Secret Armies and the Origins of the Cercle Complex Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the origins of the shadowy network variously known as Le Cercle, the Pinay Circle and a host of other names. I've already examined the Cercle complex at length before here, but for those of you just tuning in: Le Cercle is somewhat akin to the far right's answer to the Bilderberg Group. Both organizations were founded in the early 1950s and forged a kind of alliance during the first few decades of their existence. But differences always existed.

Bilderberg chiefly drew its membership from the ranks of international capital and the emerging technocratic class and was heavily dominated by the Anglo-American Establishment. Le Cercle's early backers largely hailed from Continental Europe and were chiefly comprised of members of the old aristocracy and various far right Catholic organizations such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Opus Dei. What's more, while Bilderberg was chiefly a policy coordinating body, Le Cercle went far beyond that, effectively operating as a full blown private intelligence network. As such, it gained early support from the ranks of the Anglo-American intelligence services and by the 1970s a clique of British veterans of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) wielded enormous influence within the network

By the 1970s the Cercle complex became increasingly disillusioned with the Rockefeller-backed policy of detente. David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, one time affiliates, had formerly broken with the group by 1980. This was part of a broader break with the Bilderberg network. Le Cercle would throw its extensive intelligence resources behind Margaret Thatcher and later Ronald Reagan, the elections of which formerly reversed course from detente to full blown rollback against the Soviet Union.

Having covered some of the numerous outraged committed by the Cercle complex over the years in a prior series, my purpose here is to explore the possible origins Le Cercle had in what is commonly referred to as Operation Gladio. Gladio was only the name of the Italian component of what was a network spread across Western Europe that the Pentagon and CIA, along with their counterparts in the UK, established in the wake of the Second World War. "Gladio" was essentially a series of stay-behind armies that were set up to wage a guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in the event of an invasion of Western Europe.

Or at least that was the rationalization, anyway. Over the years, extensive evidence has emerged that these stay-behind armies were in fact used to wage campaigns of terrorism within Western Europe to ensure that said states remained within the NATO system. Italy and Belgium in particular faced especially intense terror campaigns in what is known as the Years of Lead and the Bloody Eighties in those respective nations.

There were essentially three organizations for which these stay-behind armies were modeled upon, two of which derived from the Anglo-American intelligence services. One was the above-mentioned SOE while the other was the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was largely based upon the SOE.

The third organization hailed from Nazi Germany and was known as the Reich Main Security Office (RHSA). The RHSA, a component of the SS, was a Byzantine organization that included the dreaded Gestapo, among others. For our purposes here, I am mainly concerned with two departments of the RHSA: Amt VI and Amt VII. Amt VI housed the foreign component of the SD, which was the SS's intelligence service. Within the SD was a detachment known as Amt VI-S, headed by the infamous Otto "Scarface" Skorzeny. Amt VI-S possessed the bulk of Nazi Germany's special operations forces and was used extensively to train stay-behind networks to harass the advancing Allies.

And then there was the mysterious Amt VII, which is often described as the RHSA's "research library." In reality, it appears to have conducted a lot of arcane research into the occult. As the war was winding down, the infamous Italian philosopher and occultist Julius Evola went to work for the RHSA, likely in either Amt VI or VII, but most likely the latter. Evola in turn appears to have became involved in efforts by the Reich to establish of a postwar stay-behind network, likely as an ideological architect.

Evola

Such were the topics discussed in part one of this series. In this present installment I would like to consider these postwar networks in greater depth.

SOFINDUS

Over the years there has been much dispute as to whether there was a well organized network geared toward revving the Reich or a haphazard network thrown together as the war was winding down to spare as many of Nazi hierarchy as possible. The truth appears to lie somewhere in between.

On the one hand, plans for this network do appear to have been rather last minute and geared chiefly towards saving as many of the most notorious Nazis, especially as SS members, as possible. And on the whole, this network appears to have been rather decentralized. And yet, there appears to have been some type of formal hierarchy within this network that drew upon its resources. And as many of the longstanding ODESSA allegations have long maintained, this inner circle appears to have centered around Otto Skorzeny in the immediate decades following the Second World War. But rather than staging a revival of the Reich, Skorzeny and his associates appear to have been enlisted by the Anglo-American defense establishments in their Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Skorzeny

This inner hierarchy that Skorzeny was the figurehead of appears to have derived from a conglomerate called Sociedad Financiera Industrial, better known as SOFINDUS. Unsurprisingly, this company's murky origins are closely linked to the RHSA, and especially the SD.

The genesis of SOFINDUS can be traced to two prior holding companies:the Berlin-bases ROWAK and HISMA of Tetouan, Morocco. Both companies were headed by a German businessman known as Johannes Bernhardt. Bernhardt was not only close to the Nazi regime, but Franco as well. After the Nazi regime opted to support Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Bernhardt was tasked with funneling supplies to the generalissimo. Bernhardt effectively created ROWAK and HISMA for this purpose.

In 1938, ROWAK and HISMA were rolled into one operation, SOFINDUS. From the very beginning, SOFINDUS was close to Nazi intelligence. In The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis notes: "Bernhardt's SOFINDUS intelligence network was manged out of the Reich Main Security Office (RHSA) Section VI, or Foreign Intelligence Service, also known as Ausland-SD" (pg. 149).

But unlike ROWAK and HISMA, which were chiefly concerned with Spain, SOFINDUS had dealings across the world. Ganis goes on to note:

"The SOFINDUS business networks were expansive. In addition to operations in Spain and Morocco, Johannes Bernhardt also oversaw operations in South America (particularly Argentina) and France. One of the most important roles of SOFINDUS was the delivery of vital mineral resources from Spain, Morocco, and Portugal to the Third Reich. Foremost in this operation was wolframite (tungsten), a mineral that was vital in the production of armor-piercing ammunition. The SOFINDUS delivery of wolframite had to be protected by Germany at all costs. The war could not be fought without this critical mineral.

"Through the SOFINDUS network, Nazi intelligence services carried out espionage, sabotage, and even assassinations. SOFINDUS assassination operations are referenced in declassified documentation involving SS Lt. Col. Walter Mosig..."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pgs. 149-150)

The above-mentioned Mosig is himself quite an interesting figure. He left SOFINDUS in 1945 as the Reich was coming to an end and would fall into the hands of US authorities in 1946. In  February of 1947 Mosig was "interrogated" US Army Counterintelligence (CIC) Officer Arnold M. Silver. Silver, who would sign on with the CIA in 1948, had also interrogated Otto Skorzeny and is widely believed to have been the man who recommended his use to the US intelligence community. It is likely Silver did the same for Mosig, as both "former" SD men managed to escape from US custody after being interrogated by Silver. In 1948, Mosig would turn up in Argentina, working for the successor of SOFINDUS. But more on that in a moment.

On the topic of Arnold Silver, it is also interesting to note that after he was drummed out of the CIA in 1977, he signed on with Brian Crozier's 6I intelligence network. As was noted in the prior installment, Crozier was very close to many of the former SOE men who signed on with Le Cercle in the 1970s. His 6I network would become a key intelligence network for Le Cercle by the late 1970s. According to David Teacher in his long suppressed Rogue Agents, Silver is known to have attended Le Cercle meetings in 1982 but it is unknown if he became a member. The significance of Silver's connection to SOFINDUS via Skorzeny and Mosig will be more evident in a future installment.

Before moving along, a note should be made concerning SOFINDUS's resources: they appear to have been quite extensive, to put it mildly. Indeed, SOFINDUS appears to have been one of the key institutions used to launder gold out of Nazi Germany:

"... It is worthwhile to note that the Allies had computed the amount of gold coming into Spain from Nazi Germany during the period of the war as more than 122 tons (conservatively; other estimates put it at more than 200 tons). These calculations were based on records obtained from Sofindus and from trucking manifests out of Germany to Spain. The final disposition of this gold is unknown, but it would be worth more than US$100 million in 1945 dollars."

(Ratline, Peter Levenda, pg. 60)

Today, this gold would be worth in the billions. Clearly then it was no insignificant amount of funding SOFINDUS had its disposal by 1945, when these shipments were at there peak. SOFINDUS would seemingly put these resources to good use in one particular project the conglomerate became deeply involved in as the war was drawing to a close.

Ratlines

When key figures in the SS began drawing escape plans for the aftermath of the Reich's inevitable defeat, it was the SD that they turned to devise escape routes. And it would seem that the SD in turn made good use of the SOFINDUS network in creating what has become known as the "Ratlines." As such, it is hardly surprising then to find that the earliest Ratlines led from Spain to Argentina, where various Nazi war criminals could flee even deeper into South America, depending upon the extent of their crimes. 

Reportedly the first such Ratline was established by a Buenos Aires-born Frenchman known as Charles Lesca. During the 1930s Lesca had been most active in various far right movements in France, most notably Action Francaise. Lesca was an asset of the SD and appears to have been recruited even before the Nazi conquest of France. Afterwards, Lesca would have well placed contacts in the Vichy regime, most notably President Pierre Laval.

Charles Lesca

As the war wound down, Lesca became the figurehead of a group of French collaborators who ended up in Spain to avoid arrest. Lesca was tasked with smuggling them, along with various German SD men, to Argentina. Lesca and his associates frequently met at a German restaurant in Madrid known as Horcher's. This establishment was a key point of contact for various Nazi intelligence personnel in Spain and was likely set up by the SOFINDUS network. 

"The group often gathered at the exclusive Horcher restaurant on Alfonso XII Street, installed there in 1943 by Berlin restaurateur Otto Horcher with the help, according to American intelligence, of Walter Schellenberg. To open his Madrid branch Horcher allegedly transferred 250,000 Swiss francs out of Germany to Nazi diplomats in Lisbon and later converted the Swiss notes to pesetas on the black market, an exercise in money-laundering allegedly organized by another Schellenberg agent who ended up in Argentina, Walter Eugen Mosig. Schellenberg reportedly also helped Horcher transfer furnishings and silverware from Germany. The original Horcher restaurant on Berlin's Kurfurstendamn had been a regular meeting place for the Third Reich's hierarchy from Goring to Himmler. Unknown to most clients, it was planted the secret microphones to capture the conversations of foreign visitors..."

(The Real ODESSA, Uki Goni, pg. 74)

Walter Schellenberg was the head of the RHSA VI, the foreign intelligence branch of the SD. As was noted above, this was same branch of the RHSA that oversaw the SOFINDUS network, which Mosig was an agent of by 1942. As such, SOFINDUS likely played a role in establishing Horcher's in Spain, which in turn was clearly used as a cover for intelligence operations, most notably the first Ratline to Argentina. That it was established by French collaborators is most significant, as we shall see.

Before moving along, its also interesting to note that Lesca first arrived in Spain (1944) around the same time Skorzeny was training French collaborators there in sabotage and assassinations operations with eye towards infiltrating them back into France in the wake of the liberation. This was noted in the first installment of this series.

A much more tangible connection between SOFINDUS and the Ratlines comes in the form of Carlos Fuldner, another Argentina-born SD asset. Fuldner was born to German immigrants in Buenos Aires, but he and his family returned to Germany in 1922, just as the Nazi Party was starting to take off. Fuldner would join the SS in 1932 at the age of 21. Bizarrely, he was then booted out of the SS in 1936 as allegations of fraud and disloyalty hoovered around him. The charges were cleared up in 1937 and by '38 he attempted to reenlist in the SS. The next seven years of his life are shrouded in mystery.

"... He apparently had a close connection with Spain, serving as a lieutenant and German-Spanish interpreter in the Blue Division, the corps of 20,000 soldiers sent by dictator Francisco Franco to fight alongside the Nazis on the Russian front. He returned frequently to Berlin. At some point he joined the huge Nazi corporation Sofindus, which controlled widespread German business interests and provided cover and financing for the Nazi agents in Spain. True to character, Fuldner created trouble for himself even there and was dismissed for embezzlement. In the last months of war he traveled back and forth between Madrid and Berlin. An arrival by plane in Madrid was registered in 26 November 1944, then a return to Berlin in late December.

"But by that crucial Monday in March 1945 when he climbed down the German plane's stepladder in Madrid, Fuldner seems to have been restored to his former rank. He was now on a 'special mission' for Himmler's secret service for which he carried both his German and Argentine passports, and to which he would add the particular brand of financial chicanery which had distinguished his career. In the coming years, many former Reich officials and some of the worst Nazi criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, would owe their lives to the Argentine SS captain. Was Fuldner's mission the result of a plan laid by Schellenberg and Himmler? There is precious little documentation available even today about Fuldner's activities in Madrid in the immediate postwar period, but his later activity suggests high-level Nazi involvement."

(The Real ODESSA, Uki Goni, pg. 69)

It was Fuldner more than anyone else who managed to enlist Juan Peron, the Argentine dictator, to turn his country into a haven for Nazi war criminals. As was noted above, Eichmann and many of the most notorious Nazis who fled to South America were aided by Fuldner.

Peron

When examining Fuldner's career, there is a strong hint of sheep dipping. After being booted out of the SS he would apparently spend much time traveling in the late 1930s and early 1940s, frequently visiting South American and even the United States. He then ends up serving in Franco's Blue Division and employed by SOFINDUS.

As was noted above, the conglomerate was effectively a front for the SD and was used to smuggle tremendous amounts of gold from Nazi Germany to Spain. And here is Fuldner, allegedly booted out of SOFINDUS for "embezzlement" shortly before he was brought back into the SS and SD in 1945, apparently with high level support amongst the Nazi hierarchy.

Carlos Fuldner

This researcher suspects that Fuldner was serving as an agent of the SD for much of this time, and most certainly during his time with SOFINDUS. His dismal from the company was likely a ploy to confuse Allied intelligence as to Fuldner's actual mission. Curiously, there are also reports that Fuldner was linked to the Nazi "Werwolf" efforts at war's end. As was noted in the prior installment, Otto Skorzeny also had some involvement in these stay-behind efforts.

And that brings us to Scarface. Skorzeny does not appear to have had direct involvement with SOFINDUS during the war, but likely made use of its assets. After all, both SOFINDUS and Skorzeny's commandos were the control of Amt VI and SOFINDUS would have provided the kind of cover necessary for covert operations.

It was not until after the war the Skorzeny officially began to take an active role in SOFINDUS. In The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph Ganis notes that Skorzeny partnered with SOFINDUS founder and "former" SD agent Johannes Bernhardt in business venture in Spain shortly after Scarface arrived in Madrid in 1950. At the time, Bernhardt was still involved with the SOFINDUS network as an 'adviser.'

Around the same time, Skorzeny would emerge as a key figure in the Ratlines. H. Keith Thompson, an American recruited into the SD while allegedly still a teenager who later aided the escape routes in the postwar years, emphasized Skorzeny's importance to journalist Martin A. Lee: "Skorzeny was not an intellectual. He was a get-it-done type, a soldier. Very daring. He would take on anything. He played a significant role after the war in the escape routes" (The Beast Reawakens, Martin A. Lee, pg. 86).

Meet the New Boss

With its ties to Skorzeny, Mosig, Fuldner and likely Lesca, it seems clear that SOFINDUS was crucial in establishing the Ratlines in Spain immediately after the war. Other organizations, most notably the Vatican, would later pick up the slack, but SOFINDUS appears to have been the trailblazer. But smuggling Nazi war criminals does not appear to be the extent of SOFINDUS network's intelligence efforts in the postwar years.

But to put these activities into context, we must first consider who gained control of SOFINDUS after the war:

"...Several months before the end of the war Johannes Bernhardt had secretly contacted British Intelligence in an attempt to strike a deal with the Allies to turn over the SOFINDUS network. The Spanish government, which had investments in the company and had worked closely with German Intelligence, was also involved in this secret arrangement.

"As a result of these clandestine negotiations, SOFINDUS assets were eventually taken over by the Allied Control Commission (ACC) as soon as the war ended. This was a joint operation in which an American corporate president was placed in charge of SOFINDUS assets, with a British vice-president. Also involved in the transfer of assets was the Spanish government, which negotiated control in Spanish industry tied to SOFINDUS. Under the agreement, the former SOFINDUS network was rolled up into a government-controlled organization called Instituto Nacional de Industria (National Institute of Industry) or INI, under Juan Antonio Suanzes.

"The acquisition was announced publicly but details were not given, and the takeover of SOFINDUS was conducted in great secrecy. In one clever move, U.S. and British Intelligence had acquired the entire former SS intelligence network embedded in SOFINDUS. Subsequently, SOFINDUS companies were revamped and incorporated into the World Commerce Corporation (WCC) formed by General William Donovan and operated by Frank Ryan and Ricardo Sicre..."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pgs. 147-148) 

Ah yes, the good old WCC. That organization is quite a story unto itself, one that I will take up in the next installment. Until then dear readers, stay tuned. 

Secret Armies and the Origins of the Cercle Complex Part I

Regular readers of this blog are no doubt aware of my interest in a curious organization known variously as Le Cercle, the Pinay Group, Pinay Circle/Cercle and a host of other titles. The organization was founded in 1952 by longtime German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, onetime German Defense Minister Franz Josef-Strauss, French Prime Minister Antoine Pinay (for whom the organization was sometimes named after) and the mysterious Frenchman known as Jean Violet. It grew out of the United Europe movement and would become one of the two principal networks working towards this goal, along with the infamous Bilderberg group.

But while there was overlap between Bilderberg and Le Cercle in the early years, there were fundamental differences between these groups that led to a rift by the 1970s. Bilderberg was chiefly comprised of international bankers and other captains of industry and has long been dominated by the Anglo-American Establishment. Le Cercle, by contrast, was largely dominated by elites from Continental Europe until the 1980s, many of whom were drawn from the ranks of the Vatican and the old aristocracy. Catholicism was as much a part of Le Cercle's vision of a United Europe in the early days as was capitalism.

What's more, unlike Bilderberg, Le Cercle was not simply a policy coordination body, but also a full blown private intelligence network. As I've noted before here, here and here, Le Cercle appears to have played a crucial role in what is commonly referred to as Operation Gladio as well as various sex rings across Europe used to blackmail regional elites. As such, it has long enjoyed close ties with various Western intelligence services, especially those in the US and UK.

Recent research I've been conducting has indicated that this relationship may have stretched back to the origins of Gladio and that Le Cercle itself may have grown out of this network as a coordination body. This is the general thesis of this series.

Before moving along, a few words about Gladio: For one, Gladio is only the name of the Italian component of a network that stretched across Western Europe during the Cold War. Gladio and related components were meant to serve as stay-behind-armies in Western Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion, effectively waging an intense guerrilla war against the Reds. Or at least that was the official reasoning anyway. In actuality, these stay-behind or secret armies were more often than not used to terrorize Western nations to ensure their submission to NATO and the United States on the whole. The terrorism related to Italy's "Years of Lead" and Belgium's "Bloody Eighties" can largely be traced back to the stay-behind networks in these nations, as I noted before here and here.

And it would appear that Le Cercle loomed over all these networks, and may have from the very beginning. But before getting to the origins of Le Cercle let us first consider the history of these secret armies. Essentially, two World War II-era organizations appear to have served as the basis for these secret armies and were incorporated wholesale into Gladio at the onset of the Cold War. As such, a few words should be said about the WWII-era functions of these organizations.

Special Operations Executive 

The first of these organizations up for consideration is the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British intelligence network created at the onset of World War II. SOE had its origins in Section D of MI6 and several other operations being carried out by the Foreign and War Offices. When Churchill came to power in 1940, all of these operations were coordinated under the SOE, which came to be housed in the Ministry of Economic Warfare.

SOE is probably most well known in these United States for the role it played in creating the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA. The SOE worked closely with the British Security Coordination (BSC) in New York City prior to US entry into the Second World War. Along with the BSC and MI6, it maintained a branch office in Rockefeller Center beginning in 1940. Sir William Stephenson, head of the BSC and a close friend of OSS Director William "Wild Bill" Donovan, coordinated the operations of the SOE and MI6 in the States. He helped Donovan set up the OSS, which was largely modeled upon the SOE.

the famed Rockefeller Center

The SOE in turn maintained a massive training compound in Canada that was used initially to train OSS agents being deployed to Europe.

"... Camp X. Located on the north shore of Lake Ontario, between the Canadian towns of Oshawa and Whitby, the camp was the first paramilitary training school in North America. Established in December 1941, just one day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the 270-acre site was operated by Britain's ultra-secret Special Operations Executive. SOE had been formed as a branch of MI-6 in July 1940, after Winston Churchill instructed his military advisers to counter Nazi blitzkrieg victories and 'set Europe ablaze.' SOE's first order of business was to recruit and train hundreds of secret agents, who would be responsible for advancing sabotage, subversion, and organized resistance against Axis occupied areas. Camp X, also called Project J and STS-103, offered its carefully selected students a full curriculum in the techniques of guerrilla warfare, covert action, and assassination...

"Training at Camp X was extremely rigorous. Recruits were routinely roused well before dawn to perform several hours of strenuous physical exercise before they were allowed a Spartan morning meal consisting of little more than a glass of milk and a hard roll. Then it was on to a full day of classes with instructions in subjects like 'Close Combat,' 'Small and Concealed Weapons,' and 'Silent Killing.' The camp featured a number of extremely difficult 'infiltration courses,' one of which featured a large swamp dubbed 'Lake Oshawa' by SOE instructors; for more substantial water exercises, the frigid waters of Lake Ontario were only twenty minutes away. Camp X's training ethos were simple; it revolved around the mantra, 'Kill or be killed.' Several times a week, trainees would participate in group jiu jitsu training, led by their chief instructor, British Major William Ewart Fairbairn, during which words were chanted, in cadence with martial movements, for hours on end. Said one former student years later, 'It turned our values upside down and we wondered about making a world fit for terrorists.' "

(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli, pgs. 393-394) 

Camp X

These fears would prove to be most well founded, as we shall see.

During the Second World War, the SOE built up a massive and highly effective network that the great Daniele Ganser referred to as "a carbon of operation Gladio born in the midst of the Second World War" (NATO's Secret Armies, pg. 41). Ganser went on to note:

"Special Operations Executive employed many of the staff of Section D and eventually became a major organisation in its own right with over 13,000 men and women in its ranks, operating on a global scale and in close cooperation with the MI6. Although SOE also carried out missions in Far East Asia, mounted from India and Australia, Western Europe was its main theatre of operation where it focused on establishing of national secret armies. SOE promoted sabotage and subversion in enemy-occupied territory and established nucleus of trained men who could assist resistance groups in the re-conquest of the countries concerned. 'SOE was for five years the main instrument of British action in the internal politics of Europe,' the British Cabinet Office report noted, 'it was an extremely powerful instrument' for it could serve a multitude of tasks and thus 'While SOE was at work no European politician could be under the illusion that the British were uninterested or dead.' "

 (NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 41)

the emblem of the SOE

Curiously, SOE veterans would serve as the backbone of Cercle members from the UK when the British began to take a keen interest in the organization during the 1970s. Lord Julian Amery, a future Cercle chairman and president, noted before here, cut his teeth with the SOE in Albania during WWII. By the 1980s he had been joined Le Cercle by his former SOE comrade-in-arms Neil "Billy" McLean.

Another future Cercle chairman, Sir Peter Tennant, was also an SOE veteran, having been recruited by Sir Charles Hambro, the eventual director of the SOE. Another Hambro associate who would sign up with Le Cercle was Harry Sporburg, a deputy chief of SOE under Hambro's predecessor, Colin Gubbins. Later, he would go on to work for the banking house long controlled by the Hambro family.

Sporborg's association with Le Cercle is especially ominous. Sporborg has been described as the individual who first conceived of Gladio, though I have been unable to confirm this. I have been able to confirm, however, that he helped establish an especially controversial British charity typically known as Sue Ryder. The Sue Ryder who served as the namesake of this charity was herself a veteran of the SOE during the Second World War. It would later be revealed that Jimmy Savile abused at least one dying child at a Sue Ryder children's hospice in Leeds. Its possible there were more victims at this institute, but no one is alive now to tell tales. But moving along.

Another British Cercle chairman and future president, Brian Crozier, never worked with the SOE, but received ample aid from such veterans over the years. His Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), a major Cercle propaganda outfit by the early 1970s, received its initial funding from SOE veteran Sir Peter Wilkinson. Another SOE veteran, Stephen Hastings, was deeply involved in Shield, a private intelligence network Crozier established in the UK in the 1970s to help elect Thatcher. Sporborg and Tennant were also involved with Shield, which was a domestic version of the global intelligence network Crozier established with the assistance of Le Cercle known as the 6I. Hastings was also a member of the Monday Club and a longtime political alley of Amery. He is known to have attended Cercle meetings during the late 1970s but it is unknown if he was a full blown member.

Clearly, SOE veterans were a key source of support for the Cercle complex by the 1970s and eventually they would dominate the organization by the 1980s. This curious relationship has been little remarked upon, but given the role the SOE had in establishing Gladio, it is hardly surprising. For all of this information I'm deeply indebted to David Teacher's groundbreaking and long suppressed Rogue Agents, which can be found here on the great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP). ISGP's own Cercle page is also a great resource.

Reich Main Security Office

But while the SOE connection to Gladio has received some attention over the years, the influence of another WWII-era intelligence agency has been even less remarked upon. This is not entirely surprising as the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) was the chief intelligence and security service for the SS. Of course the role Reinhard Gehlen, who at one point was the German General Staff's chief intelligence officer for the Fremde Heere Ost (FHO, Foreign Armies East) and the founder of the BND, played in German and Eastern European stay-behind networks is fairly well known at this point. But Gehlen was an agent of the Wehrmacht, the German military. Gehlen was not an SS man and while known for rather brutal interrogation methods, was not a fanatical Nazi. In point of fact, Gehlen comes off as rather restrained in comparison to the legions of the psychopaths in the RSHA, many of whom would serve as the backbone of Gehlen's secret armies.

Gehlen

But before getting to that, a bit more should be said about the RSHA. Created in 1939, it quickly grew into one of the most Byzantine institutions in Nazi Germany (no small accomplishment, that). The man often credited with its creation was General Reinhard Heydrich, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. Heydrich headed the organization from its creation in 1939 until 1942, when he was assassinated --by the SOE.

During his time overseeing the RSHA, Heydrich incorporated many of the most brutal components of the Nazi Party into the organization. The RSHA was divided into seven Amters or sections. Amt IV and Amt V included the dreaded Gestapo and the Kriminalpolizei (which was somewhat akin to Nazi Germany's FBI). Amt IV also oversaw many aspects of the Holocaust.

Amt III was comprised of the domestic wing of the SD, the SS's own private intelligence service and the chief rival of the Abwehr during the Second World War. For our purposes here, however, we are most concerned with Amt VI and Amt VII. Amt VI featured the foreign component of the SD, which became one of the most powerful intelligence services of WWII era by war's end.

"... Amt VI ('Department Six') of the SS RSHA, Nazi Germany's main security headquarters. This SS section had been a combined foreign intelligence, sabotage, and propaganda agency and was, in effect, the CIA of Nazi Germany. By war's end SS RSHA Amt VI had consolidated not only the foreign sections of the Nazi's police intelligence apparatus but military intelligence (Abwehr), Gehlen's own FHO, and much of the Nazi Party's internal foreign espionage network as well. Amt VI was an extraordinary rich collection of trained agents, intelligence files, saboteurs, and propagandist. Both Gehlen and the United States drew many of their most valuable recruits from this department after the war. Its hoard of files on the USSR and Eastern Europe, in particular, was without equal anywhere."

(Blowback, Christopher Simpson, pg. 46)

Of especial interest was Amt VI-S. Created in 1943, Amt VI-S would emerge as the special operations forces of Nazi Germany. At the time this unit was conceived of as a counter to the British SOE  and Special Air Services (SAS) and the American OSS. Tapped to head the unit was the infamous Otto "Scarface" Skorzeny, allegedly Hitler's favorite commando. Virtually everyone who met Skorzeny agreed that he was very inch of soldier. Standing at 6'4 and weighing around 220 pounds of mostly muscle, the Austrian was as fine an example of Hitler's notion of Aryan superiority as any.

The Hunting Group

Skorzeny, prior to the war, had trained as an engineer and generally comes off as more intelligent than he is often given credit for. Certainly the intense training he subjected his charges too would test both their physical and mental limits.

"... Skorzeny's unit would eventually be known as SS-Jagdverband or 'Hunting Group.' Skorzeny recruited personnel throughout the Reich'ss various military units. He wanted to acquire only those of the highest caliber and as such received special permission to recruit from all the services, not just the Waffen SS. Eventually, his commando group included army, navy, and air force personnel, which resulted in Skorzeny becoming the preeminent special forces commander of the Third Reich.

"Besides having a foreign language requirement, the recruits had to demonstrate basic skills and knowledge of firearms, grenades, artillery, and the ability to operate automobiles, motorcycles, watercraft, and locomotives. They also had to be expert swimmers and able to parachute from aircraft. Many were capable of speaking foreign languages such as English, French, Italian, Russian, and Persian. An intense commando training regimen was instituted. Some individuals were selected for special agent training. All of Skorzeny's training was tough and included covert operation skills required for stay-behind missions in enemy territory."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pg. 38)

As the war began to turn against Nazi Germany in the wake of the disastrous Battle of Stalingrad, Skorzeny became increasingly involved in training stay-behind units. Some of the earliest and most infamous were Eastern units, largely comprised of Ukrainians, that were used to harass the Red Army as the Germans retreated from the Ukraine. These units were drawn from the ranks of the infamous Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which in turn grew out of the equally infamous Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera (OUN-B). There had been an early OUN, but with approval of the Nazis, the more radical OUN-B emerged out of this group. While its relationship with the Nazi regime would be ambiguous at best throughout the war, the OUN-B was still the chief Ukrainian Quisling group and a vigorous participant in the Holocaust.

the emblem of the OUN-B

When the war turned against the Nazis in the East, the UPA was founded by the OUN-B to assist the German withdraw. Skorzeny trained many of these units, which would prove to be highly effective.

"... accelerated German recruitment of Ukrainians from police groups into the Waffen SS, and by increased cooperation with the underground OUN/UPA leadership and a secret program that the SS-designated Operation Sonnenblume (Sunflower). According to U.S. interrogations of SS RSHA Amt VI clandestine operations chief Otto Skorzeny and his adjutant Karl Radl, Amt VI organized Sonnenblume in 1944 to coordinate German and OUN efforts during the Nazis' retreat from Russia.

"Thousands of tons of arms, ammunition, and other war materiel abandoned by the Nazis were consigned to underground OUN-led troops, Skorzeny told the Americans. The deal proved to be an astute investment for the Germans. The OUN/UPA succeeded in tying down some 200,000 Red Army troops and killing more than 7,000 Soviet officers during the Wehrmacht's disordered flight across Europe during 1944 and 1945."

(Blowback, Christopher Simpson, pgs. 162-163)

Curiously, many of the OUN-B members would go on to play a crucial rule in establishing the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). The ABN in turn would play a key role in creating the World Anti-Communist League (WACL, noted before here), one of the key components of the post-war Fascist International. Both the ABN and especially the WACL would establish a close working relationship with Le Cercle. But back to the matter at hand.

Skorzeny also had some involvement in the legendary Werwolf project, though not to the extent that is generally claimed. SS General Hans-Adolf Prutzmann was the actual head of the project, with Skorzeny's "Hunting Group" provided some training and support to the Werwolf units.

For those of you unaware, the Werwolf project was begun in 1944 as the war was winding down. Originally the Werwolf participants were conceived as additional commando units that could be used to conduct sabotage and assassinations behind enemy lines. Towards the end of the war, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels made brazen claims that the Werwolf units would be used as a stay-behind force to wage a guerrilla war against the Occupation, a claim that Allies initially took very seriously.

However, it is now widely agreed that these claims were pure propaganda. There does not appear to have been a serious plan to wage a guerrilla war against the Allies and in fact the Werwolf units were largely poorly trained and equipped. Their chief value to the Nazi regime was principally for psychological warfare purposes.

Skorzeny was involved in other, much more highly effective stay-behind operations, however. One of the most notorious was the so-called "Peter Group" of Denmark, which was created to counter the SOE-backed resistance in that particular Nordic country. The group as commanded by Otto Schwerdt, one Skorzeny's top men in the SD.

Another, even more curious group Skorzeny was involved in was known as the "Organisation Technique" (OT). This group was also established in 1944, shortly after France was liberated by the Allies. The OT was intended as a stay-behind network that would conduct sabotage and assassination operations against the Allies in France.

"... the OT was created by Joseph Darnand, the former head of the Vichy Milice (French fascist paramilitary), consisting of 150-200 volunteers to be trained as agents and sent back in France to fight the Allied forces. 

"Command of the OT was given to Jean Degans, a former member of the Cagoule and former director of the Vichy police. OT liaison with the Germans came from Skorzenys Jagdverband, and Jean Fillliol, a former Cagoule who exercised 'day-to-day' control of the group. Several OT sabotage and secret service camps were established in Germany with training and operational planning coming directly from Skorzeny's special forces."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pg. 60) 

OT creator Joseph Darnand, like seemingly every other major member of the group, had also been a member of the dreaded Cagoule in the years leading up to the war. La Cagoule, which was addressed before here and here, was a secret society and paramilitary organization active in France during 1936 and 1937. During those years the group stockpiled an enormous amount of arms and engaged in several assassinations and bombings, with an eye towards plunging France into a civil war. From there the Cagoule, along with their extensive supporters in the military, would establish a fascist dictatorship in France along the lines of those in Italy and Spain.

Needless to say, things didn't quite work out that way. The organization was largely neutralized by French police in 1937, with most key members in prison by the end of that year. But with the outbreak of the war in 1939, many Cagoulards were released to defend the homeland. After the French defeat most Cagoulards signed up with the Vichy regime, were they gained some degree of influence. Others went to De Gaulle's Resistance movement. Towards the end of the war, they became a crucial back channel between the US and the Nazi regime.

The above-mentioned Jean Violet, a founder of Le Cercle, had been a member of the Cagoule prior to the war. Violet is generally regarded as the chief force behind the creation of Le Cercle and the dominant personality behind the group until his departure in the late 1970s.

Amt VII

And finally we come to Amt VII, easily the most mysterious section of the RHSA. When most (scholarly) researchers consider occultism in the SS, they look to the Ahnenerbe, that curious "think tank" that dabbled in so much esoteric research both prior to and during the Second World War. And while the Ahnenerbe was without a doubt the chief agency within the SS for researching occultic topics, Amt VII would quietly delve into the same waters with equal vigor. Officially Amt VII was the "Written Records" section of the RSHA, essentially its library. But this was a library that specialized in especially arcane research.

"... AMT VII of the RSHA, the 'Ideological Research' Division that handled occultism, Freemasonry, and cults. From 1941-1945, this division have been under the leadership of Dr. Franz Alfred Six, a scholarly SS-Brigadefuhrer who earlier became prominent as a leader of the Vorkmmando Moskau: a death squad that roamed occupied Russia, murdering hundreds of civilians, dissidents, and Jews in 1941. Six joined the SD in April of 1935 when he was only twenty-six years old; in 1939 he became head of AMT II of the RSHA. A year later, Heydrich named him his future representative in Great Britain after the hypothetically successful Nazi invasion of the British Isles. In other words, Dr. Six would have been largely responsible for program of 'ethnic cleansing' in England had the Nazis managed to invade and occupy the country. 

".... It is said that Himmler created the bizarre occult research division of the RSHA –AMT VII – specifically for Six, so pleased as he was by Six's enthusiasm for hunting down the enemies of the Reich in Russia during the summer of 1941 at Smolensk."

(Unholy Alliance, Peter Levenda, pg. 237)

Six had actually left Amt VII in 1943 and was replaced by Paul Dittel, another SD man. Throughout its brief existence, appears to have maintained a close relationship with the SD, especially Amt VI. Six had been a member of Amt VI, as had Werner Goettsch, another Amt VII man that shall be addressed in a moment. This has led to some confusion among researchers, with some claiming that Amt VII was a part of the SD. Technically they were separate departments, with the SD consisting of Amt III and Amt VI in the RSHA. Still, there was clearly close collaboration and various members of VI would later work with Amt VII.

Back to one of those members, the above-mentioned Werner Goettsch. Goettsch was a close friend of fellow SD agent Otto von Bolschwing, who enjoyed a longstanding working relationship with the CIA in the post-war years. Goettsch was also close to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who became head of the RHSA in the wake of Heydrich's assassination. Kaltenbrunner was an old fencing partner of Otto Skorzeny from their academy days. It was Kaltenbrunner who recommended Skorzeny to lead the SS's commando units.

Kaltenbrunner

During his time with Amt VI, Goettsch played a key role in establishing SD intelligence networks in the Balkans. Then, in 1943, he was transfer to Amt VII for curious reasons. A report by the Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) noted:

"while deep in this reading which changed his feelings towards Nazi ideology, GOETTSCH was appointed liaison officer between Amt VI and the Propaganda Ministry. Because of continued illness and a changed ideological point of view, GOETTSCH asked KALTENBRUNNER to transfer him to Amt VII. Later he sought the acquaintance of Dr DOPPLER, a Freemason in VIENNA, who later advised him concerning the evacuation of Amt VII'S library."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 322) 

The reading that changed Goettsch's point of view involved works on political theory, history and mysticism. Nor was Goettsch the only SD man who would use Amt VII to research the occult at the end of the war.

The infamous Italian philosopher and occultist Julius Evola had enjoyed a longstanding association with the SD that likely went back to at least 1939 despite Evola's ideology being denounced by Volkish elements in the SS. Evola was close to members of the Romanian Iron Guard, which Werner Goettsch's friend Otto von Bolschwing had also worked with while detailed to the SD. Evola's early work with the SD may have derived from his connection to the Guard as well. Former members of the Iron Guard would later help establish the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, as was noted before here.

Evola was officially involved with the RSHA by the end of the war, but what exactly he was doing is shrouded in mystery.

"...  Historian Richard Drake says that while he was in Vienna, 'Evola performed vital liaison services for the SS as Nazi Germany sought to recruit a European army for the defense of the Continent against the Soviet Union and the United States.' According to his own account, Evola spent his time living incognito while doing 'intellectual' research. But what kind of research? 

"While Evola was in Vienna, the SD supplied him with a series of arcane texts plundered from private libraries and rare book collections. The SD bureau the provided him with these documents was Amt VII, an obscure branch that served as an RSHA research library. With this precious archive, Evola closely studied masonic rituals and translated certain 'esoteric texts' for a book called Historie Secrete des Societes Secretes.  It never appeared because Evola claimed that all his documents were lost during the Russian bombardment."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 319-320)

Julius Evola

But is it possible Evola was doing both --working on a book on occultism while helping set up a stay-behind army? And were these to projects totally unrelated? The great Kevin Coogan proposes that Evola was involved in setting up a kind of secret society that could sustain the SS in the wake of the Third Reich's defeat.

As outlandish as it may sound, there can be little doubt that Evola played some as yet unknown role in the Gladio-inspired Years of Lead in Italy, as was noted before here. And there can be even less doubt that Evola had an enormous influence on Italian neo-fascist terrorists in thep ost-war years.

"The use of violence in Italian neo-fascism escalated with numerous bomb attacks and massacres, beginning with the Piazza Fontana explosion in Milan in April 1969. Adriano Romauldi, a leading young neo-fascist, identified Evola in 1971 as the intellectual hero of militant right-wing youth in Italy 'because the teaching of Evola is also a philosophy of total war.' By 1975, the far-right underground adopted a leftist strategy in mounting attacks against the state itself (murders of officials, robberies in ministries). The trend towards violence continued, so that by the late 1970s a cult of action replaced ideology itself, elevating the idea of combat to an existential duty. Neo-fascist terrorist such as Franco Freda and Mario Tuti frequently reprinted and cited Evola's two most militant tracts, Metafisica della guerra (1935) and Dottrina ariana (1940), in praise of 'heroic,' 'exemplary' action without an instrumental purpose.... Groups such as Movimento Revoluzionario Popolare, Terza, and Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari subsequently unleashed a surge of black terrorism in Italy until the majority of militants had been captured or killed and a handful fled abroad."

(Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pgs. 67-68)

Could this also help explain why so many Amt VI men like Six and Goettsch would end with Amt VII as the war was going into a critical stage studying the occult. Wouldn't their services have been put to better use in other fields? Or was there was some truth to Coogan's notion of a Black Order?

During his time with the RSHA at war's end, Evola was detailed to Vienna. Otto Skorzeny, a man also deeply involved in SS stay-behind networks, was also active in Vienna at times during this period as well. Did their work overlap and were their postwar efforts part of the Black Order Evola conceived of in the final days of the Third Reich?

As well shall see, there were certainly a few post war connections to either man. And with that I shall sign off for now. Until next time dear reader, stay tuned.

The Return of the Sith Lord

Anyone who was waded through online conspiracy theories has no doubt encountered ample stories and allegations surrounding Aleister Crowley: that the famed British magi was a Satanist and intelligence asset engaged in nefarious schemes and that he left a fanatical group of followers in his wake that manage a shadowy underground network engaged in terrorism, drugs, pedophilia and ritual murder. Or something along those lines.

While there can be no doubt that Crowley was an occultist (but not a Satanist, as if often alleged) and that he had a relationship with British intelligence, much of everything else one encounters in this regard concerning Crowley is highly suspect, to say the least. This is partly the result of the Christian right's obsession with some type of Satanic conspiracy at the heart of modern liberalism and/or the New Age movement.

If they were to set their gaze upon the murky netherworld of what is commonly referred to as "Traditionalism," they would be on much firmer footing.

Traditionalism is a philosophical school that emerged in the early twentieth century. It derived in part from perennial philosophy, the notion that all of the world's great religions all share a similar origin. To Traditionalists, this philosophy has been gradually lost and/or degraded in the West since roughly the onset of the Renaissance. It went into overdrive in the twentieth century with the increasing abandonment of traditional social structures and the rise of materialism in both communist and capitalist societies.

Rene Guenon

Rene Guenon, a Frenchman who eventually converted to Sufism, is often cited as the first individual to conceptualize the concept of "Traditionalism." Guenon began his spiritual journey in pre-WWI France where he became fascinated with Theosophy and Martinism after a Catholic upbringing. While eventually breaking with these ideologies, they would nonetheless serve as some of principal inspirations for Guenon's particular philosophical bent according to Mark Sedgwick, a leading authority on Traditionalism.

Mr. Evola

In the years following the First World War Traditionalism became increasingly associated with fascism. One of the most influential thinkers in Traditionalism was Julius Evola, who briefly courted Mussolini before his views were deemed to extreme for Italian fascism. From there Evola's gaze would shift to Nazism, which he ultimately found too tame as well. He saw both ideologies as displaying great potential but ultimately being derailed by the pandering to the Church and the working class that both Mussolini and Hitler engaged in.

Evola, a philosopher and occultist, was in many ways everything the conspiratorial right has long accused Crowley of being. In the post-war years he appears to have played a key role in the spread of right wing terrorism and US intrigues in the Italian state and beyond.

"Evola and members of the radical fascist group Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria (FAR) were arrested in April 1951 and charged with plotting to overthrow the state. The crackdown was orchestrated by Christian Democratic Interior Minister Mario Scelba in conjunction with SIFAR, Italy's postwar secret service. After six months in jail, Evola was charged with being 'the spiritual father' of FAR. Although ultimately acquitted of the charges, his arrest had clearly been a warning from the Christian Democratic establishment, as well as the CIA, to get in line.

"Two years later Evola published Gli uomini e la rovine (Men Among the Ruins), in which he seemingly abandoned his anti-American stance. He now argued that 'the immediate task is that of "reinforcing the state," while malgre soi [in spite of oneself] keeping it within the Western alliance (malgre soi because American materialism is as much an enemy of traditional values as Russian totalitarian collectivism).'

"What did Evelyn mean by 'reinforcing the state'? And why did he now argue for keeping Italy 'within the Western alliance'? Had he yielded to American pressure? Or did his decision have something to do with the fact that Men Among the Ruins was published in 1953, shortly after Allen Dulles became the new director of the CIA? One clue comes from the man who wrote the introduction to the book, Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, the 'Black Prince' of Italian far-right politics... 

"At the end of the war Borghese opened up contact with the OSS's James Jesus Angleton. Angleton, who later became one of the CIA's most powerful officials, ran the OSS's 'X-2' counterintelligence branch for Italy during the war. He personally saved Borghese from certain partisan execution by dressing him up in an American uniform and driving him south to Rome for interrogation. Although Borghese was convicted of war crimes, the Italian Supreme Court of Appeals ordered him released from jail in 1949. After regaining his freedom, the Black Prince became a hero for MSI hard-liners.

"Borghese was also courted by the American embassy, the Vatican, and the Christian Democrats. All them wanted him to become the leader of the new pro-NATO 'national front' because the MSI was still considered an unreliable 'hotbed of anti-American and anti-Atlantic sentiment' that could hinder Italian integration into the Western alliance 'unless the party's moderates were able to obtain control and enforce internal discipline.' Given his reputation, the CIA believed that Borghese was the perfect candidate to lead the new front. The MSI, however, was terrified of losing him. Some Salo veterans visited his castle at Artena to warn him about 'reactionary forces' behind the 'national front' and begged him to join the MSI. MSI Secretary Augusto De Marsanich even offered to make him the group's honorary president. The Evolians also hoped that he would help in the struggle against the MSI's parliamentary 'softs.' Borghese officially join the MSI in November 1951, and one month later, on 2 December 1951, he became the MSI's honorary president.

"Borghese's importance for the CIA went beyond politics. The CIA-backed SIFAR spy agency began organizing secret squadrons (many composed of ex-officials of the SID, Mussolini's a secret police) for espionage and 'counter-espionage' operations against the left in 1949. The CIA then created an underground army of ex-fascist combat veterans in an operation codenamed 'Operation Gladio' (Gladio being the name for a Roman double-edged sword). Gladio, however, couldn't succeed without Borghese's tactic approval."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 330-332)

Operation Gladio was eventually expanded throughout West Europe by the CIA and Pentagon. In theory this secret army would launch a guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in the event of Western Europe being overrun and occupied.

That was the theory, anyway. The actuality appears to have been quite different. Gladio forces were overwhelming recruited from the far right and ample evidence has surfaced over the year to indicate that their primary purposes was to launch terror attacks in Europe that could be blamed on the Communists and left in general. This was to ensure that Western Europe remained in the NATO camp throughout the Cold War.

This blog has already addressed Gladio operations in Italy during the so-called "Years of Lead" before here. More information on Gladio's role in Belgium's "Bloody Eighties" can be found here and here.

Evola and Gladio

The great Kevin Coogan firmly believed that Evola collaborated with US officials to launch Gladio. Later, he appears to have provided the ideological basis for a new generation of neo-fascist terrorists to sign on with it.

"Seen in this context, the fact that Prince Borghese wrote the introduction to Men Among the Ruins takes on special significance. Franco Ferraresi's commentary on Evola's idea of the State as expressed in the book also takes on an added level of meaning:

The notion of using the forces of the 'true Right' for the defense of the State against subversion corresponds to a lasting concern of Evola's. Industrial society has made the State a hostage in the hands of trade unions and organize masses, which can jam the whole machinery with strikes and sabotage. The Army and the police, 'given the level reached in Italy by the communist gangrene,' might not be able to provide an adequate defense. Hence the need, for the right, to gradually organize a close network of task forces, 'ready to quickly intervene against all possible emergencies,' in order first and foremost to uphold 'against the rabble, the State and its authority (even when it's an "empty State").'

"Evola's Gladio-like notion of 'reinforcing the State,' even an 'empty state,' operated on two levels. Networks of fascist loyalist in the armed forces and intelligence services now pushed closer and closer to centers of power, using the imminent danger of communism or terrorism (from either the 'left' or 'right') as justification for their rise. These networks also sponsored far-right paramilitary shock-troops to intervene in crisis situations. The most important of these groups was Giuseppe 'Pino' Rauti's Ordine Nuovo (New Order, or ON), which split from the MSI after its 1956 congress chanting, 'Fewer double-breasted suits and more cudgels.' Rauti's move was ideologically inspired by Evola, whom Rauti worshiped. Rauti also maintained close ties to Italian military intelligence. Organizations like Ordine Nuovo were regularly employed as street fighters against the left; they also engaged in bombings and killings, and helped create a popular climate for more repressive measures against 'anarchy' from either the right or left – a kind of political yen/yang that justified the flourishing of the secret state. As part of the strategy of tension, rightist operatives and police agents used left and anarchist groups that they had created, or legitimate sects that had been infiltrated. By the 1970s the social crisis in Italy had also given rise to an entire independent subculture of armed sects on both the left and the right."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 333-334)

While the Ordine Nuovo was certainly one of the most notorious fascist terror networks in Italy during this era, it was hardly the only one to be heavily influenced by Evola.

"In another right-wing manual of the period, La lotta politica di Avanguardia Nazionale (1974-75), the so-called black bomber, Stefano Delle Chiaie, portrayed his followers in Avanguardia Nazionale as an Evolian 'elite of heroes.' Moreover, when Clemente Graziani, the leader of the Movimento Politico Ordine Nuovo (MPON), following Pino Rauti's return to the MSI in 1969, sought to defend the need for a truly revolutionary right-wing organization in Italy, he patterned his argument, in Processo a Ordine Nuovo, processo alle idee, on Evolian ideas. The bibliography of this tract was made up almost entirely of books by Evola. Graziani stated succinctly that 'the work of Ordine Nuovo from 1953 to today has been that of transferring Evola's teachings to the political plane.' On the question of violence, he reminded his readers, 'We are not Christians.' No, they were revolutionaries in the civil war that had already erupted would fight: 'we intend to react, in a virile manner, responsibly, but to react....' Graziani did not oppose violence on principle; but then he asked who did. Perhaps not even the bourgeois revolutionaries, who thought violent acts against the established order of their day had founded the modern Italian state, now in its death agony...

"Cavalcare la tigre also made a deep impression on the neofascist generation of 1977 – those youths who believe that only a violent rejection of the status quo would enable Italy to escape a dual enslavement, to Marx and to Coca-Cola. For them Evola was a beacon in the long night of Italy's spiritual crisis, and they turned to him for instruction on how to validate themselves in a worthless age. What they learned, particularly from Evola's final homilies, was the paramount need to do battle against the forces of darkness, the Christian Democrats and Communists. 'Nothing in the system deserves to be saved,' Evola exhorted, and the implications of his exhortations were not very subtle. For example, in 1970 he wrote, 'It is not a question of contesting and polemicizing, but of blowing up everything.' Three years later Evola was warning his followers about the imminent decisive hours as the Left, emboldened by the undoing of Italy's government, prepared to take power. Only armed resistance offered the Right any hope of victory, he counseled 

 "If Salierno's testimony is reliable, we can conclude that all along Evola, in his private audiences with right-wing youths, freely advocated violence without truce. Toward the end of his life, even in his public statements on the question of terrorism, Evola hardly bothered to conceal his true sentiment, that terrorism should be ruled out only when the odds against it success were overwhelming. He added, however, that if 'the person responsible for this contemporary subversion [could be kept] in a constant state of physical insecurity, that would be an excellent thing.' Evola's message here resembled Marx's view of terrorism in The Civil War in France: not to be employed indiscriminately, but only when the authentic revolutionary cause will be served effectively by it. As the German poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) had written more than thirty years earlier in an admiring review of La rivolta contro il mondo moderno, Evola appeals to those 'black monks' who await the stroke of midnight; 'when the time is full they will guide the forces of the resurrection.' "

(The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy, Richard Drake, pgs. 131-132)

Stefano Delle Chiaie, the infamous Evola acolyte and Gladio asset linked to terrorism throughout Europe and South America

It would seem that Benn's proclamation concerning Evola and his followers may yet be proven correct. His influence likely did not end with the Italian deep state, but was spread through a vast fascist underground. Many of Evola's acolytes were close to Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, a Belgian aristocrat close to that nation's deep state and Gladio network. As was noted before here, the so-called "Black Baron" was also implicated in Belgium's infamous elite pedophile networks.

Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, the "Black Baron"

Evola has had a broader, if little acknowledged, influence upon esoterica as well. He counted famed mythologist Mircea Eliade as something of a friend and had an influence on his work that Eliade tactically left unacknowledged. Chilean ambassador and occultist Miguel Serrano's system was heavily influenced by Evola as well. And it is this researcher's belief that Evola crafted much of the modern Black Sun mythos that were later spread by Wilhelm Landig (who likely served with Evola in the SS in Austria towards the end of WWII).

one variation of the Black Sun

Certainly Evola never achieved the degree of influence on the popular culture that Crowley did, but he surely would not have wished for such an influence. Evola's system was both highly elitist and secretive. He had no interest in the great unwashed masses. Rather, he sought to initiate a highly select sect of warrior-monks bent on co-opting the state from within. As such, there is very little information available about Evola's actual occult system after the 1920s or the extend of its reach as his followers have gone to great lengths to keep said system hidden from the "profane."

The Sith Strikes Back

And now it would seem that Evola is enjoying something of a Renaissance. Throughout Europe and America, Evola is increasingly being cited as an influence by far right political parties and the American alt-right. The New York Times recently carried a curious article that outlined this resurgence:

"... Today, the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works.

"More important for the current American administration, Evola also caught on in the United States with leaders of the alt-right movement, which Mr. Bannon nurtured as the head of Breitbart News and then helped harness for Mr. Trump.

" 'Julius Evola is one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century,' said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who is a top figure in the alt-right movement, which has attracted white supremacists, racists and anti-immigrant elements. 

"In the days after the election, Mr. Spencer led a Washington alt-right conference in chants of 'Hail Trump!' But he also invoked Evola’s idea of a prehistoric and pre-Christian spirituality — referring to the awakening of whites, whom he called the Children of the Sun...

"A March article titled 'An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right' in Breitbart, the website then run by Mr. Bannon, included Evola as one of the thinkers in whose writings the 'origins of the alternative right' could be found.

"The article was co-written by Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing provocateur who is wildly popular with conservatives on college campuses. Mr. Trump recently defended Mr. Yiannopoulos as a symbol of free speech after demonstrators violently protested his planned speech at the University of California, Berkeley."

Richard Spencer

That Evola's work would have an influence on the intelligentsia behind the alt-right is not especially surprising. As I noted before here, some very strange things began to emerge during the recent presidential election, from "meme magic" to the obsession with the frog Pepe that some alt-righters hail as a new manifestation of the Egyptian god Kek.

But Evola's resurgence among the alt right is not the most intriguing aspect of The Times' article. Far more eyebrow raising is the fact that Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign manager turned "chief strategist" and recent addition to the National Security Council, is aware of Evola. The Times noted:

"Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen K. Bannon’s dark and at times apocalyptic worldview have repeatedly combed over a speech that Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s ideological guru, made in 2014 to a Vatican conference, where he expounded on Islam, populism and capitalism.

"But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola...

"As Mr. Bannon expounded on the intellectual motivations of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, he mentioned 'Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the Traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian Fascism.'..

"In his Vatican talk, Mr. Bannon suggested that although Mr. Putin represented a 'kleptocracy,' the Russian president understood the existential danger posed by 'a potential new caliphate' and the importance of using nationalism to stand up for traditional institutions.

" 'We, the Judeo-Christian West,' Mr. Bannon added, 'really have to look at what he’s talking about as far as Traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism.' "

Steve Bannon

It's hard to say what's more interesting about this --Mr. Bannon's actual comments or the timing of this information, that is. After all, Hillary Clinton's campaign was hurt badly by the fact the campaign chairman John Podesta simply received an invitation to a "spirit cooking" dinner. And yet Bannon was on record for almost two years name dropping Evola and speaking favorably of "Traditionalism," a movement long linked to fascism, and the media is just now exposing it.

One is thus tempted to dismiss Bannon's mention of Evola as hyperbole on the part of the press at this point, and yet Breitbart (which Bannon ran prior to signing up with Trump) appears to have been promoting Evola in early 2016, months before Bannon signed up as Trump's campaign manager. While Bannon may be widely mocked, close associates insist that he is extremely intelligent and well read, both of which are frankly a prerequisite before tackling Evola. And no doubt Evola's ideology, which called for the infiltration and eventual conquest of the state by an initiated fascist elite, would have had a certain appeal to Bannon.

A New Russian Tradition

The New York Times of course can't resist a bit of Russian conspiracy theorizing. It goes on to note:

"As Mr. Bannon suggested in his speech, Mr. Putin’s most influential thinker is Aleksandr Dugin, the ultranationalist Russian Traditionalist and anti-liberal writer sometimes called 'Putin’s Rasputin.'

"An intellectual descendant of Evola, Mr. Dugin has called for a 'genuine, true, radically revolutionary, and consistent fascist fascism' and advocated a geography-based theory of 'Eurasianism' — which has provided a philosophical framework for Mr. Putin’s expansionism and meddling in Western European politics."

Everything the mainstream media says about Russia should be taken with a heaping grain of salt, but there is some basis to what The Times is alleging. Russia does in fact possess a vigorous Traditionalist movement that Aleksandr Dugin helped spearhead. And Mr. Dugin did derive much of his influence from Evola, as did early Russian traditionalists.

"Golovin, Jamal and (later) Dugin worked on reconstructing Traditionalism from the books they found in the Lenin Library, sometimes attempting to guess the contents of unavailable books from their titles alone. Although Guenon's Symbolisme de la Croix was unavailable (held in the 'closed section' of the library), Evola's Pagan Imperialism (in the revised, more Traditionalist Leipzig edition of 1933) had been placed in the library's open collection when it was acquired in 1957 – whoever was responsible for these decisions obviously looked no deeper than the books' titles. Russian Traditionalists, though taking their lead from Guenon's explanations of modernity, generally reacted to it (after 1991, at least) more on the model of Evola."

(Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick, pg. 222)

Alesksandr Dugin

As for Aleksandr Dugin, he and his "Eurasia Movement" do indeed appear to have Russian deep state connections.

"There were many reports that the Eurasian Movement received generous financial support from branches of associations of retired officers of the SVR and FSB, the foreign intelligence and domestic security agencies into which the Soviet KGB had been divided in 1991. Dugin's second-in-command in the Eurasian movement, Peter Yevgen'evich Suslov, was also a former intelligence officer. After service in the KGB's First Main Directorate, Suslov retired from the SVR as a colonel in 1995. According to one controversial and unconfirmed report, he had specialized in assassinations and was linked with Maxim Lazovsky, a former KGB and FSB officer implicated in allegedly fabricating 'Chechen terrorist' bombings in Moscow in 1994. Support from retired FSB and SVR officers does not definitely indicate the active support of serving officers or of the FSB itself, but it does imply at least a cooperative relationship with the FSB and the Kremlin. Given that President Putin himself had once served in the KGB's First Main Directorate (later the SVR), there was a tendency for intelligent officers to be entrusted with certain delicate tasks – not because those tasks were necessarily related to intelligence work, but because intelligence officers were seen as being trustworthy, reliable, and effective. There is thus a possibility that, in one way or another, Suslov was a Kremlin representative in the Eurasian Movement's leadership."

(Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick, pgs. 235-236)

the emblem of the FSB

So there is that. But just how much influence Dugin actually has in the Kremlin is highly, highly debatable,  And certainly there is no indication that he has Putin's ear. In point of fact, Dugin was recently removed from his post as head of the Department of Sociology of International Relations of Moscow State University after his provocative comments on the situation in the Ukraine.

Still, I find the bizarre spiritual overlap between elements of the American and Russia far right to be extremely interesting. As was noted before here, Rick Joyner and other radical Christian fundamentalists belonging to the Oak Initiative have also forged links with their counterparts in the World Public Forum, which was co-founded by Vladimir Yakunin, a close associate of Putin. If the evangelical have made common cause, would the resurgent Evolites not consider similar alliances?

Trump is not Putin's puppet, not by a long shot. But there does appear to be a surprising amount of overlap among the America and Russian Christian fundamentalists and Evolites among the far right. There are likely more than a few intelligence asset among this motley crew as well. And there does appear to be compelling evidence of organized crime links between Russian and the Trump team.

What it amounts too is that there appears to be some very shadowy and sinister non-state forces behind the resurgence of the far right across the globe and that this resurgence may be driven by some very warped spirituality. Where all of this is heading I do not pretend to know, but it will surely be unlike anything we have witnessed in the post-war years. And with that I shall sign off for now. Until next time dear readers.