The Orphans of Fascism
How the United States and the Soviet Union recruited former Fascists during the Cold War
It’s incredibly fashionable for American Communists to accuse the United States government of having some ideological affinity for German or Italian Fascism, when nothing could be further from the truth. The leaders of the United States and the West at large only have an affinity for one ideology: Liberalism.
Liberalism, understood in the classical sense, has it’s own history of war, colonization, genocide and oppression. One need not invoke the specter of 20th century Fascism to criticize the contemporary West, anyone with textbook knowledge of history will know that Liberalism is chiefly responsible for genocide in North America, the Atlantic slave trade, pioneering eugenics in the early 20th century, two world wars, and detonating the atomic bomb, among other things.
Alternatively, Fascism (in power) barely made it twenty years before being destroyed at the conclusion of the Second World War.
At first glance violence and racism similar to Liberalism in Italy’s colonization of Ethiopia and Hitler’s ‘Lebensraum’ (colonization of traditionally Slavic lands, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, by Germany) albeit Fascism was constrained by time, and (I believe) by intent.
However, in that nearly two-decade span the dual nature of Fascism can be clearly observed;
Primarily as a middle class (petty bourgeois) nationalism over and against finance capital (manifesting in war/colonialism abroad / protectionism and social-welfare at home) and secondarily as a working class (proletarian) led nationalism declaring open war on finance capital, implementing expropriation and socialization via corporatism/syndicalism, maintaining trade and friendship with the Soviet Union, and supporting anti-colonial/anti-imperialist movements worldwide.
From the Indian anti-Imperialist hero Subhas Chandra Bose to the ‘Red Pope’ and founding member of the Communist Party of Italy Niccola Bombacci, ‘Left-Wing’ Fascism is a well-documented but often (intentionally) overlooked undercurrent in the broader movement. Admittedly, it’s hard for us in the 21st century to imagine how or why two factions, diametrically opposed from our point of view, might choose to exist in the same movement. But that is a discussion for another time.
At the beginning of the Cold War both the United States and the Soviet Union recruited former Fascists to serve them in the coming geopolitical clash, and those ex-Fascists serving on each side ought to be viewed as a continuation of the 'Left’ - ‘Right’ duality internal to Fascism.
Operation Gladio was the codename used for a secret NATO-sponsored and CIA-led paramilitary network in post-war Europe. Initially formed to fight in case of a theoretical Soviet invasion, by the 1970s the network was being used as tool to manipulate and suppress political opponents of NATO within Western Europe.
During the 1960s-1980s Italy was rocked by a period known as the Years of Lead characterized by Far-Right & Far-Left acts of terrorism. After the murder of three Carabinieri by a car bomb in Peteano in 1972, attributed to the Red Brigades by Italian authorities but actually carried out by Far-Right terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, the existence of the secret network was revealed through an investigation by judge Felice Casson.
Former lieutenant col. Walter Kopp of the Wehrmacht contacted John Jay McCloy, a high-level official of the occupation government, in May of 1945 expressing concern that the Soviet Union may invade Allied Occupation Zone. Shortly after-which Kopp was named head of the KIBITZ-15 subnetwork in Germany, described as "a group with Nazi tendencies" by official CIA documents released in 2009.
The modern German Bundeswehr was practically built by two Nazi officers, Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel.
Heusinger had been Operations Chief within general staff of the high command of Hitler’s army, and from 1941 forward was personally responsible for planning and overseeing the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Speidel himself was directly involved in the 20th of July Plot to assassinate Hitler orchestrated by Claus von Stauffenberg, and was held in prison until the end of war, being the only major player involved with the plot to survive.
Finally, Operation Paperclip was a well-known program wherein 1,600 former Nazi scientists and engineers were given political asylum in the United States after agreeing to work for the government, among them Herbert A. Wagner and Wernher von Braun.
Similarly, the Soviet Union also employed ex-Nazi scientists to develop rocketry, atomic weapons, and the Soviet space program.
Operation Osoaviakhim, nicknamed the Soviet Alsos by the West, focused on identifying scientists (involved mostly with atomic research) and securing their allegiance to the Soviet Union. On October 22, 1946 the Red Army transported more than 2,200 ex-Nazi scientists and the contents of their laboratories to the USSR in an operation arguably much larger in scope than the American equivalent, Operation Paperclip.
Notable ex-Nazi scientists that were employed by the Soviet Union include; Peter Adolf Thiessen, Manfred von Ardenne, and Nikolaus Riehl.
Perhaps most notably, Otto Grotewohl, a former Premier of East Germany claimed that Soviet intelligence services removed Hitler’s infamous deputy Rudolf Hess from Spandau prison on the night of March 18th, 1952 and offered to him leadership of the National Democratic Party of East Germany (NDPD, 1948-1989) and a high position in the East German government if he would publicly support Communism and the Soviet Union.
Hess refused the offer and remained in Spandau for the rest of his life, but that didn’t deter the government of East Germany continuing to recruit former members of the NSDAP.
Wilhelm Adam was such an ex-Nazi, a one-time member of the SA (Hitler’s Brownshirts) he joined the Soviet-backed National Committee for a Free Germany operating on the Eastern Front in 1944 after being captured at the Battle of Stalingrad. Adam co-founded the NDPD with German Communist Lothar Bolz, who had participated in the same committee at the close of the war, openly declaring it’s purpose was to recruit former Nazis with a message of socialism and patriotism. The NDPD was one of the strongest allies of the ruling SED in East Germany, it sent 52 delegates to the Volkskammer in the 1948 elections and was estimated to have had 110,000 registered members in 1980.
In West Germany Maj. Gen. Otto Ernst Remer, who personally foiled the attempted coup in Berlin during the 20th of July Plot to assassinate Hitler, founded the Socialist Reich Party (SRP) in 1949 with former SA man Fritz Dorls and future politician and former leader of the Nazi ‘German Student Union’ Gerhard Krüger.
The SRP was secretly funded by the Soviet Union and the East German government through Remer personally, when it was outlawed in 1952 it boasted over 10,000 members, many of whom had been organized into paramilitary ‘Reichsfront’ units, according to the West German government. Author Martin A. Lee even claims that from 1950 until it was banned that the SRP received Soviet funding exclusively, the USSR viewing the reconstituted Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the West as ineffectual.
Remer is famous for declaring that if the Soviet Union invaded West Germany, he would “show them the way to the Rhine” and SRP members would "post themselves as traffic policemen, spreading their arms so that the Russians can find their way through Germany as quickly as possible.” He continued to act on behalf of Soviet interests following the 1952 ban of the SRP, fleeing to Egypt and working as an advisor to Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, selling arms to the Algerian National Liberation Front, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and even a reported 4,000 pistols to Fidel Castro.
Then there’s Joseph Settik and Hans Sommer, both former members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) intelligence services, who were later recruited by the East German Stasi to spy in West Germany and around the world.
The presence of ex-Fascists in both camps during the Cold War, whether acting as government officials, politicians, activists or spies, does not prove that either the United States or the Soviet Union ever had an ideological affinity for Fascism.
It does however highlight an interesting ideological duality within historical Fascism (proletarian / petty bourgeoise), and may help the American Communists I am addressing (and any other readers) explain why the contemporary United States continues to support similar movements throughout the world in places like Ukraine (Azov) without having to actually be Fascist.
This article has been edited into a video version: