The swamp creature that held Pope Benedict XVI in its deadly grip

 

Effective schemes had been developed by the Nazis and militarists to obstruct law and justice. After they had reached success, after thousands of Nazi criminals had fled to Spain and Egypt, after other thousands had been freed from Allied prisons, there appeared accounts in some Rightist newspapers, congratulating a group of Nazi ringleaders on accomplishing an almost impossible task. The Deutsche Soldaten Zeitung aune 1958) published a full-page account of a farreaching secret organization which had been founded in 1948 in violation of Allied rules.

The purpose of the organization was to free the war criminals in defiance of law and justice. The author of this remarkable report, Major General Hans Korte, describes how a kind of General Staff, or “steering committee,” was set up in Munich to direct all the anti-warguilt propaganda in occupied Germany and throughout the entire world. A group of Nazi jurists who had served in Nuremberg as counsels for major war criminals formed the nucleus of the directing body. Prominent among them were Dr. Rudolf Aschenauer of Munich and Ernst Achenbach (of the Naumann circle) of Essen, the latter having excellent financial connections on Rhine and Ruhr.

In order to conceal certain activities from the occupying powers, a number of fronts or subagencies were created to serve as special task forces. To furnish the press with propaganda on the war-guilt question, an “independent” monthly newsletter, Die Andere Seite (The Other Side), was issued, in which material about the “so-called war criminals” was cleverly introduced among other news items. This distorted and slanted news was reprinted not only in the provincial press but in such leading papers as the Frankfurter Allgemeine) the Stuttgarter Nachrichten) and Die Welt. In addition, a circular letter was mailed periodically to organizations and influential personalities in Germany and abroad in order to gain their support for the release of all war criminals.

To camouflage these activities well-known German church representatives were brought into the organization, so that both major denominations joined the common defense for the convicted Nazi war criminals. A Committee for Christian Aid to War Prisoners was formed in 1948; among its sponsors there were prominent Roman Catholics-Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne and Bishop Johann Neuhaeussler of Munich-and leading Protestants-Bishop Theophil Wurm of Stuttgart and Bishop Meiser of Munich. These church leaders had already issued several strong protests against the Allied war crime trials.  (more...)

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