Christian Fundamentalism and the Underground Reich

Audio:  Part 1     Part 2

Recent decades have seen the growth of the Christian Right, a major force within the Republican Party and on the American political landscape itself. The Family, a recent book by Jeff Sharlet has gained considerable traction and sets forth the profound influence wielded within U.S. power structure by an organization called The Family, founded in the 1930’s by a Norwegian immigrant named Abram Vereide (usually referred to by those familiar with him as “Abram.”) Although its primary influence is within the GOP, the Family has considerable gravitas within the Democratic Party as well.

This program highlights the organization’s profound relationship with the Underground Reich and the Bormann capital network. Vereide and his associates played a significant role in neutralizing the de– Nazification of Germany and the political rehabilitation of Third Reich alumni for service both in the “New” Federal Republic of Germany and U.S. intelligence.

Thus: “Between the Cold War establishment and the religious fervor of Abram and his allies, organizations that came of age in the postwar era – the National Association of Evangelicals, Campus Crusade, the Billy Graham Crusade, Youth For Christ, the Navigators, and many more – one finds the unexplained presence of men such as [Nazi agent Manfred] Zapp, adaptable men always ready to serve the powers that be.”

After delineating the prewar and wartime careers in the United States of Nazi spies Manfred Zapp and Baron Ulrich von Gienanth, the program notes that they were among those who became close associates of “Abram” in his “saving” of Third Reich alumni for duty in the Cold War. They were typical and by no means the worst of the Nazis recruited by Vereide and his associates.  (more...)

Christian Fundamentalism and the Underground Reich

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The Cancer From Within

The Canadian branch:

Stephen Harper's Covert Evangelicalism