-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- The World Wildlife Fund An unnatural History by Kevin Dowling Part 4 Bernhard – white knight or black prince? BACK IN 1961, AT THE DUKE OF Edinburgh's suggestion, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was appointed President and spokesman of the World Wildlife Fund. There was much that was unaccountable and mysterious about the choice. When he became the public voice of the new environmental consciousness, Bernhard was Commander in Chief of the Dutch armed forces and - secretly an arms salesman for US defence contractors, Lockheed (although fifteen years would pass before some of the unflattering details would become public knowledge). Some people did vaguely recall that the German-born prince, who married the crown princess of the Netherlands in 1937, was once alleged to have been a Nazi. Fortuitously, at about the time of his nomination for the WWF leadership, an authorised biography titled HRH Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands, appeared in bookshops all over the English-speaking world, which addressed just that issue. In Chapter Four - boldly titled The Prince and the Nazis - Bernhard and his biographer instantly adopted a refreshingly forthright tone: 'In order to finish his education quickly,' the chapter began 'Bernhard had to make some compromises with the monstrous political system that was fastening its grip on Germany. The story that the Prince of the Netherlands once wore the black uniform of Hitler’s SS is quite true.' The author and his subject were, however, not being nearly as frank as they obviously meant us to believe. In Chapter One it is what is omitted, rather than what is said, that is significant. His Serene Highness Prince Bernhard BLACK UNIFORM Leopold zur Lippe-Biesterfeld was born at Jena in 1911. His father's elder brother was the Regent of Lippe-Detmold, part of a small but ancient royal principality between Hanover and Westphalia. Here the family led a quaintly feudal life, living in castles, hunting deer on their forested estates and riding handsome arab steeds dressed in the flash uniforms of officers of Kaiser Wilhelm's army. The authorised biography does tell us that Bernhard's mother, Armgard, had briefly been married to another of the boys next door, Graf Bodo von Öyenhausen of Driburg, before marrying Bernhard von Lippe Snr, Bernhard's father. Armgard re-married close to the von Öyenhausens: she and her children spent a significant part of the World War I sheltering in Count Öyenhausen's castle at Driburg. Bernhard clearly did not anticipate (in 1961) that, in 1978, some dedicated American historians would dish the dirt on this quaint feudal scene. In their remarkable book, Who Financed Hitler, James and Suzanne Pool would reveal that Lippe's royals had a very special place in Nazi history. The Pools would reveal that the very first German prince to join the Nazis was Bernhard’s cousin, Friedrich Furst zu Schaumburg-Lippe, the reigning Prince of Lippe. He became a Nazi stormtrooper in 1929, frequently addressing Nazi rallies dressed in his brown SA uniform. Hitler and Prince Friedrich became close personal friends. The next prince to join the Nazis and Hitler’s inner circle, was the Duke of Mecklenburg - whose brother was married to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Before the decade was out, Bernhard would be married to her daughter. The Duke saw Hitler as Germany's only salvation against communism and regularly travelled abroad, propagating Hitler’s ideas. While several of Hitler's more extreme ideas, including his anti-Semitism, found favour with the Duke, he always maintained a cool, polite manner in the presence of Jews. Not everyone was fooled. "The Duke's sleek courtesy always gives me the creeps," society columnist Bella Fromm recorded at the time. Needless to say, these interesting bits of family history do not appear in the fairytale biography published in 1961. Neither is any mention made of the events of 1993, which really earned Lippe its place in Nazi history: Negotiations with the aged President Hindenberg to have Hitler installed as Chancellor of Germany were on a knife-edge. The Nazis had suffered a serious setback in elections held in late 1932. To get the best possible deal with Hindenberg, it was necessary to remove the impression that support for the Nazis was declining. Now there was another election due - in the small state of Lippe. Hitler saw his opportunity to reverse the tide. He did, after all, have some very influential friends there. The Fuhrer crisscrossed Lippe for ten days addressing village meetings. Each night he would return to his campaign headquarters at Schloss Vinsebeck, a beautiful medieval castle, built in the middle of a lake. Here, in the romantic surroundings of ancestral paintings, and an old executioner's sword hanging over the fireplace, the Fuhrer enjoyed relaxing conversations with his host and hostess - none other than Baron and Baroness von Öyenhausen, both supporters of the Movement and, of course, Prince Bernhard's mama’s one-time relatives by marriage. And still her close, close friends. On January 15 1933, the Nazis were rewarded by Lippe with a great victory at the polls. Their percentage of the vote had increased by almost 17%, in contrast to the 40% decline in other states. "The tide is turning," the Party's propaganda machine began to drum. "Signal Lippe" was the slogan Goebbels used in a campaign to impress the nation with the scale of the victory. Hindenberg and his advisors were impressed. At midday on January 30 Hitler was sworn in as Nazi Chancellor of -Germany. The Third Reich was born. Worse was yet to be revealed - but it would take till 1993 before the US government would open its War archives to' the public - and more details, of the House of Lippe's Nazi past would come tumbling out. Back in 1961, Bernhard's authorised biographer - an impressionable American called Alden Hatch - coyly related how 'many young and idealistic" German aristocrats, 'swept away by Hitler's incendiary oratory', had been ready to follow him blindly. Amongst these was Bernhard's younger brother, Aschwin. At 16, said Bernhard's biographer, Aschwin was caught up in the tide of enthusiasm for Nazism and - only very briefly -lent his name to the movement. This would, logically, have been in 1930. In contrast, big brother Bernhard had an "unexpected social conscience". Remarkably - in Hatch's view - this Lippe prince was opposed to Nazism from the start. 'His revulsion against Nazism was hardly due to a dedication to parliamentary democracy, " he adds, "because he did not believe in it." "IDEALISTIC NAZI" Truthfulness like that surely deserves our forgiveness. Who the hell believes in democracy anyway? Ha-ha. Bernhard even had witnesses to his anti-Nazi views: he is said to have had a "serious discussion" with his parents late in 1933 in which he told them of his "doubts" about Nazism. Not that it spoilt the fun years he was having at university - three of them, actually. Starting at Lausanne, he transferred first to Munich, where, true, he watched the Nazi troops march by, then to Berlin where, yes, he witnessed the massive Nazi book-burning. But, happily for the Student Prince, most of the time it was just "drink, drink, drink ... !". (The world had been singing along to the voice of Mario Lanza in Hollywood's favourite musical The Student Prince for almost ten years - Bernhard's biographer knew a good script when he saw one.) According to the biography, the fun and games only came to an end in June 1934 when, at his father's deathbed, the shocked prince decided to become a serious student. The romantic fairy-tale does not end there, however: within just one year of serious study, he is able to successfully complete what the biography describes as "the equivalent of a doctorate in law". Which seems an appropriate moment to revert to that ominous introductory sentence: "In order to finish his education quickly Bernhard had to make some compromises with the monstrous political system .." Eleven days after Bernhard's father's death, Germany experienced Hitler's Night of the Long Knives. A thousand Nazis whose loyalty the Fuhrer did not trust - most of them working class Sturm Abteilung (SA) troopers - who tended to make new recruits from the upper classes nervous by taking the socialist in National Socialist Party too seriously were murdered. The brown-uniformed SA was disbanded and replaced by the smarter, black-uniformed SS. No-one could have mistaken it for a bit of student tomfoolery. As the time for his graduation was approaching, Bernhard says, he learned that he would have to pass a political "attitude test" before being allowed to graduate - a test, he coyly tells us, he feared he would not pass. Then he discovered a way out of this dilemma: if you were already a member of a Nazi "paramilitary organisation", you were assumed to have already displayed the "right" attitude and did not have to do the test. So, in order to get his law degree, and in order not to have to prove he was a Nazi, Bernhard decided to become a member, not just of the party, but of the Nazi SS. First he joined the League for Air Sports, started by the Nazis as an undercover way of training war pilots. But, his biographer records, after crashing one of their planes, he had hurriedly to leave the League. Luckily he soon found another "harmless cover": the Berlin unit of the Ritter SS, which was headed by a friend - an "idealistic Nazi" who "truly believed in the noble aspirations of the party". Bernhard and "five or six friends" joined this SS unit which was made up of young men who owned their own cars. "It almost amounted to a sports car rally," he says gaily. Bernhard and friends rushed to a tailor in Berlin to have their new nazi uniforms made. "I must say we looked smart in them," he says. The chapter concludes: 'At the end of their studies, Bernhard's 'group left the SS and severed all connection with the party." So, if the biography he authorised at the time of his appointment as President of WWF International was to be believed, Bernhard joined the SS late in 1934, and resigned in about August 1935. He was, of course, not to know that Nazi Party records seized by American intelligence in 1946, would be declassified 45 years later. In fact, he had every reason to believe that his name had been expunged from the Nazi records for good. In June 1948, a senior official of the Dutch Foreign Office had been instructed to arrange it. The American State Department had been sympathetic. Ah, the best made plans ... We have obtained copies of those wartime records - curious how the Nazi Prince found it necessary to lie, even then. In its formal request to the Americans in 1946, the Dutch Foreign Office offered yet another version of his story: they claimed that Bernhard had joined the Nazi Party "solely for the Purpose of obtaining a pilot's license". The Prince had obviously momentarily forgotten how smart he had looked in his Ritter SS uniform. " heil hitler !" The Nazi archives seized by the American military government of Berlin reveal that no fewer than eleven Lippe royals were Nazis; Crown Prince Ernst zur Lippe had joined in 1928 already. The records show that, far from expressing doubts, Bernhard joined the Nationalsozialistische (Nazi) Deutsche Arbeiterpartei on May 1, 1933 - more than a year before his father died and he supposedly discovered the barrier to his serious academic ambitions. And, as for little brother Aschwin's juvenile lapse that was pure invention. Aschwin only joined the party in 1937 - when he was 23 - and still had not resigned by the time the war ended. Most significantly, Prince Bernhard's own resignation from the party was only formalised in January 1937, after his engagement to Princess Juliana of the Netherlands. The American archives contain the Nazi leadership's lengthy correspondence concerning Bernhard's resignation from the party, including his note of resignation which reads: "I herewith declare my resignation from the NSDAP and authorise Mr Heinrich Langenheim to carry out all the associated formalities and to sign on my behalf in connection with any such matters." It concludes with the salutation "Heil Hitler" Indeed. The list of Nazi royals also includes a number from the principality of Hesse, next door to Lippe. Amongst them is Prince Christoph of Hesse, another of the jolly members of the Ritter SS - and brother-in-law to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Ah, yes, you say, but all this is history. True. But the lies and cover-up alerted investigators to other, closely related trails. Trails that begin in Paris and Berlin and London in the 1930s - and lead, inexorably, to Africa. Today. After he graduated, at the end of 1934, Bernhard left Germany for Paris. 'As a first step,' says his biographer, Hatch, 'he got a job in the Paris office of I.G. Farben, the great German chemical combine.' When we take up that trail in our next instalment, it will become clear why a Nazi Prince, schooled in colonial trade and eager, desperate really, to earn a buck on the side - an enthusiastic hunter with no known commitment to nature conservation - was a logical choice to lead the WWF. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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