The Anti-Nazi Resistance: Diverse Groups of People Motivated by Diverse Thinkers

In the 1930s and 1940s, a person who lived in Nazi-controlled territories who secretly or openly opposed Hitler was taking an enormous risk. In fact, it was less a risk and more a probability that such a person would be arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and murdered. Yet many people resisted anyway.

Why would people face death, when they could survive and go on living by simply accepting the National Socialist Party?

There is more than one reason which motivated people to actively resist the National Socialist. People from different parts of society had different inspirations. Yet these diverse groups all worked at the same time to achieve the same goals: to make sure that the Nazis would fail, to see to it that the Germans would be liberated from Nazi oppression, and to save the lives of as many Jews as possible.

The National Socialists oppressed Germany for twelve years, from 1933 to 1945. People of sincere faith could meet only secretly. Hitler had ordered that all churches be turned into Nazi propaganda centers.

Writing about one of the many groups of anti-Nazi resistance groups, historian Uwe Siemon-Netto explains:

More than six decades ago, scores of Germans were rounded up and tortured to death, hanged, guillotined, or executed by firing squads for their attempt to overthrow the National Socialist tyranny. Almost all of them were Christians; some were Roman Catholic, and some were Lutheran. The most famous among the latter group were Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian, and Carl Friederich Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig. Goerdeler would have become Germany’s chancellor had the July 20, 1944 coup succeeded.

The idea of opposing Hitler produced an impressive cooperation between different groups of people.

The German women and men who resisted the Nazis came from many different demographic groups: aristocrats, scholars, military officers, theologians, and blue-collar men from the factories. Each social group had its own style of opposing Hitler. The Lutherans, as mentioned above, “acted in accordance with Martin Luther’s teachings on how and when to resist secular authority,” according to Uwe Siemon-Netto.

Four hundred years after his time, Martin Luther, who lived from 1483 to 1546, provided encouragement for the women and men who defied Hitler and undermined the Nazi government.

These freedom fighters willingly and knowingly embraced a great risk: many were arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and murdered for their actions. They followed Martin Luther’s advocacy of “an almost foolhardy opposition against all governmental injustice,” in the words of historian Franz Lau.

Here is a great historical paradox: on the one hand, many scholars accuse Luther of fueling the anti-semitism which ultimately led to the rise of Hitler; on the other hand, other scholars see Luther as providing the inspiration for the anti-Nazi resistance movement. Which one is true? Can it be both ways?

Part of the solution to this seeming contradiction is this: Nazi propaganda was so effective that its results have outlived the actual Nazis by almost a century.

The National Socialists attempted to legitimize themselves — or more precisely, to make themselves seem legitimate — by distorting the historical record. They hoped thereby to make it seem as if almost every great thinker in history endorsed Nazi views.

Martin Luther was only one victim of this propaganda effort. Philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Herbert Spencer, both of whom stood clearly opposed to National Socialist ideas, were presented by the Nazis as if they agreed with, and predicted, the rise of Hitler and his policies. Poets like J.W. von Goethe and Ludwig Uhland were interpreted as if they were proto-Nazis. The list of brilliant authors who were portrayed as forerunners of Naziism is long — and each of them was in reality opposed to Naziism.

The Nazis were so good at lying that their propaganda has shaped the views of anti-Nazis, and their lies are molding media and authors a century later.

The notion that Martin Luther would have in any way encouraged the ideas of Naziism is a notion produced by Nazi propaganda.

Yet some people during the 1930s and 1940s were duped by the propaganda. Even now, many people have been tricked into believing it. Ironically, many sincere anti-Nazi thinkers in the twenty-first century have been deceived by Nazi propaganda, because that propaganda was so thoroughly disseminated that it has infused modern scholarship and culture.

So historian Uwe Siemon-Netto can write that, “well, yes, there were” a few “Germans who misunderstood Luther” under the influence of Nazi propaganda “and therefore did not resist the Nazis and who became Nazis themselves; and there were” many “other Germans whose internalized Lutheranism guided them in the opposite direction and made them choose the path of resistance and martyrdom.”

History is messy. History is complicated. Figuring out who the real Martin Luther is, and separating him from the fake ideas about Martin Luther which the Nazis presented, is not easy. Some people in the 1930s and 1940s were fooled. Some people today are fooled.

But some people, then and now, were and are aware of how the Nazis attempted — and often succeeded — in warping and twisting the words and actions of the real Martin Luther. Those who have explored the ideas of Luther see that he inspired resistance against Hitler and against National Socialism.

The resistance movement was multifaceted: while Luther inspired the Lutheran freedom fighters, a different group of writers inspired the Roman Catholic underground, and philosophers and poets inspired the academics who resisted Hitler. Just as the resistance movement was composed of diverse groups of people, so the inspiration behind that movement was a diverse group of authors and thinkers.

How the Germans Fought the Nazis

It is far too easy to not only associate, but even equate, “Germans” with “Nazis” — especially given the cliches from Hollywood — when studying the history of central Europe from 1933 to 1945. The student is tempted to believe that, during those years, Germans were Nazis and Nazis were Germans.

But that’s not the way it was.

Most Germans weren’t Nazis. Quite a few Nazis weren’t Germans.

The population of Germany, just before WW2 started, was a bit over 79,000,000. The peak membership of the Nazi Party was between 8,000,000 and 8,500,000. Approximately 90% of the German population were not Nazis.

Even in the German armed forces — the Wehrmacht — Nazis were in the minority.

Not only were the majority of Germans not Nazis; many of them were active anti-Nazis. They were engaged, not only in an intellectual rejection of National Socialism, but in concrete actions which slowed the war effort and saved the lives of thousands of Jews.

From the moment Hitler took power in 1933, groups of resistance formed among the Germans. A diverse group of Germans worked simultaneously to defeat the National Socialist: aristocrats, academics, military officers, theologians, and working-class men from the factories. Some of these groups were networked with other groups, forming a larger resistance web. Other groups worked in isolation. Together, they weakened the military resources of the Nazis and saved the lives of thousands of Jews, as historians Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis write:

There were people in the uniforms of the Third Reich who not only had plotted to overthrow Hiter but also hoped to assassinate him.

Lieutenant-Colonel Hans Oster, a talkative, open, and honest man who had served bravely in the Great War, despised Hitler and his “politicization” of all aspects of German society; among friends, he would insist on only referring to the Führer dismissively as “Emil.” His senior role in German military counterintelligence, the Abwehr, allowed him to discover the real truth behind the torture of political dissidents, Jews, and religious figures, and of the concentration camps. Oster, a pastor’s son, believed Hitler intended to drive Germany’s Jews to destruction and felt a growing responsibility before God for their rescue.

His friend Hans von Dohnanyi — a studious-looking man with dark hair swept to one side and this metal-rimmed glasses — was collecting a Chronicle of Shame, a legal file of Hitler’s crimes to be used in a prosecution of the Führer following a coup.

Oster was intent not only on resisting the Nazi regime, but also on removing Hitler.

Hans Oster was part of one particular resistance nexus which was organizing assassination attempts. Some of the civilian members of these networks were morally opposed to killing a human being, but soon they understood that by assassinating Hitler, they would save the lives of thousands of others. Parallel to the projected death of Hitler, these groups planned a coup which would overthrow the entire National Socialist government and put an authentically German government in place to end the war and stop the oppression of the civilian population.

He had already planned one coup and was now planning another. For Oster there would be no trial of Adolf Hitler. He planned to kill him.

Altogether, there would be more than twenty-five separate assassination attempts on Hitler between 1932 and 1944.

While none of these attempts was successful in killing Hitler, they did hinder the political leadership of the Reich and thereby reduced the effectiveness of the war effort.

The members of the German resistance understood earlier than the Allies what Hitler intended to do, and how repulsively evil it would be. The resistance members developed a passionate and urgent need to work against Hitler, long before the French, British, or Americans understood how horrifying the Nazi regime would be.

That’s why these German freedom fighters took such great risks in undermining the National Socialist regime.

German Officers in Uniform Oppose Hitler: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

It’s easy to think that the German military during WW2 was a Nazi organization. It’s helpful to know a few words: The German Army was the Heer. The German Navy was the Kriegsmarine. The German Air Force was the Luftwaffe. The overarching term for the complete military — army, navy, and airforce together — was the Wehrmacht.

But most of the military weren’t Nazis.

Most historians estimate that 29% of the officers in the Wehrmacht were members of the National Socialist Party. Among those officers, 33% of the junior officers were members, while significantly less than 29% of the senior officers were members. Among the enlisted men, even fewer were members.

The majority of both officers and enlisted men in the German military were not members of the Nazi Party.

A significant number of them were active in the resistance. Not only were they not National Socialists, but they were taking specific concrete steps both to undermine the war effort and to impair the extermination of the Jews. These soldiers and officers helped the Allies to defeat the Nazis and liberate Germany, and saved thousands of Jewish lives in the process.

The general public in the first quarter of the twenty-first century is accustomed to seeing black-and-white photos of German soldiers and officers in uniform, and simply equating them with Nazis. Yet the majority of them were not Nazis, and many of them fought vigorously against the Nazis.

One such example is Harro Schulze-Boysen. He was a well-respected officer in the Luftwaffe who’d worked his way up to a responsible position. In the word of historians Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis, Harro Schulze-Boysen worked “in the air force intelligence division, scanning foreign press reports and writing briefings for one of the most powerful figures in the Third Reich, Hermann Göring.”

By outward appearances, Schulze-Boysen was loyally supporting the Nazi war effort. But the reality was different:

Schulze-Boysen was in fact a daring, sometimes reckless anti-Nazi. Aided by his wife, Libertas, he planned not only to reveal some of the regime’s most heinous crimes, but also to turn over its military secrets to the enemy. As war consumed the world, he would become one of the most significant spies at the heart of the Third Reich.

Schulze-Boysen made contacts in the military and outside the military in order to form a resistance network. One of his contacts was Arvid Harnack.

Arvid Harnack was “one of the nation’s greatest academic minds,” having obtained both a doctorate in legal studies and a doctorate in philosophy. He had a job working in the Economics Ministry, where people supposed that he was making sure that Hitler’s plans were well-financed.

But in reality, Harnack was at the center of a growing opposition movement to Hitler, and was already sharing some of the Reich’s most confidential secrets with both Washington and Moscow.

In April 1939, before the war started, he and his wife Mildred were “busy passing Harnack’s secrets to America’s only spy in Germany.” Mildred was an American who’d moved to Germany. She was eager to protect the Germans from the Nazis.

Both Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack lived and worked in Berlin. Together they formed a group which sent Nazi military secrets to the Allies. Their efforts were effective and made a real difference in helping the Allies to defeat the Nazis.

They were discovered by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, and murdered in 1942.

Germans vs. Nazis: The Resistance Undermines Hitler’s Plans

In January 1933, two things happened. Adolf Hitler’s Nazis completed their political scheme to seize power and begin oppressing the people of Germany, and thousands of Germans began organizing a resistance movement which to reduce the effectiveness of Nazi war machine and save the lives of thousands of Jews.

The resistance took different forms in different times and places. Many of the leaders were Aristocrats, academics, military officers, and Christians. But some leaders were blue-collar factory workers. They had several things in common: they were opposed to Hitler’s “National Socialist” movement, and they were determined to oppose it in concrete and effective ways.

Such an explicit refusal to accept National Socialism was dangerous, and more than dangerous, as historians Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis write:

These are the ones who through a love of Germany committed treason against it, rejecting the shackles of a warped, corrupt, and evil state.

They stood up in the knowledge that almost all dissent would be punished by death.

They gave their lives with one thing foremost in their minds: that through their actions they might redeem the honor of their nation.

The list of individual Germans who worked to defend their country from the Nazi oppressors is long. Specific names, dates, places, and actions reveal the ways in which this underground movement reduced the effectiveness of the National Socialist plans, weakened the Nazis, and assisted the Allies in the effort to liberate Germany.

One example is Robert Scholl. He and his wife Magdalena lived in the city of Ulm with their children. He’d been active in politics: he’d been the mayor Ulm at one point in time. When Hitler took power, Scholl could see the hidden intentions behind the Nazi propaganda, and realized that the National Socialists were preparing for war:

Fiercely independent-minded, he “translated” the Nazi propaganda on the radio for his family and told them war was coming. He had maintained his friendships with Jewish friends and associates in Ulm when others shunned them.

When some of Scholl’s neighbors draped Nazi banners from their windows, the Scholl family did not: “There were no flags flying from their windows.” Robert Scholl “was a man of deep conviction and strongly held” Christian and civic “beliefs.” Scholl’s children agreed with the ideas they found in the sermons of Bishop Galen: Real Christians must oppose the Nazi practice of treating human life as worthless.

Among Scholl’s children, two of them — Hans and Sophie — would become the most influential in the resistance movement. They saw the National Socialists as insulting to Christ. True Christians could not support a party which offended God by murdering innocent people.

Opposition to the National Socialists had a unifying effect: academics and factory workers found themselves supporting the cause; military officers and pacifists joined forces; Lutherans, Catholics, and Calvinists found common ground. There was a terrible tension: on the one hand, basic humanity demanded opposition to the Nazis; on the other hand, such opposition not only risked one’s life, but more likely guaranteed the end of one’s life.

So it was that the entire Scholl family persevered solidly in their efforts against the National Socialists:

Scholl had brought up his five surviving children in his image. Hans, the elder boy, was the dominant character among them, but Sophie matched him in spirit. As they learned about the treatment of Jews across Germany, the words of one friend struck them deeply: “They are crucifying Christ a second time, as people!”

For the Scholls, opposition to Hiter was a moral imperative, a simple question of right versus wrong. No matter what the consequences. In the horrors that Hitler would create in the coming years, the family would pay a terrible price for its desire for a better Germany.

The price paid was this: Hans and Sophie would be executed by the Nazis in 1943 for their conscientious resistance.

In the blue-collar neighborhood of Neukölln in Berlin, Jews and non-Jews worked closely together. Led by Herbert Baum, they engaged in a number of actions to undermine National Socialist propaganda. They printed and distributed their own writings against the Nazis, and when the Nazis set up an exhibition about the Soviet Union, Baum and his colleagues set it on fire. Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis report:

In areas like working-class Neukölln, Jews and Gentiles found common ground in their hatred of the Nazis. Many congregated around electrician Herbert Baum and his wife, Marianne, who were developing a flair for the dramatic, creating their own antifascist propaganda to counter that of Goebbels. They had already humiliated the “poison dwarf” once and intended to do so again.

The Baums and their Jewish friends intended to fight back.

Like Hans and Sophie Scholl, Herbert and Marianne Baum were murdered by the Nazis.

The underground resistance efforts against the National Socialists ultimately came from all income levels, from all regions of Germany, from Christians and Jews, from the highly educated and the blue-collar. Those who were part of the efforts understood that they were essentially signing away their lives, but they also understood that they were doing so in order to hasten the end of the evil which the Nazis were perpetrating.

Conspiracies Hidden within Conspiracies: The Agenda Is Never the Agenda

The political class seems never to tire of ‘socialism’ and ‘communism.’ There are those who openly embrace, by name, this single phenomenon which carries these two labels: those who speak fondly of socialism.

There are also those who embrace this one political spirit without using either of its names, having learned that ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ are still uncomfortable words for much of the public.

Finally, there are a few brave individuals who openly oppose socialism and communism, and are stigmatized both by their peers in the political class and by news media.

A majority of the people in each of the above-named three categories have at least this one thing in common: whether they openly support, covertly support, or directly oppose the international communist conspiracy, they do not realize that what they are supporting or opposing is merely one component of a much larger movement — a movement which is not communism or socialism, and which has nothing to do with what these people support or oppose.

This can be made clear by considering the following two questions: (1) Why is there a clique of ultra-wealthy individuals who are prominent advocates for socialism and communism? (2) Why do these same individuals ensure that their personal wealth is not touched by whichever measures are implemented to advance the causes of socialism and communism?

Why would people who have billions of dollars embrace and support movements which have the stated goal of confiscating that money? If they truly believe in helping those in poverty, would they not already be giving that money to worthy charities, rather than waiting for some future day when the socialist plan is ultimately implemented?

Under the slogan demanding that citizens “pay their fair share,” the incremental programs and legislations which advance the socialist agenda nonetheless seem to leave the ultra-wealthy in possession of their billions and hundreds of billions, while middle-class wage earners pay ever higher tax rates.

The most reasonable explanation is that these advocates of socialism do not want socialism, but rather have found that they can harness the socialist movement to do other, different, tasks. Rather than using the movement to advance socialism, they have found ways to use it to advance their own personal agendas.

At this level of operation, the difference between ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ is a nuance left to academic debates. The vocabulary is chosen for its political leverage, not for precise definition of ideologies.

The international communist conspiracy is a small part of a far bigger, and very different, conspiracy, as historian Gary Allen writes:

What you call "Communism" is not run from Moscow or Peking, but is an arm of a bigger conspiracy run from New York, London and Paris. The men at the apex of this movement are not Communists in the traditional sense of that term.

The paradox of individuals who have hundreds of billions of dollars making common cause with the “workers of the world” presents a contradiction. This contradiction points to the hidden agenda. The prima facie agenda is the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Clearly, the billionaires have proven by their actions that they have no desire to relinquish their wealth. When it appears that two disparate parties are united to achieve a shared aim, and that shared aim is clearly detrimental to one of the parties, and that party has already shown that it in truth does not embrace this allegedly shared aim, then the conclusion is that there is a different hidden aim.

The power brokers who are fueling the socialist movements, and whose names are well-known as proponents of socialism, “feel no loyalty to” to these movements and ideologies. They feel no loyalty to socialist governments and parties around the globe, even as they passionately advocate for them.

Individuals who live in first-world democracies, and who have hundreds of billions of dollars, are products of, and depend upon, free-market economies. Socialism and communism would destroy them. Why, then, do they promote these redistributionist ideologies? Only because they have found a different, hidden purpose for which they can use these ideologies — or more precisely, for which they can use these movements and parties.

Gary Allen explains how the ultra wealthy utilize these ideologies for their own purposes:

They are loyal only to themselves and their undertaking. And these men certainly do not believe in the clap-trap pseudo-philosophy of Communism. They have no intention of dividing their wealth. Socialism is a philosophy which conspirators exploit, but in which only the naive believe. Just how finance capitalism is used as the anvil and Communism as the hammer to conquer the world will be explained in this book.

At this level, both capitalism — “finance capitalism” as Gary Allen phrases it — and communism are merely tools for the powerful to gain yet more power.

The capitalists and socialists who fight each other in the trenches of street-level politics are equally pawns in a game being played at a higher level. Gary Allen continues:

The concept that Communism is but an arm of a larger conspiracy has become increasingly apparent throughout the author's journalistic investigations. He has had the opportunity to interview privately four retired officers who spent their careers high in military intelligence. Much of what the author knows he learned from them. And the story is known to several thousand others. High military intelligence circles are well aware of this network. In addition, the author has interviewed six men who have spent considerable time as investigators for Congressional committees. In 1953, one of these men, Norman Dodd, headed the Reece Committee's investigation of tax-free foundations. When Mr. Dodd began delving into the role of international high finance in the world revolutionary movement, the investigation was killed on orders from the Eisenhower-occupied White House. According to Mr. Dodd, it is permissable to investigate the radical bomb throwers in the streets, but when you begin to trace their activities back to their origins in the "legitimate world," the political iron curtain slams down.

The Reece Committee discovered, e.g., that the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published a list of its members, but maintained a separate list of clandestine members. This finding raises many questions.

The top-level conspiracy has employed the lower-level conspiracies to occupy the attention of the public. Debates between the major parties in the United States are mere sideshows. Protests and demonstrations serve to keep the news media busy reporting about them, and keep the commentators busy having opinions about them.

These distractions successfully prevent the public from discovering the true conspiracy.

At the highest levels of functioning, the conspiracy is truly global — beyond international — and is utterly indifferent to the geographical boundaries and legal domains of various nation-states. They see and treat the world as a large undifferentiated mass. They merely adjust their tactics to suit the context of locally varying conditions.

An axiom, which can be found in slightly different phrasings in the writings of those investigate such things, explains that the agenda is never the agenda, and the issue is never the issue. Despite its stated purpose, a movement is being used to achieve other and different goals — and the members of the movement are unaware.

Bilderberg: The Little-Known Group and Whether It’s Part of a Conspiracy

The average citizen or voter in any country is likely to know nothing about the Bilderberg Group. The group’s main function is to organize an annual or biannual private conference. It seems that the group has no formal membership list; people are simply invited to attend its meetings. There is a defined “steering committee,” and vague indications that there is also a separate “advisory group,” but otherwise the group seems to have little formal structure.

The group seems to be prima facie a networking and discussion group. It has no legal authority and is not recognized by, or as a part of, any national government. As of November 2022, the group’s website stated:

The Bilderberg Meeting is an annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. Every year, between 120-140 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, labor, academia and the media are invited to take part in the Meeting. About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; approximately a quarter from politics and government and the rest from other fields.

The Bilderberg Meeting is a forum for informal discussions about major issues. The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor any other participant may be revealed.

Thanks to the private nature of the Meeting, the participants take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity, and hence are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions. As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights. There is no detailed agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken and no policy statements are issued.

The group could seem to be innocent and even laudable. Perhaps it is. Yet it has continually attracted skepticism and criticism. Some historians see it as possibly part of an international conspiracy. The group’s privacy and informality fuel such conjectures.

The news media have made the phrase “conspiracy theory” a commonplace. Some allegations of conspiracy are lunatic inventions with no supporting evidence. Other conspiracies have been demonstrated, either in the legal system or by scholars, to be concrete realities.

Some scholars have attempted to link the Bilderberg Group to another possible node in a conspiracy network, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), as historian Gary Allen notes:

It should not be surprising to learn that there is on the international level an organizational equivalent of the C.F.R. This group calls itself the Bilderbergers. If scarcely one American in a thousand has any familiarity with the C.F.R., it is doubtful that one in five thousand has any knowledge of the Bilderbergers. Again, this is not accidental.

Serious scholars who investigate possible conspiracies run the risk of being categorized among the paranoid yellow journalists who publish baseless speculations. How do historians analyze the conspiracies while maintaining high academic standards?

The CFR publishes, among other things, a periodical titled Foreign Affairs. This journal includes relatively prosaic articles which don’t reek of conspiracy. On the other hand, individuals associated with the CFR include Cyrus Eaton. There are two men with that name — Cyrus Eaton, Sr. and Cyrus Eaton, Jr. — and their connection with the Soviet Socialists, i.e., with the international communist conspiracy, is clear, as historian Gary Allen explains:

Cyrus Eaton Jr. is the son of the notoriously pro Soviet Cyrus Eaton, who began his career as secretary to John D. Rockefeller. It is believed that Eaton’s rise to power in finance resulted from backing by his mentor. The agreement between Tower International and IBEC continues an old alliance. Although Eaton’s name does not appear on the CFR's membership rolls, the Reece Committee which investigated foundations for Congress in 1953, found that Eaton was a secret member.

The two entities named above — Tower International and the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC) — both appear to be, at first glance, business enterprises: the former in mining and metals, the latter in agronomics. Yet both had ties to the Stalinist economic system in the USSR. Cyrus Eaton, who brought Tower International into being, was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet government; he had easy access to East Germany and Russia at a time when most U.S. citizens found it difficult to obtain visas and travel papers to such places. IBEC was associated with David Rockefeller, who also launched the Americas Society; between IBEC and the Americas Society, Rockefeller had numerous connections to the leaders who were hoping to give the Soviet Union a foothold in South America and Central America.

Cementing the ties to Stalin, Khruschev, and Moscow were the joint efforts by Cyrus Eaton and Aramand Hammer to plan and carry out massive building projects, through the Tower Corporation, in the Soviet Union. As historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write,

The importance of Hammer’s U.S.-Soviet business dealings can’t be overstated, as the Communists would be chronically reliant on Western funding, credits, and technology to help them through their economic troubles. (Conversely, it was when the credits and technical assistance were cut back under Reagan that the creaking Soviet machinery collapsed and Mikhail Gorbachev had to adjourn the Cold War.) U.S. capitalists who followed the trail blazed by Hammer included W. Averell Harriman, Henry Ford, the Morgan interests, Cyrus Eaton, Mack Truck, Chase Manhattan, Control Data, and several other U.S. corporations. Such dealings were of utmost importance in keeping the Soviets economically afloat for a span of nearly seven decades.

The CFR, of which Cyrus Eaton was a member, was founded in 1921, in the same milieu as the League of Nations. The CFR was founded in the spirit of Woodrow Wilson, but by that time, he was out of office and mentally disabled. More directly relevant to the founding of the CFR was Edward House, known as “Colonel House,” who had been an associate of Wilson’s, although the two had also disagreed and eventually parted ways.

These organizations — the Bilderberg, the CFR, the League of Nations — are large enough, and structurally ambiguous enough, that they could house conspiracies, even if the organizations themselves were unaware of the conspiracies, or more likely pretended not to notice such conspiracies. The informal backchannel conversations and the overlapping memberships held by various individuals make it possible and even probable that secret deals and plans were developed in such an environment.

One sign of a conspiracy is the collaboration between individuals whose interests and motives should be opposite. A capitalist business owner, whose livelihood comes from a free-market economy, would seemingly find very little common cause with a bureaucrat who operates within the Soviet Socialist command economy. Yet such connections arise. These connections might be innocent — if both parties find a working relationship advantageous. But such connections, especially when they present the union of what should be diametrically opposed ideologies, point to a hidden agenda.

Economic support for, or even cooperation with, the Soviet Union worked against the causes of peace and justice. An array of individuals demonstrably engaged in activities which supported the Soviet Socialists economically or in other ways. These individuals held memberships in a variety of organizations, including the CFR, the Bilderberg Group, and the League of Nations. (Other such organizations include the Institute of Pacific Relations.)

A preponderance of evidence points to these organizations having — knowingly or not — hosted conspiracies. The likelihood of these individuals having used these organizations as occasions for communication constitutes a clear and convincing case for conspiracy.

Each of these organizations had numerous connections to other organizations and to various businesses, extending the network, as historian Gary Allen reports:

The strange name of this group is taken from the site of the first meeting in May, 1954 — the Hotel de Bilderberg — in Oosterbeek, Holland. The man who created the Bilderbergers is His Royal Highness Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. The Prince is an important figure in Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell Oil) and the Societe General de Belgique, a huge conglomerate cartel with worldwide holdings. The Bilderbergers meet once — or sometimes twice — a year. Those in attendance include leading political and financial figures from the United States and Western Europe. Prince Bernhard makes no effort to hide the fact that the ultimate goal of the Bilderbergers is a world government. In the meantime, while the “new world order” is being built, the Bilderbergers coordinate the efforts of the European and American power elites.

Among the remaining questions is to which extent these organizations were deliberately the homes for conspiracy, and to which extent they were unwitting dupes. The probability is overwhelming that there were also individual members of these groups who were unaware of such secret conspiracies. Indeed, it belongs to the nature of such conspiracies that they operate behind and among innocent and unwitting individuals and organizations: they are not merely conspiracies, but covert conspiracies.

Skepticism about the Bilderberg Group can only be fueled by the fact that Stacy Abrams is listed as a member of the Group’s “steering committee.”

Also on the steering committee was Jack Sheinkman. He was a member of the Workmen’s Circle, a social organization whose membership was largely innocent. But within that organization was a group of leftist, pro-communist members. As the New York Times explains,

In an era when labor leaders were reluctant to defend leftist movements overseas, Mr. Sheinkman led labor’s opposition to President Ronald Reagan’s efforts to remove the leftist government of Nicaragua.

Daniel Ortega, supported by Jack Sheinkman, is now largely seen as someone who egregiously violates human rights. The New York Times reports that Ortega has an “increasingly brutal and repressive strategy to quell the opposition movement and has tightened his grip on his power.” Ortega “shut down a popular television station, jailed its news director and expelled international human rights observers.”

Jack Sheinkman was one of the people who enabled Daniel Ortega to become the dictator of Nicaragua. Jack Sheinkman was not only a part of the Bilderberg Group, but rather also a member of its steering committee.

The question about the Bilderberg Group, then, is not a simple “yes or no” question, rather a question about the extent to which the official organizers of the group are aware of the conspiratorial activity, and to which extent conspiracies were the purpose for the creation of the group.

Slavery in America: How It Started

The societies which inhabited North, Central, and South America prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus can be measured both by their strengths and by their weaknesses.

Pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas made advances including agriculture, irrigation, metalwork, astronomical calendars, and architecture. Some of their building projects indicate a mastery of geometry.

But there were less appealing aspects to pre-Columbian cultures. They routinely committed human sacrifices; large numbers of healthy young people were killed to satisfy the spirits which these cultures imagined. Women had little to no legal standing; they could be physically captured and forced to marry the men who captured them; they could be bought and sold.

The societies in the Americas prior to 1492 practiced cannibalism. The two ideas — human sacrifice and cannibalism — were sometimes united in a single event. Historian Nathaniel Knowles writes:

Cannibalism apparently invariably accompanied torture among all Iroquois speaking people. It was also most important to eat at solemn feasts the flesh of the woman sacrificed to the war god.

Centuries before any European contact, the natives of South America used cocaine for both medicinal and recreational purposes. While the medicinal applications were beneficial, the recreational usage brought about many of the usual problems of addiction. Some of the communities fell into neglect as their residents made imprudent decisions under the influence of the drug. The warriors of these societies often consumed cocaine prior to battle, which energizes the user even as it impedes rational decision making. The natives obtained cocaine by chewing the leaves of the coca plant, sometimes mixing coca leaves with tobacco leaves.

The Native Americans (“Indians”) also used peyote. While cocaine is a stimulant, peyote contains a psychoactive drug. It alters the user’s perceptions of sights and sounds.

The use of cocaine, peyote, and other drugs slowed the improvement of civilization.

Diplomatic relations between tribes were often uneasy. Warfare between tribes was ubiquitous. Given both constant armed conflict and an inability to unite politically, the isolated tribes devoted large amounts of energy and resources to military activity, with little left for refining civilization. Population levels failed to grow and social structures developed little.

“Slavery between tribes existed before the coming of Europeans,” writes David Treuer in the Los Angeles Times.

Involuntary servitude was deeply ingrained in the pre-Columbian societies of North, Central, and South America. It pervaded cultures from the Arctic Circle to the southern tip of South America.

“Slavery was practiced by the Native Americans before any Europeans arrived in the region. People of one tribe could be taken by another,” agrees historian Joshua Mark.

By the time Columbus set foot on Hispaniola, millennia of bondage had shaped the societies of the Americas.

“Europeans did not introduce slavery to this continent,” writes Rebecca Onion. “The Native groups in the land that later became the United States and Canada practiced slavery before Europeans arrived.”

These many defects of pre-Columbian American cultures were connected. The natives who practiced one of them also practiced others. These social flaws encouraged each other in a vicious circle.

“The pre-Columbian world was a place where slavery, trafficking, sexual exploitation, oppression, and even genocide was commonplace prior to any European contact,” writes David Barton. He gives an example:

Take briefly for instance, the Carib tribes who had widespread institutions of perpetual slavery, captive mutilation, and even villages dedicated to the sexual exploitation of captured Taino women forced to produced children which their masters then ate.

Archeologists and scholars continue to unearth more evidence of social problems which the original Americans inflicted upon each other.

In an NPR radio interview, University of California Professor Andres Resendez said:

What we do know is that there is plenty of archaeological and pictorial evidence, as well as some of the early chronicles of the New World depict the enslavement of natives prior to the arrival of Europeans. In the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, Iroquois peoples waged wars on neighboring groups for the purpose of avenging their dead and replacing them with captives. In the Pacific Northwest, elite marriages were often sealed by providing slaves. So we know that these activities went on.

After thousands of years of slavery, the arrival of Columbus in 1492 and the subsequent European presence in the Americas marked the beginning of change. By November 1542, European governments were beginning to enact laws to eliminate slavery. By 1652, abolishist Roger Williams led the legislature of Rhode Island to illegalize slavery. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and by 1865 slavery had been eliminated in the United States.

Other countries, inspired by the United States, also abolished slavery. By 1888, there was no more slavery in the Americas. The last country to abolish slavery in the Americas was Brazil, 23 years after the U.S. had done so.

After more than 5,000 of institutionalized slavery in the Americas, it took less than 500 years for the effects of European contact to erase slavery from the Western Hemisphere.