Pierre de Villemarest: Interviewed about his new book ... Untouchable, Who Protected Bormann and 'Gestapo' Muller after 1945
Mr. Villemarest has been a professional journalist since the fifties. Between 1962 and 2006 he has published about 30 works. He is the author of the new book: Untouchable, Who Protected Bormann and 'Gestapo' Muller after 1945.
1943 in the Vercors region in France present
FP: Pierre de Villemarest, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Villemarest: Hello and thank you for granting me this interview. I’m deeply honoured.
FP: Could you sum up the plot of your book Untouchable?
Villemarest: The plot of Untouchable comes down to the fact that Martin Bormann, Hitler’s eminence grise, had undertaken the clandestine evacuation of most of the assets of the Treasure of the Reich in money or currency, with the complicity of Gestapo-Muller, to two dozens foreign countries – more particularly in South America, but also in Japan and in various Scandinavian countries. Hitler did not know anything about this “job” carried out by Bormann’s ultra-secret network called “Hacke”. Only eleven initiated persons belonged to the network at the end of 1944. Each one of them would then, in turn, manipulate agents. Gestapo-Muller, who had been the Grand Master of the Security of the Reich since the beginning of 1942, was automatically briefed by Bormann, who actually distrusted him and feared he would betray him. In my opinion, Bormann had no idea that Muller had made secret agreements with general V.Abakoumov, the Soviet in charge of the networks in the heart of Germany.
In the general state of confusion of March-April 1945, when Germany was defeated, several German personalities under the surveillance of each of the Western Allies realized, at least in part, the role played by Bormann and Muller. The latter had disappeared during the week of Berlin’s fall. But each one of the Allies (London, Washington, the French) kept their discoveries on the subject secret. These discoveries were like some of the small pieces of a huge puzzle. In my book, I wrote about both the existence of the Hacke network, and about Muller’s personal role, who, after crossing the German-Czech border – then part of the occupation zone of the USSR- had become a Soviet agent in 1945.
From 1946-1947 onwards, the Americans discovered up to 70% of the secret transfers of the German Treasure via Switzerland – among other countries- straight to South America. Very intelligently, Bormann, who was advised by his ex-friends from the Treasury Department of the Reich (among whom were Doctor Schacht and the right-hand men of Minister Funk, his successor), invested 80% of the German assets in a multitude of business, naval, airline, mining companies, etc… where figureheads from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and so forth acted under the surveillance of the initiated members of the Hacke network. There were quarrels among the “heirs”, thus the secret message sent to Bormann, who was then hiding in the Bohemian mountains, via his Saragossa group in Spain, so that he would come over to settle the dispute. All the relevant details are in my book.
Until the time of the Berlin blockade and airlift (1949) Bormann had thought that with his fortune and his powerful network, his human resources in Germany (about 80,000 Germans with forged papers scattered in the occupation zones, who suspected a secret organisation since they had been provided with forged papers in 1944 already), he would have been able to play a part between the East and the West; However, the firmness of the Americans during the Berlin blockade organized by the Soviets showed that Bormann’s speculations on an East-West conflict were in vain. Indeed, Moscow yielded when Washington forced the blockade, despite Stalin’s war blackmail…
This is what led Bormann to get in touch with Chancellor Adenauer’s entourage through friends who were in a good position to help him. Thus, the English had imposed on Adenauer (Chancellor in 1949 and afterwards) such characters as H.J. Abs, industrialists and former advisers from the Treasury of the Reich (quoted in Untouchable), who despite their Nazi past, held the financial reins of West Germany. A negotiation started, which comes down to Bormann demanding impunity in exchange for the repatriation to Germany of most of the assets that had been scattered in about 24 countries, in the form of banking, industrial firms etc… (that is to say over $700 million worth in 1949).
FP: What inspired you to write this book?
Villemarest: It is when I started poking my nose into some of the pieces of that puzzle, while I was working for Guillaume Widmer, the French Governor of Bade-Wurtemberg (a cover-job for my activities in the French Secret Services), and then as France’s Deputy Governor in the Calw, Horb and Freudenstadt areas, that I began to gather notes, sometimes documents, with a view to writing a book on the subject later on.
FP: Can you describe the role of Soviet infiltration in the Nazi régime, and, near the end of WW2, inside the Nazis escaping networks?
Villemarest: Your question leads me to specify that I was discovering the power of the Soviet infiltration into the administrative and secret services of the Western Allies, at the same time as the fact that Moscow protected former Nazis at will, people who were involved in German-Soviet cooperation in the past or, like Muller, who had defected to the KGB in 1943-1945.
I worked on this difficult theme for years. Considering the soviet infiltration of the French intelligence services as well as of others, I feared then, and after 1950, once I had become a civilian again, that the KGB might discover my knowledge of the game played by Moscow, and that some Soviets who were disgusted by the Soviet regime might also give me some information.
No one can play a game solo when confronted with a foreign Intelligence service, without risking a catastrophe. That is why I contacted or resumed contact with the French Intelligence services and gave them part of my findings from time to time.
For example, between 1947 and 1951, I discovered the existence of escape networks to South America -or other countries, organized by the Nazis. There were seven of them in 1946-1947. Thus, I was involved right in the midst of things (and had informers): in “Die Spinne” (the spider), which depended on Bormann and his friends, and also in “l’Ecluse” (the lock, the waterwork), etc… But I did not trust “Odessa” (clearly absolutely SS) that was fully Nazi, and consequently had many Soviet agents.
This detail is totally ignored by historians who cyclically talk about Odessa (which was only an organisation for former SS to help one another out, at first).
That is when the Muller case arises: since 1936-1937, he had had close contacts with the USSR secret services as negotiators, at the time already, of a possible German-Soviet pact, while thousands of volunteers were leaving for the war in Spain, without thinking for a minute that Stalin had made secret agreements with the Nazis.
FP: Tell us some more about Bormann and Muller, and the role they played in the Holocaust, WWII and the Nazi regime overall.
Villemarest: Muller participated in all the conferences where the incarceration of the Jews in concentration camps was envisaged, from 1942 onwards (including the Wannsee Conference). He would let his associates speak but was the director who led to the extermination of all the Jews who were considered to be ill or incapable of working in the mines and weapon manufactures because they were too young or ill. That is how many children and elderly people were sent to a sure death.
In 1945, Muller became:
[a] the Soviets’ adviser for their German occupation zone. Gifted with a phenomenal memory, he knew exactly who was who, who could be manipulated in the Nazi crowd. He also knew who was “redeemable” among the clandestine Germans in the Allies’ zones for the simple reason that, as soon as the spring and summer of 1944, he had given many of them forged papers to be used once Germany had been defeated.
[b] Muller was also an adviser to train agents and infiltrate them into the western occupation zones. What ended Muller’s “Soviet” career in 1950-1951, was a plot against Stalin’s protector, general V.Abakoumov, organized by Stalin’s entourage. The latter was suspended 1951, before being arrested and probably eliminated in 1952, while his rival, Lavrenti Beria, was taking over the “ German cases” (one of Beria’s advisers was actress Olga Tchekova - refer to my book, appendix 6) who strangely defected to the West in 1949-1950 and was decorated by the Bonn government. Her work as a double-agent was all the more remarkable since her role has never been narrated whereas she died in 1980. She happened to be one of Hitler’s intimate friends – there are photos to prove it…
FP: Can you relate more facts regarding how Muller and Bormann sold out to the Soviets, what happened to them after the war, etc.?
Villemarest: Bormann died of cancer in January 1959 in Paraguay (my investigations led me there). His role bothered Bonn so much that his bones had to be brought back secretly so as to be buried and suddenly discovered, and thus his case could be closed forever. I denounced this deception in L’Aurore (a daily with a print run of 350,000) on a whole page. Bonn preferred not to react… As for Muller, after being kidnapped in 1955 by Rudolph Barak for the Soviets, and being exfiltrated to Prague to be interrogated by Aleander Korotkov, he was taken back to the USSR, and all traces of his existence were lost at the beginning of the 1960’s, somewhere in central Asia, which was still Soviet at the time. His death remains a mystery.
I asked his family, his relatives and close friends, his three mistresses as well as the Mossad and other “services”, but nothing came out of it. Only Moscow knows the end of this story.
FP: You saw Bormann after the war and spoke with him one time in 1949 (while everyone said he was dead in Berlin in 1945). Can you relate these events?
Villemerest: In fact, I only talked to Bormann in 1949, when he decided to leave his secret retreat in the Bohemian Mountains to go to Argentina. However, before, I had met him once by chance, as I was following a forest path in the Deggendorf area, on the border of Czechoslovakia and he crossed the zigzagging path right in front of my car. Talking about crosschecking, I was based on the edge of Lake Constance and considered to be a voluntarily exiled French man in 1949 who was doing business, and doing favours to the Germans who were taking over the Economy of their country, using my connections in the authorities. Now one night, one of my Austrian right-hand men drove me to a chalet next to mine. A certain Biederman, in fact Bormann, wanted to get a temporary pass from the French border control services on the German and Austrian borders, so that he could go to neighbouring Switzerland. Three days after “Biederman” had arrived in Switzerland, I exchanged a few words with him. He did not know that I knew…
The surveillance of his itinerary allowed me to follow him to Zurich and then, from there to Argentina. I also got to know of some of his connections in Switzerland such as a business man and his brother – Germans who had bought their Swiss naturalization in 1943, and who lived peacefully in Zurich at the time.
FP: Vladimir Bukovsky, who writes the preface for this book, comments how for 60 years no one has wanted to talk about this reality. Why the deafening silence?
Villemarest: Bukovsky knows very well why everybody in Germany wanted to keep quiet in the past and today also, in Bormann and Muller’s stories, as well as in all the others concerning the collaboration between the Nazis and the Soviets. Too many personalities have cheated, lied, and several of them are still alive. Is the German-Soviet totalitarism a two-sided coin? It is the same coin.
FP: Why did the Mossad ban further operations against Bormann (in South America) and against Mengele?
Villemarest: The Mossad followed orders from above not to touch Bormann, Mengele or others. At the time, in 1947-1959 – the date of Bormann’s death- the Israeli, German, French, American services etc… collaborated together. Revealing these “stories” meant stirring up too many details of the secret East-West history, and Moscow was as embarrassed as others. Thus everybody kept quiet and continues to do so. Even in the archives of the Dresdner Bank which were revealed and published in February 2006, there are many facts which are buried and only for specialists to deal with, but historians do not dare to do so – it would be admitting the existence of sordid cases, good service and breaking of promises that involved the Nazi, Soviet regimes and others, from the year 1900 to the fall of the USSR in 1990.
FP: Pierre de Villemarest, thank you for joining us today.
Villemarest: Your are most welcome, and it was a privilege and pleasure for me as well.