According to former New York Times writer Charles Higham, Standard Oil of New Jersey (ESSO) secretly sold gasoline to Germany and fascist Spain. ‘The shipments to Spain indirectly assisted the Axis through Spanish transferences to Hamburg.’ (7) By changing the country of registration for Standard’s tanker fleet to Panama, company spokesmen could claim that the oil was coming not from the United States but the Caribbean. (8)
There were also numerous banking connections, one of which was the partnership established in 1936 between the J. Henry Schroder Bank of New York and several Rockefeller family members to form Schroder, Rockefeller and Company, Investment Bankers that provided economic support to the Rome-Berlin Axis. ‘The partners in Schroder, Rockefeller and Company included Avery Rockefeller, nephew of John D., Baron Bruno von Schroder in London, and Kurt von Schroder [of the Bank of International Settlements] and the Gestapo in Cologne … Standard Oil’s Paris representatives were directors of the Banque de Paris et de Pays-Bas, which had intricate connections to the Nazis and to Chase [National Bank].’ (9)
According to investigator Paul Manning, Hermann Schmitz, head of I.G. Farben, was president of Chase National Bank for seven years prior to the war, and later held as much stock in Standard Oil as did the Rockefellers. He held other shares in General Motors ‘and other US blue chip industrial stocks, and the 700 secret companies controlled in his time by I. G. [Farben], as well as shares in the 750 corporations he helped Bormann establish during the last years of World War II’. Manning continues: ‘The Bormann organization in South America utilizes the voting power of the Schmitz trust along with their own assets to guide the multinationals they control, as they keep steady the economic course of the Fatherland. The Bormann organization is not merely a group of ex-Nazis. It is a great economic power whose interests today supersede their ideology.’ (10)
The financial relationship between the Nazis and the Swiss banks has been well documented. Through processes of investment and money laundering, approximately 15 billion Reichsmarks was moved through Switzerland, equivalent to three per cent of America’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 1944. ‘To put this into today’s terms, three percent of America’s GDP is $200 billion, which is more than the entire GDP of Switzerland. Allow for interest, compounded over 50 years, and the value of the Nazi cache that went through Switzerland moves into the region of a trillion dollars.’ (11)
Over the years there has been considerable speculation on the fate of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy and the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. One of the main characteristics of the Nazi survival theory is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea that the Nazi leaders themselves managed to escape from Berlin during the Allies’ final assault. Since Bormann played such a large part in planning the continuation of Nazi financial interests and power after the war, it is worth pausing briefly to note the findings of the internationally esteemed historian Hugh Trevor-Roper who, as a wartime intelligence officer, was charged with the task of establishing the ultimate fate of Hitler and his inner circle.
According to Trevor-Roper:
In 1945 the evidence [on Bormann’s fate] was conflicting and uncertain. Several witnesses maintained that Bormann had been killed in a tank which exploded when hit by a Panzerfaust [bazooka] on the Weidendammer Bridge during the attempted breakthrough on the night of 1–2 May. On the other hand, all these witnesses have admitted that the scene was one of great confusion and none of them claims to have seen Bormann’s body … Further, even in 1945 I had three witnesses who independently claimed to have accompanied Bormann in his attempted escape. One of these witnesses, Artur Axmann, claimed afterwards to have seen him dead. Whether we believe Axmann or not is entirely a matter of choice, for his word is unsupported by any other testimony. In his favour it can be said that his evidence on all other points has been vindicated. On the other hand, if he wished to protect Bormann against further search, his natural course would be to give false evidence of his death. This being so I came in 1945, to the only permissible conclusion, viz: that Bormann had certainly survived the tank explosion but had possibly, though by no means certainly, been killed later that night. Such was the balance of evidence in 1945. (12)
Trevor-Roper adds that by 1956 the situation remained unchanged by new evidence. In 1953, a former SS major, Joachim Tibertius, made a statement to a Swiss newspaper, Der Bund, in which he claimed to have seen Bormann after the tank explosion, at the Hotel Atlas. According to Tibertius: ‘He had by then changed into civilian clothes. We pushed on together towards the Schiffbauerdamm and the Albrechtstrasse. Then I finally lost sight of him. But he had as good a chance to escape as I had.’ (13)
The absence of concrete evidence for Bormann’s death in 1945 spawned a number of claims of his survival, including one that placed him in Bolivia. Another claim came from Reinhardt Gehlen, who had been an Abwehr officer during the war and had subsequently become head of the new West German intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, ‘thanks to his useful experience … and the beginning of the Cold War’. (14) In 1971, Gehlen stated in his memoirs that during the war he had come to the conclusion that Bormann was actually a Soviet spy. Following the war, ‘Bormann had sought and found protection in Moscow, where he had occasionally been seen by reliable witnesses and had recently died’. (15)
However, as Trevor-Roper informs us, Gehlen’s claims were refuted in 1972 ‘when two human skeletons, which had been dug up in waste ground near the Lehrter Station in West Berlin — i.e. not far from the place where Axmann claimed to have seen the bodies — were forensically examined and identified as those of Bormann and his companion in flight, Dr [Ludwig] Stumpfegger’, Hitler’s surgeon. (16)
Although it has been established since 1972 that Bormann’s attempt to escape from the ruins of the Third Reich ended in death, it is equally certain that his brainchild, Operation Eagle Flight, met with considerably greater success. According to conspiracy researcher Jim Keith, the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, stated in 1945 that ‘Nazi Party members, German industrialists and the German military, realizing their victory can no longer be attained, are now developing postwar commercial projects, endeavoring to renew and cement friendships in foreign commercial circles and planning for renewals of pre-war cartel agreements’. (17) Keith goes on to quote the minutes of the secret meeting between Bormann and a group of German industrialists, mentioned earlier: ‘The [Nazi] Party is ready to supply large amounts of money to those industrialists who contribute to the postwar organization abroad. In return, the Party demands all financial reserves which have already been transferred abroad or may be later transferred, so that after the defeat a strong new Reich can be built.’ (18)
Those who subscribe to the idea of Nazi survival in the postwar period cite another documented historical fact in support of their theories. After the end of the war, both the Americans and the Russians began to search throughout occupied Germany for technical, intelligence, military and other scientific information. In September 1946, President Harry Truman authorised Project PAPERCLIP, a programme to bring selected German scientists to America. Aside from expertise in their fields, the main requisite for their acceptance for residence in the United States was proof that they had not been active members of the Nazi Party, and had not displayed any allegiance to Hitler.