Faust
10-30-2004, 03:02 AM
"Was Hitler's Secretary Martin Bormann a Soviet Spy?"
http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2000/280013.shtml
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 9, 2000, No. 28, Vol. LXVIII
FACES AND PLACES
by Myron B. Kuropas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hitler's traitor, Stalin's spy
One of the enigmas of World War II is the abhorrent and ultimately self-destructive behavior of the Germans during their occupation of Ukraine. Some historians believe that, had Hiltler's approach in Ukraine been more acquiescent, Stalin might have been defeated. Ukrainians had initially welcomed Hitler's army as liberators. Ukraine was also a wealthy storehouse of food and raw materials, supplies coveted by the Germans.
Was Nazi behavior the result of ignorance? Hardly. The German high command had been in contact with Ukrainian separatists since 1921, writes Alexander Dallin in his book "German Rule in Russia: 1941-1945, German contacts with Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky following the first world war, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during Col. Yevhen Konovalets' time and later with Col. Andrii Melnyk's OUN (M) and Stefan Bandera's OUN(B) were ongoing generally positive.
The architect of the pro-Ukrainian school of thought within the Nazi high command was Alfred Rosenberg, head of Aussenpolitisches Amt, the Nazi party's foreign policy office. Rosenberg's blueprint for Ukraine called for a united and autonomous state in close alliance with Germany. To attain such a state, he argued, "Ukrainian writers, scholars and politicians must be put to work for a revival of Ukrainian historical consciousness, so as to overcome what Bolshevik-Jewish pressure has destroyed." Planned was a new university in Kyiv, technical academies, the eventual elimination of the Russian language, the publication of Ukrainian literature, the extension of Ukraine to the Volga and Crimea, and the propagation of German culture and language.
"If we accepted in marshaling all political, psychological and cultural means to create a free Ukrainian state from Lvov to Saratov," Rosenberg informed Hitler, "then the century-old nightmare which the German people has been subjected to by the Russian Empire will be broken."
Hitler appointed Rosenberg Ostminister (Minister for the Occupied East) but vacillated between the Rosenberg position and the ideas of Martin Bormann, who favored a lebensraum policy based on the Nazi principle that all Eastern Europeans were inferior (untermenschen), unfit for self-rule. The sole purpose of the Slavs, he reminded Hitler, was to serve the genetically superior German Herrenvolk.
Bormann convinced Hitler that any German plan for a "Garden of Eden" in Ukraine demanded that: Ukraine be divided; Ukrainians receive little formal education; medical and sanitary services be limited severely; Ukrainian towns not be rebuilt; Germans be forbidden to live among Ukrainians.
Hitler adopted Bormann's proposals and, after invading the Soviet Union, awarded Bukovyna to Romania, formally incorporated Galicia into the General Government for Occupied Polish Territories, and placed eastern Ukraine within the newly created Reichskomissariat Ukraine. Appointed Reichskomissar was Erich Koch, a psychopath close to Martin Bormann.
Aware that he, as Ostminister, outranked Koch, Rosenberg met with the gauleiter prior to his posting in Ukraine. As Jurgen Thorwald reports in his book "The Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler's Armies," the meeting went badly for Rosenberg. Running out of Rosenberg's office, the Reichskomissar bumped into Carl Cranz, Rosenberg's press officer, who innocently offered to shake hands, saying: "May I congratulate you, Herr Reichskommissar, on the interesting and fruitful mission you will now be assuming."
"What mission do you mean?" growled Koch. "I mean the mission of leading such a biologically strong and valuable race as the Ukrainians back to national consciousness," Carl Cranz replied.
"My dear sir," Koch roared. "You must have read that in some provincial tabloid. Let me tell you this: the Ukrainians are Slavs through and through. They are going to be governed by makhorka, vodka and the knout." Koch remained true to his word. His bestial oppression of eastern Ukraine squandered any remaining good will the Germans may have enjoyed. Caught between Stalin's anvil and Hitler's hammer, Ukrainian nationalists established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and battled both the Nazis and the Soviets.
Martin Bormann, a man very close to Hitler, engineered both the Jewish Holocaust and the Nazi terror in Ukraine. Was he a racist? A psychopath? Or did he have an agenda all his own?
Bormann was definitely a monster, but it now appears that he was also something else. He was a Soviet spy. Two-time Pulitzer prize winner Louis Kilzer persuasively argues in "Hitler's Traitor: Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich" that "Bormann had been as valuable to Russia as 50 Red divisions. His value to Stalin began early." Mr. Kilzer notes: "In 1941, when Germany could have used millions of Ukrainian nationalists to defeat Soviet rule, Bormann decided that they deserved only 'enslavement and depopulation' ... Faced with the choice of genocide by the Germans or political domination by the Soviets, the Ukrainians chose to live, and by doing so ruined German hopes for an easy conquest."
In one of the most astounding espionage stories of the war, Mr. Kilzer describes the incredible escapades of the so-called "Red Orchestra," a spy ring operating out of Switzerland that regularly passed on information from the mysterious "Werther," a spy whose true identity remains murky. Werther provided the Soviets invaluable, almost instantaneous information regarding German military plans, often before Germany's front-line commanders were appraised. Whoever supplied this intelligence to the Soviets had to be extremely close to Hitler's inner circle. He was "the ultimate mole with the ultimate cover," a person who, according to Albert Speer, another Hitler confidant, sabotaged many well-planned German initiatives. After carefully reviewing the actions of a number of candidates close to Hitler and considering the views of many Western espionage experts familiar with Bormann, Mr. Kleizer concludes: "All the suspicions concerning Bormann by the spymasters over the years were valid. The pieces of the puzzle fit together. In Martin Bormann we have found Werther."
Was it in Stalin's interest to have Ukrainians turn on the Germans after initially treating them as "liberators?" Absolutely. Would Hitler have behaved differently had Herr Bormann not been around? Probably not, but, as is now clear, Bormann was Hitler's prime enabler, a man Speer believed should have been declared a "hero of the Soviet Union."
OD thread:
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?p=93010#post93010
Jewish spy helped defeat Hitler, writer to say at JCC
ALEZA GOLDSMITH
Bulletin Staff
Did a Jewish spymaster aid in efforts that led to Hitler's destruction?
Not just a Jew, says two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Louis Kilzer, but a beautiful, young Jewish woman.
In his new book, "Hitler's Traitor," Kilzer deduces that the Moscow spymaster in charge of one of history's most effective Soviet agents and Hitler's greatest traitor, was a twentysomething chief operative named Maria Poliakova.
He also deduces that the great unknown traitor, who supplied Russians with strategic and tactical intelligence on the German army's strength, disposition and movement -- directly influencing the key Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk-Orel -- was none other than Hitler's own right-hand man, his secretary Martin Bormann. In fact, the book is subtitled "Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich."
Kilzer will explain his theories Wednesday to the Association of Former Intelligence Officers in San Francisco and will speak again on Sunday, April 22 at the Marin Jewish Community Center in San Rafael.
During a telephone interview from his Denver office, where he works as the sole investigative reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, Kilzer shared his conclusions.
He said it was known for some time that the Red Army had a spy strategically placed within the Third Reich. This spy was so highly placed that he was able to get Hitler's plans to Stalin within days, sometimes hours, of their issuance.
"But it was anyone's guess who it was," said the Yale graduate, even with the opening of previously top-secret World War II archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Everyone seemed improbable."
Kilzer began to suspect Bormann in 1991 while he was researching "Churchill's Deception," published in 1994. While he was going through files at the former KGB headquarters in Moscow, Bormann's name continually popped up in material on Rudolf Hess, a deputy of the Third Reich.
Kilzer's curiosity was sparked.
"I couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew that something was a little strange -- well, a lot strange," he said.
Checking information on Bormann in the institute's computer, he asked the clerk for five folders on Hitler's secretary only to discover that they hadn't been properly catalogued and couldn't be located immediately.
"So longhand, on a yellow piece of paper I requested the folders," said Kilzer. "Six or seven months later I got access to material never seen before."
The files verified his hypothesis that Bormann was a constant "fly on the wall." As an investigator trying to break a story, who sold a book proposal to publishers merely on a hunch, the discovery "was serendipity."
At one point, for instance, he said, Bormann convinced Hitler to have stenographers in his meetings so that Hitler could "take credit for his victories" for posterity. As secretary and "chief architect of the Holocaust alongside Hitler," Bormann, of course, had access to all the notes.
"He's the only one that it could be," said Kilzer. "I'm convinced that he's the one. I lay up the reasoning in the last chapter, and a reader can take it or discard it. It's almost like a prosecutor's case and my readers are the jury."
As to Bormann's motive, Kilzer admits that's the one thing that he's "short on."
Kilzer continued his research at the National Archives, which was then in Washington, D.C. (now in Maryland), to follow up leads that Poliakova was Bormann's sophisticated spymaster.
Kilzer was so intrigued by this young woman -- the only one of her family not to be killed by Stalin and to subsequently progress in the Red Army intelligence -- that he plans to write his next book about her.
"She played a critical role in the defeat of Hitler," said Kilzer. "Maybe it's too extreme to say she played as big a role as Churchill or Roosevelt, but without her playing her role, the world would be vastly different today.
"And God gave her something more than just beauty and youth -- he made her a Jew.
"I'm delighted that Maria is Jewish," said Kilzer, who is not Jewish himself. "Somehow there's justice in that."
Louis Kilzer will speak at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 22 at the Marin Jewish Community Center, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. $5 donation suggested. RSVP: (415) 444-8069.
"Hitler's Traitor: Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich" by Louis Kilzer (307 pages, Presidio Press, $29.95).
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk010413/sfahitler.shtml
A good source:
Worm in the Apple
German Traitors and Other Influences
That Pushed the World Into War:
The little-known story of the men who destroyed Adolf Hitler's Germany
Original edition: F. Lenz, self-published, 1952 Translated by Victor Diodon
http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/worminapple/wa00.html
http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2000/280013.shtml
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 9, 2000, No. 28, Vol. LXVIII
FACES AND PLACES
by Myron B. Kuropas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hitler's traitor, Stalin's spy
One of the enigmas of World War II is the abhorrent and ultimately self-destructive behavior of the Germans during their occupation of Ukraine. Some historians believe that, had Hiltler's approach in Ukraine been more acquiescent, Stalin might have been defeated. Ukrainians had initially welcomed Hitler's army as liberators. Ukraine was also a wealthy storehouse of food and raw materials, supplies coveted by the Germans.
Was Nazi behavior the result of ignorance? Hardly. The German high command had been in contact with Ukrainian separatists since 1921, writes Alexander Dallin in his book "German Rule in Russia: 1941-1945, German contacts with Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky following the first world war, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during Col. Yevhen Konovalets' time and later with Col. Andrii Melnyk's OUN (M) and Stefan Bandera's OUN(B) were ongoing generally positive.
The architect of the pro-Ukrainian school of thought within the Nazi high command was Alfred Rosenberg, head of Aussenpolitisches Amt, the Nazi party's foreign policy office. Rosenberg's blueprint for Ukraine called for a united and autonomous state in close alliance with Germany. To attain such a state, he argued, "Ukrainian writers, scholars and politicians must be put to work for a revival of Ukrainian historical consciousness, so as to overcome what Bolshevik-Jewish pressure has destroyed." Planned was a new university in Kyiv, technical academies, the eventual elimination of the Russian language, the publication of Ukrainian literature, the extension of Ukraine to the Volga and Crimea, and the propagation of German culture and language.
"If we accepted in marshaling all political, psychological and cultural means to create a free Ukrainian state from Lvov to Saratov," Rosenberg informed Hitler, "then the century-old nightmare which the German people has been subjected to by the Russian Empire will be broken."
Hitler appointed Rosenberg Ostminister (Minister for the Occupied East) but vacillated between the Rosenberg position and the ideas of Martin Bormann, who favored a lebensraum policy based on the Nazi principle that all Eastern Europeans were inferior (untermenschen), unfit for self-rule. The sole purpose of the Slavs, he reminded Hitler, was to serve the genetically superior German Herrenvolk.
Bormann convinced Hitler that any German plan for a "Garden of Eden" in Ukraine demanded that: Ukraine be divided; Ukrainians receive little formal education; medical and sanitary services be limited severely; Ukrainian towns not be rebuilt; Germans be forbidden to live among Ukrainians.
Hitler adopted Bormann's proposals and, after invading the Soviet Union, awarded Bukovyna to Romania, formally incorporated Galicia into the General Government for Occupied Polish Territories, and placed eastern Ukraine within the newly created Reichskomissariat Ukraine. Appointed Reichskomissar was Erich Koch, a psychopath close to Martin Bormann.
Aware that he, as Ostminister, outranked Koch, Rosenberg met with the gauleiter prior to his posting in Ukraine. As Jurgen Thorwald reports in his book "The Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler's Armies," the meeting went badly for Rosenberg. Running out of Rosenberg's office, the Reichskomissar bumped into Carl Cranz, Rosenberg's press officer, who innocently offered to shake hands, saying: "May I congratulate you, Herr Reichskommissar, on the interesting and fruitful mission you will now be assuming."
"What mission do you mean?" growled Koch. "I mean the mission of leading such a biologically strong and valuable race as the Ukrainians back to national consciousness," Carl Cranz replied.
"My dear sir," Koch roared. "You must have read that in some provincial tabloid. Let me tell you this: the Ukrainians are Slavs through and through. They are going to be governed by makhorka, vodka and the knout." Koch remained true to his word. His bestial oppression of eastern Ukraine squandered any remaining good will the Germans may have enjoyed. Caught between Stalin's anvil and Hitler's hammer, Ukrainian nationalists established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and battled both the Nazis and the Soviets.
Martin Bormann, a man very close to Hitler, engineered both the Jewish Holocaust and the Nazi terror in Ukraine. Was he a racist? A psychopath? Or did he have an agenda all his own?
Bormann was definitely a monster, but it now appears that he was also something else. He was a Soviet spy. Two-time Pulitzer prize winner Louis Kilzer persuasively argues in "Hitler's Traitor: Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich" that "Bormann had been as valuable to Russia as 50 Red divisions. His value to Stalin began early." Mr. Kilzer notes: "In 1941, when Germany could have used millions of Ukrainian nationalists to defeat Soviet rule, Bormann decided that they deserved only 'enslavement and depopulation' ... Faced with the choice of genocide by the Germans or political domination by the Soviets, the Ukrainians chose to live, and by doing so ruined German hopes for an easy conquest."
In one of the most astounding espionage stories of the war, Mr. Kilzer describes the incredible escapades of the so-called "Red Orchestra," a spy ring operating out of Switzerland that regularly passed on information from the mysterious "Werther," a spy whose true identity remains murky. Werther provided the Soviets invaluable, almost instantaneous information regarding German military plans, often before Germany's front-line commanders were appraised. Whoever supplied this intelligence to the Soviets had to be extremely close to Hitler's inner circle. He was "the ultimate mole with the ultimate cover," a person who, according to Albert Speer, another Hitler confidant, sabotaged many well-planned German initiatives. After carefully reviewing the actions of a number of candidates close to Hitler and considering the views of many Western espionage experts familiar with Bormann, Mr. Kleizer concludes: "All the suspicions concerning Bormann by the spymasters over the years were valid. The pieces of the puzzle fit together. In Martin Bormann we have found Werther."
Was it in Stalin's interest to have Ukrainians turn on the Germans after initially treating them as "liberators?" Absolutely. Would Hitler have behaved differently had Herr Bormann not been around? Probably not, but, as is now clear, Bormann was Hitler's prime enabler, a man Speer believed should have been declared a "hero of the Soviet Union."
OD thread:
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?p=93010#post93010
Jewish spy helped defeat Hitler, writer to say at JCC
ALEZA GOLDSMITH
Bulletin Staff
Did a Jewish spymaster aid in efforts that led to Hitler's destruction?
Not just a Jew, says two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Louis Kilzer, but a beautiful, young Jewish woman.
In his new book, "Hitler's Traitor," Kilzer deduces that the Moscow spymaster in charge of one of history's most effective Soviet agents and Hitler's greatest traitor, was a twentysomething chief operative named Maria Poliakova.
He also deduces that the great unknown traitor, who supplied Russians with strategic and tactical intelligence on the German army's strength, disposition and movement -- directly influencing the key Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk-Orel -- was none other than Hitler's own right-hand man, his secretary Martin Bormann. In fact, the book is subtitled "Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich."
Kilzer will explain his theories Wednesday to the Association of Former Intelligence Officers in San Francisco and will speak again on Sunday, April 22 at the Marin Jewish Community Center in San Rafael.
During a telephone interview from his Denver office, where he works as the sole investigative reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, Kilzer shared his conclusions.
He said it was known for some time that the Red Army had a spy strategically placed within the Third Reich. This spy was so highly placed that he was able to get Hitler's plans to Stalin within days, sometimes hours, of their issuance.
"But it was anyone's guess who it was," said the Yale graduate, even with the opening of previously top-secret World War II archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "Everyone seemed improbable."
Kilzer began to suspect Bormann in 1991 while he was researching "Churchill's Deception," published in 1994. While he was going through files at the former KGB headquarters in Moscow, Bormann's name continually popped up in material on Rudolf Hess, a deputy of the Third Reich.
Kilzer's curiosity was sparked.
"I couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew that something was a little strange -- well, a lot strange," he said.
Checking information on Bormann in the institute's computer, he asked the clerk for five folders on Hitler's secretary only to discover that they hadn't been properly catalogued and couldn't be located immediately.
"So longhand, on a yellow piece of paper I requested the folders," said Kilzer. "Six or seven months later I got access to material never seen before."
The files verified his hypothesis that Bormann was a constant "fly on the wall." As an investigator trying to break a story, who sold a book proposal to publishers merely on a hunch, the discovery "was serendipity."
At one point, for instance, he said, Bormann convinced Hitler to have stenographers in his meetings so that Hitler could "take credit for his victories" for posterity. As secretary and "chief architect of the Holocaust alongside Hitler," Bormann, of course, had access to all the notes.
"He's the only one that it could be," said Kilzer. "I'm convinced that he's the one. I lay up the reasoning in the last chapter, and a reader can take it or discard it. It's almost like a prosecutor's case and my readers are the jury."
As to Bormann's motive, Kilzer admits that's the one thing that he's "short on."
Kilzer continued his research at the National Archives, which was then in Washington, D.C. (now in Maryland), to follow up leads that Poliakova was Bormann's sophisticated spymaster.
Kilzer was so intrigued by this young woman -- the only one of her family not to be killed by Stalin and to subsequently progress in the Red Army intelligence -- that he plans to write his next book about her.
"She played a critical role in the defeat of Hitler," said Kilzer. "Maybe it's too extreme to say she played as big a role as Churchill or Roosevelt, but without her playing her role, the world would be vastly different today.
"And God gave her something more than just beauty and youth -- he made her a Jew.
"I'm delighted that Maria is Jewish," said Kilzer, who is not Jewish himself. "Somehow there's justice in that."
Louis Kilzer will speak at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 22 at the Marin Jewish Community Center, 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. $5 donation suggested. RSVP: (415) 444-8069.
"Hitler's Traitor: Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich" by Louis Kilzer (307 pages, Presidio Press, $29.95).
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk010413/sfahitler.shtml
A good source:
Worm in the Apple
German Traitors and Other Influences
That Pushed the World Into War:
The little-known story of the men who destroyed Adolf Hitler's Germany
Original edition: F. Lenz, self-published, 1952 Translated by Victor Diodon
http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/worminapple/wa00.html