About Paul Manning: A Heroic Journalist

Paul Manning

Much of the For The Record series deals with the Bormann Organization and the research done on that by the late Paul Manning. Holding the official title of Reichsleiter, and having officially succeeded Hitler as the head of the NSDAP (German Nazi Party), Martin Bormann remains relatively unknown. Feared by other, better-known Nazi leaders for his perseverance, cunning, industriousness and capacity for detail, Martin Bormann was the real “power behind the throne” in the Third Reich.

Paul Manning’s research was undertaken, in considerable measure, as a result of the encouragement of Edward R. Murrow. ”. . . My wartime CBS colleague, the late Edward R. Murrow, had talked at length with me about developing the Bormann saga as a solid and historically enlightening, valuable post­war story. . . .”

Captured documents in Manning’s possession reveal that on August 10, 1944 a conference of top representatives of German industry and finance enacted a flight capital program in which Germany’s economic wealth was to be legally, but clandestinely, moved to “Safehavens” in neutral countries.

Authorized by Bormann and executed by the SS, this conference paved the way for the tremendous economic power of Nazi Germany to power a postwar perpetu­ation of a Third Reich gone underground. As the captured documents reveal, an important provision of this conference was that German finance and industry would continue to sustain the Nazi party after the formal surrender of Germany. The Third Reich has been able to survive — underground — in deadly, Mafia-like fashion.  (more...)

About Paul Manning: A Heroic Journalist

Manning's extraordinary gift to journalists and historians:

Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile

More of Manning's work:

Update on Germany

Nuclear Weapons and the “Underground Reich”

How "follow the money" has acquired new meaning:

Darkness in the Vaults