
it produced a shock wave in the Jewish and German communities of Buenos
Aires. Jewish leaders informed the Israeli authorities
in no uncertain terms that this must never happen again because a repetition
would permanently rupture relations with the Germans of Latin America,
as well as with the Bormann organization, and cut off the flow of Jewish money
to Israel. It
never happened again, and the pursuit of Bormann quieted down at the request of
these Jewish leaders. He is residing in an Argentine safe haven, protected by
the most efficient German infrastructure in history, as well as by all those
whose prosperity depends on his well-being. Personal invitation is the only way
to reach him.” (Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Manning;
Copyright 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stuart Inc.; ISBN 0-8184-0309-8; pp. 226-227.)
8.
It is
ironic to note that Holocaust survivor Wiesel lauds
Random House for its support for the survivors’ memoir. Random House’s behavior
vis-à-vis a book authored by a key witness in Holocaust revisionist David
Irving’s unsuccessful libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt
and her publisher suggests that Wiesel’s accolades
are, at the very least, premature. “[Queens Counsel and Lipstadt attorney Anthony] Julius won because the professor
of modern history at Cambridge had
demolished Irving’s scholarship.
Richard J. Evans went through Irving’s
sources and produced an exhaustive 740-page analysis which detailed how Irving
had twisted evidence in the Nazi interest. Irving
had censored himself as well as the past by cutting references to death camps
from his early work when it was reprinted. Evans has written a book on the
affair—Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the
David Irving Trial. You are free to buy it in America
and read the professor’s account of the case and reflections on historical
interpretation. I’ve no doubt it is a serious study. Evans is the author of In Defense of History, a patient
critique of the wild subjectivity of postmodernist theory. You were meant to be
free to read Lying about Hitler in Britain.
But last week, Evans’ publishers, Heinemann, a branch of the Random House
conglomerate, ordered that the book should be pulped. [Justice] Gray’s verdict,
which came after years of collecting evidence and months of cross-examination
in an enormously expensive trial, might as well never have happened. Heinemann
said they did not dare publish because Irving
was appealing against Gray’s ruling. In fact, Irving
has been refused permission to appeal, and it is that decision he is
contesting. In the very unlikely event of Irving winning and the Court of
Appeal agreeing to consider Gray’s condemnation, the crushing evidence against
him should deny him victory. Granta Books certainly
think so and snapped up Lying about Hitler. Granta
didn’t ‘see any terrible legal nightmares’ and was ‘very enthusiastic and keen
to publish.’ We shall still be able to make up our own minds about Evans’
writing. If the story stopped there, the moral of the censorship of Evans would
merely be that robust authors should think hard before signing a contract with
Random House.” (“Without Prejudice: A Ploy Named Sue” by Nick Cohen;
The [London]
Observer; 3/18/2001.)
9.
The views
and work of Bertelsmann historian Bavendamm and the
actions of Random House subsidiary Heinemann in pulping the Evans book should
be compared with the Nazi tract Serpent’s
Walk.
10.
Mr. Emory
has dealt with this book extensively. Mr. Emory believes that, like The Turner Diaries (also published by
National Vanguard Books), the book is actually a blueprint for what is going to
take place. It is a novel about a Nazi takeover of the United
States in the middle of the 21st
century. The book describes the Third Reich going underground, buying into the
American media, and taking over the country. “It assumes that Hitler’s warrior elite—the
SS—didn’t give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second
World War. Instead their survivors went underground and adopted some of their
tactics of their enemies: they began building their economic muscle and buying
into the opinion-forming media. A century after the war they are ready to challenge
the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans, who have
begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism
and ‘equality.’” (From the back cover of Serpent’s Walk by “Randolph D. Calverhall;”
Copyright 1991 [SC]; National Vanguard Books; 0-937944-05-X.)
11.
This
process is described in more detail in a passage of text, consisting of a
discussion between Wrench (a member of this Underground Reich) and a mercenary
named Lessing. “The SS . . . what was left of it . . .had
business objectives before and during World War II. When the war was lost they
just kept on, but from other places: Bogota,
Asuncion, Buenos
Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico
City, Colombo, Damascus,
Dacca . . . you name it. They
realized that the world is heading towards a ‘corporacracy;’ five or ten international
super-companies that will run everything worth running by the year 2100.
Those super-corporations exist now, and they’re already dividing up the
production and marketing of food, transport, steel and heavy industry, oil, the
media, and other commodities. They’re already dividing up the production and
marketing of food, transport, steel and heavy industry, oil, the media, and
other commodities. They’re mostly conglomerates, with fingers in more than one
pie . . . .We, the SS, have the say in four or five.
We’ve been competing for the past sixty years or so, and we’re slowly gaining .
. . . About ten years ago, we swung a merge, a takeover, and got voting control
of a supercorp that runs a small but significant
chunk of the American media. Not openly, not with bands and trumpets or
swastikas flying, but quietly: one huge corporation cuddling up to another one
and gently munching it up, like a great, gubbing
amoeba. Since then we’ve been replacing executives, pushing somebody out here,
bringing somebody else in there. We’ve swing program content around, too. Not
much, but a little, so it won’t show. We’ve cut down on ‘nasty-Nazi’ movies . .
. good guys in white hats and bad guys in black SS hats . . . lovable Jews
versus fiendish Germans . . . and we have media psychologists, ad agencies, and
behavior modification specialists working on image changes . . . . But all we
ever hear about are the poor, innocent Jews and the awful ‘Holocaust,’ when, in
fact, there never was an ‘extermination policy,’ a ‘Final Solution,’ or
anything like it!” (Ibid.; pp. 42-43.)
12.
The vision
of the future presented in this book should appear sobering under the
circumstances. In light of this vision, the actions of Random House (and
Bertelsmann) subsidiary Heinemann in destroying the Evans book and the views
and actions of official Bertelsmann historian Dirk Bavendamm,
the award given to Middelhoff would appear to be less
than appropriate. (See also: FTR#’s 89, 90, 212,
225, 228.) (Recorded on 5/6/2001.)