By John F. Sase
(With assistance and inspiration from Gerad Senick, editor; Julie Sase, copy-editor; and William Gross, researcher)
"It is ideas that shape the course of history and, furthermore, that it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
-John Maynard Keynes, English economist
In our troubled world, focused upon situation that threaten humanity, we search for meaning and understanding of the human conflict. This discussion focuses upon the many groups in Easten Europe, the Middle-East, Africa, South America, and the Far East. Perhaps we can learn again from a power for good and understanding.
Introduction
This is the case of Detroit restaurateur and Nazi-sympathizer Max Stephan. In 1942, the German-born Stephan became one of the first U.S. citizens to be found guilty of treason since the Lincoln Assassination in 1865. This affaire and the decades of events that led up to it and followed it centered in Detroit, the city known as the World War II Arsenal of Democracy. We recount the case of Max Stephan in detail because of its historic value and relevance to modern times. Furthermore, Stephan's story is important to contemporary legal studies because of the yet-unanswered questions that surround the case.
Max Stephan was a Detroit restaurateur who aided in the escape of POW Luftwaffe Lieutenant Peter Krug in 1942. Krug had escaped from the Bowmanville Camp near Toronto and was attempting to get to the German Embassy in still-neutral Mexico. Stephan and others in Detroit gave him refuge for a couple of days as well as food and money to continue onward through Chicago. For his complicity, Stephan was arrested and tried for high treason as a U.S. citizen. However, a serious study of the case leaves one with the sense that the matter was indeed odd, curious, and had more holes in it than a block of Baby Swiss cheese.
As John Maynard Keynes states in our opening quote, ideas that are dangerous for good or evil shape the course of history. Therefore, in order to amass a greater perspective on the case of Max Stephan, we must explore the ideas as well as the events that both preceded and followed the Stephan affaire in Detroit. Let us start with the ideas and events that preceded the case of Max Stephan: He and many others believed in, were influenced by, and worked under an ideology that emerged in nineteenth-century Europe and continues to flourish to this day throughout the world. Most notably to the case, this ideology ferments to this day in Detroit, and does so through the National Socialist Movement (www.nsm88.org).
Birth of an Idea
The ideology that drove the Stephan case emerged from the Volkisch Movement, a nineteenth-century German cultural movement that had a romantic focus on folklore, which represented a Germanic interpretation of the populist movement. The early phase of the Volkisch Movement drew upon the teachings of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the German educator and nationalist who appeared as the Volkisch prophet of athleticism, German identity, and national unity. In order to spread his vision, Jahn founded a network of patriotic fraternities in the wake of the Napoleonic War that ended with the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
By the 1870s, the Pan-Germanic vision had arisen with the formation of the Second Reich, during which Otto von Bismarck installed Wilhelm I as the Kaiser. Following this confederation of more than one hundred small principalities, the older land-based economy of the First Reich (the Holy Roman Empire) broke down.
Consequently, a mass migration from Germany to America began for those who opposed Bismark and the Second Reich during the Kulturkampf era. In 1866, the Germanenbund formed as a federation of cultural groups that held festivals and other Volkisch events. These cultural groups explored the history, literature, and mythology that would ferment into the beliefs of Arisophy, the wisdom and ideological systems of an esoteric nature that concern the Aryans. By 1901, more than 160 such groups existed throughout the country as the democratic German parties and the Pan-German Movement made strong electoral gains.
Guido von List
During the late-nineteenth century, the German/Austrian polymath and Volkisch occultist Guido von List stood out as one of the most important figures of this movement. His work formed the platform for Germanic and Runic revivalism and Ariosophic mysticism.
However, the ideas developed by von List and others in the nineteenth century were carried forward into the twentieth century by Lanz von Liebenfels. A former monk in the Cistercian order, von Liebenfels brought the ideas of Ariosophy to a new overt level. In 1907, von Liebenfels founded the Order of the New Templars and, with fellow supporters, the Guido von List Society in 1908. Von Liebenfels advocated sterilization of the sick and "lower races" in his anti-Semitic Volkisch magazine Ostara, a work studied by Adolf Hitler. The latter was said to have met with von Liebenfels at least as early as 1909 when he gave this Viennese student some missing issues of his magazine.
Next, let us turn our attention to Berlin in 1912. Phillip Stauff, an occultist and officer of the von List Society, joined with anti-Semitic publisher Theodor Fritsch and others to form the Germanenorden, a Volkisch secret organization that was directed toward the upper echelons of society. With Germanenorden, the world saw a new use of the ancient Tibetan/Buddhist symbol for prosperity and fire from Heaven-the swastika.
The Germanenorden survived the First World War, though it split into two factions. In 1916, the former Chancellor of the order, Herman Pohl, founded Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail. He was joined by Rudolf von Sebottendorff, a wealthy occultist and admirer of von List and von Liebenfels. In his book "The Occult Roots of Nazism" (Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2009), English scholar Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke tells us that the Munich lodge of this organization chose the cover name of the Thule Society (taken from the ancient Nordic name for the mythical Aryan homeland) upon its dedication on 18 August 1918. Having enlisted the backing of various bankers and industrialists in Western Europe and beyond, the Thule Society was determined to contain any Communist expansion westward from Russia.
Another key element of the Stephan case is that of the German Workers Party (DAP), founded by Anton Drexler, a member of Thule, on 5 January 1919 in Munich. The DAP came to public attention during the time of the summer of street fights against the Communist Party that had won the election and had taken control of the government in Munich.
Given the notoriety afforded the DAP, the Thule Society began to question the autonomy and political direction of the ragtag militant organization. As a result, the Society enlisted the aid of former-Corporal Adolf Hitler to infiltrate the ranks of the DAP. After attending a meeting of the group at a Munich beer hall on 12 September 1919, Hitler reported back to Thule that the DAP posed no danger and could be instrumental to the goals of the Society. In addition, corroborating sources state that Drexler was so impressed with Hitler at that meeting that he was asked to join the party. Evidence suggests that it was at this juncture that the Thule Society began to sponsor the DAP heavily as an anti-Communist front. Through the involvement of Hitler, who was funded by the Thule Society, the DAP began to transform into the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP, aka the Nazi Party).
Barring a couple of setbacks in the early 1920s, the political strength of the NSDAP grew as the party rose to power between 1925 and 1933. The election of 1932 had established the party as the largest parliamentary faction of the Weimar Republic. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic by ailing President Paul von Hindenburg. Following the still-suspicious Reichstag fire, which a number of historians assert was started by the NSDAP as an excuse to expel the members of the Communist Party from the Reichstag, the Enabling Act was passed on 23 March 1933. This legislation conferred dictatorial powers on Hitler. The Third Reich was open for business.
During the rise and takeover of the German government by the NSDAP, the group known as Abwehr was active in Germany and around the world. The sole German military-intelligence organization, Abwehr (which comes from a word that means "defense") functioned as an information-gathering agency from 1921 through 1944. Per the terms of the Treaty of Versailles following the armistice of the First World War, the Allied powers left Germany devoid of any armed defenses.
The organization of Abwehr developed as a concession to Allied demands that post-war intelligence activities by Germany be used for defensive purposes only. The Abwehr intelligence- gathering agency dealt exclusively with human intelligence, drawing upon reports from field agents and other sources. The head of Abwehr reported directly to the High Command of the German Armed Forces. From there, intelligence summaries were disseminated to intelligence-evaluation sections of the disarmed German Army, Navy, and Air Force.
This worldwide "defensive" intelligence network developed through the 1920s, a decade of peace and prosperity for many, though not for Germany. When the NSDAP assumed totalitarian control of the country in 1933, the intelligence network was already well-established. Rearmament became the topmost priority of the German government under the NSDAP regime, which formally renamed Abwehr as the Foreign Affairs/Defense.
To be Continued.
______
Dr. John F. Sase teaches Economics at Wayne State University and has practiced Forensic and Investigative Economics for twenty years. He earned a combined M.A. in Economics and an MBA at the University of Detroit, followed by a Ph.D. in Economics from Wayne State University. He is a graduate of the University of Detroit Jesuit High School (www.saseassociates.com).
Gerard J. Senick is a freelance writer, editor, and musician.
Julie G. Sase is a copyeditor, parent coach, and empath.
