Yves here. Dr. Sotirovic covers a widely-ignored part of NATO’s past, as in the way former Nazi military officers not just found a home there but even held prominent positions. He makes the not-unreasonable suggestion that they influence the values of NATO sufficiently so as to strengthen its hostility to Russia, to the degree that it explains the fixation on NATO expansion. Aurelien and others have argued instead for NATO’s continuance after the USSR dissolved, including its core position against Russia, being due to other factors, such as inertia, the advantage to the US of continuing to keep troops in Europe, the advantage to Europe for having the US serve as the decider in squabbles, the personal benefits to key officials of having a nexus for interacting with each other and US movers and shakers. But that does not mean that the long shadow of Nazism did not play into this mix.
By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic, Ex-University Professor, Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade, Serbia
The NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Organisation du Traité de l’Atlantique Nord) is a military-political alliance signed in Washington on April 4th, 1949, by the governments of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, and Iceland. The treaty alliance entered into force on August 24th, 1949. Over time, it has expanded to the present day, and one state (Greece) briefly withdrew from it (in August 1974 due to the Cyprus crisis, but returned after the change of regime in Athens).
The NATO pact was founded by 12 Western European member states that united militarily to prevent the alleged potential military aggression of the USSR on Western European territory. Let us recall that the Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955, in fact, as a response to the military threat of the NATO pact. In any case, the NATO pact has undergone a historical evolution from the original 12 Western European member states in 1949 to the current (2026) 32 members. The largest expansion in terms of the number of members admitted to the NATO pact occurred in several stages after the disappearance of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, so that today, Russia (as the backbone of the former USSR) is effectively surrounded on its western borders on almost all sides by NATO members or its direct satellites (Ukraine). For Russia, the only breath of free space in the West for now is Belarus.
Of course, two crucial questions arise here:
1) Why didn’t NATO disband itself after the disappearance of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact?, and
2) Why is NATO successively expanding eastward towards the borders of Russia?
The logical conclusion would be that, in essence, the NATO pact was not founded to defend Western Europe against potential military aggression by the USSR (the Warsaw Pact did not exist in 1949) but rather for the military occupation of Russia!? Does this remind you of Hitler’s plans for a European war against that same Russia? After the Cold War, the USSR did disappear, but not Russia. In other words, NATO did not fully fulfill its task, just like Hitler’s Germany, which stopped 30 km from Moscow in November 1941. In any case, the Nazi experience from Operation Barbarossawas very welcome to the NATO pact, and this experience was shared by Hitler’s generals and other high-ranking officers who survived the war.
In shorten words, let us recall that the formal reason for the creation of the NATO pact was self-defense against the potential spread of communism by military means from the east after World War II (containment and suppression), but the pact itself expanded territorially year after year after the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the disappearance of the USSR, even though all of these former communist states adopted the Western-type of multi-party parliamentary democracy. However, it should also be recalled that during one period of the Cold War, two members of the expanded NATO pact – Turkey and Greece – were undemocratic, i.e. military dictatorships that almost went to war with each other in 1974 over Cyprus, i.e. the Turkish invasion and occupation of 40% of this island (with ethnic cleansing) that continues to this day.
Like many other (world) organizations, historically speaking, the NATO pact has its own hidden or suppressed history (swept under the carpet), which, if it were to see the light of day, would shed a completely different light on the reasons for the existence and activities of the organization, including its ultimate goals. Writing secret histories of the activities of certain individuals and/or organizations is a well-known trend in world historiography, but the early Byzantine chronicler Procopius is perhaps the most famous in this segment of historiography.
One of the most prolific writers of early Byzantine historiography was Procopius of Caesarea in Palestine, who was also the greatest historian of the era of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527–565). In addition to his main historiographical work on the history of Justinian’s wars (History of the Wars) with the Persians, Vandals, and Goths in 8 books (551–553), in which he glorified the role of Emperor Justinian I in his official capacity, Procopius also wrote the famous Secret History (Historia arcana), a pamphlet in which he presents the most serious accusations against Emperor Justinian I and the imperial authorities at the time – in other words, he presents the real truth about the Emperor and his misdeeds. In his Secret History, Procopius gives vent to his dissatisfaction and disagreement with the policies of Emperor Justinian I and the actions of Empress Theodora, giving a true picture of the Byzantine Empire of his time.
Until now, the true picture of the history of the NATO pact has not been written in one place, but only in fragments that can be arranged like a puzzle to obtain the Historia arcana of this Western alliance. This short text is a contribution to the historiography of this puzzle.
It is probably not known to the general public that, for a long time after 1945, former Nazis and German war criminals served in the highest structures of the NATO pact. Most of them were highly decorated Wehrmacht officers, who after the war served in the highest positions first in the West German army, and were later promoted to commanders and heads of NATO structures in Europe. This phenomenon was common in Western Europe after the war, but especially in West Germany.
Many Nazis and in general persons who supported and assisted the Nazi regime in Germany and Nazi satellite entities in Europe in carrying out the Holocaust and other war crimes, crimes of genocide, and crimes against humanity were never tried for war crimes against Jews, Poles, Greeks, Russians, and other European peoples, but instead of serving justice, they were appointed to leading positions in the NATO pact, the West German government, the army, industry, and West German society in general.
Of all the Nazis in question in the above context, the biggest beast is certainly Adolf (Bruno Heinrich Ernst) Heusinger(1897‒1982), who was a German military officer whose career spanned the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, West Germany, and NATO. He was, during the Second World War, Hitler’s Chief of the Operations Department (Operationsabteilung), i.e., the General Staff, from 1940 to 1944. A. Heusinger actively participated in the planning of Hitler’s invasions of Poland, Norway, Denmark, and France. He was promoted to colonel on August 1st, 1940, and became Chief of the Operations Department in October of the same year. Thus, he also became the third man in the Nazi hierarchy in terms of planning the Wehrmacht’s activities on the ground.
However, after the war, A. Heusinger, a war criminal who planned German invasions of several European countries that led to the deaths of millions of people, was not even tried for war crimes but instead took over the West German army – the Bundeswehr (as a General Inspector since 1957 to 1961) – and in 1961 was appointed Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, i.e. de facto Chief of NATO General Staff. He remained in this position until 1964.
Unlike many of those who were murdered under his command during WWII, A. Heusinger retired in 1964 and lived till the ripe old age of eighty-five. Whilst he was detained for two years post war, he never faced trial nor paid for the war crimes and atrocities he and those under his command committed (according to the pyramidal structure of command). Instead, he was employed by the West German state as an advisor and then later a Lieutenant General before he was snapped up by the international military alliance that purports to defend democracy. A. Heusinger enjoyed eighteen years of retirement.
Unfortunately, Adolf Heusinger was not the only German Nazi and war criminal who continued his military career in West Germany and/or NATO after the war. This was also the case with General Hans Speidel (1897‒1984), who served in the armies of the Second German Empire, Nazi Germany (Third Reich), and West Germany. During the Second World War, he was Chief of Staff in Erwin Rommel’s army (“Desert Foxes”) during the war. After 1945, he was one of the key military commanders in the Bundeswehr during the early Cold War, and from 1957 to 1963, he served as Commander-in-Chief of NATO’s Land Forces in Central Europe (Mitteleuropa), i.e., a Commander of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe (COMLANDCENT). From 1964, he served as the President of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
The next Nazi to hold a high position in NATO was Johannes „Macky“ Steinhoff (1913‒1994) – a fighter pilot in Göring’s Luftwaffe and holder of the Iron Knight’s Cross, the highest decoration in the Nazi Wehrmacht. After the war, J. Steinhoff joined the West German government’s Rearmament Office as a consultant on military aviation in 1952 and became one of the principal officials tasked with rebuilding the German Air Force during the Cold War. Later, he became Chairman of the NATO Military Committee (Chief of the General Staff) from 1971 to 1974 and held other positions within the NATO pact.
Count Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg (1906‒2006) was a prominent German military officer who served in the Reichswehr, Wehrmacht, and later as a NATO commander in the Bundeswehr. In 1940, Count Kielmansegg served as a staff officer during the Nazi invasion of France. Later, he was an officer of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht Supreme Command during World War II from 1942 to 1944. After WWII, during the Cold War, he became Supreme Allied Commander for Central Europe within NATO in 1967 and 1968.
Wehrmacht Major Ernst Ferber (1914‒1998) and Group Chief of the Organizational Department of the Wehrmacht High Command from 1943 to 1945, holder of the Wehrmacht Iron Cross, First Class, was in the NATO structures just like Count Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg – Supreme Allied Commander for Central Europe, but in the years 1973 to 1975. Ernst Ferber was succeeded in this same command post in the NATO pact by former German Nazis from the Wehrmacht, Karl Schnell from 1975 to 1977 (holder of the Iron Cross, Second Class, battery commander on the Western Front in 1940 and Chief of Staff of the 74th Panzer Corps in 1944), Franz-Josef Schulze (1918‒2005) from 1977 to 1979 (bearer of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross in 1944), and Ferdinand Maria von Zenger und Etterlin(1923‒1987) 1979–1983 (lieutenant of the 24th Panzer Division of the German 6th Army, participant in the Battle of Stalingrad, adjutant of the Wehrmacht Supreme Command and bearer of the German Cross in gold).
One will probably notice that all the above-mentioned Nazi officers were only carrying out their professional military duties during the war and therefore cannot be considered war criminals. However, the Nazi army – the Wehrmacht – was not a standard professional army, but an integral part of the organized criminal machinery of the Third Reich responsible for systematic war crimes and crimes of genocide throughout occupied Europe. Instead of senior Wehrmacht officers finding themselves on the docks of the International Court of Justice after the war, many found refuge in the high and highest positions of the NATO alliance, whose emblem resembles two joined Nazi crosses (das Hakenkreuz) and the new General Staff building in Brussels resembles two Nazi SS symbols (Schutzstaffel) as worn by the SS soldiers on the collars of their uniforms.
After World War II, there was an informal saying that the German Nazis did not lose the war but fled to America. However, this was true for only a small number of them. Others, the survivors, infiltrated European NATO structures where they also earned pensions. In any case, both before and after 1945, they fought against communism and Russia, neither abandoning nor betraying their ideological positions and doctrines. They only changed their uniforms and emblems, but the enemy remained the same. This is still true today for Russia, although it is no longer communist, but, anyway, it has survived as Russia.
That is why the NATO pact was not dismembered after the end of the Cold War in 1989/1990, after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR. Simply, the pact did not disintegrate/dissolve (cease to function) on its own, which would be a completely logical step, but contrary to the newly emerging geopolitical reality, it continued to expand territorially and strengthen militarily. Probably also under the influence of the ideology of German Nazism, that Russia (not only the USSR) must be wiped off the geopolitical map of the world.
It is known that the basic function of knowing history is to understand contemporary processes as well as to predict their development in the future. The function of uncovering the secret of history is to understand contemporary processes in an extremely objective and comprehensive scope so that their future development can be predicted with maximum precision and, accordingly, adequately and correctly react.
Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity, which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.
The author of the text does not have any moral, political, scientific, material, or legal responsibility for the views expressed in the article.
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This post gets the causation back to front. NATO was set up as an anti-Russian alliance. Naturally it was staffed with anti-Russians, and the most anti-Russian people who could be found were naturally Nazis.
Incidentally, “German military appoints experienced military officer to senior post” is a bit of a nothingburger, even if the “experience” was in the Nazi Wehrmacht. Where else was Germany to get its generals? A bit more alarming was the appointment of the head of the anti-Russian intelligence service Foreign Armies East, Reinhardt Gehlen, to head the German intelligence services — but he was parachuted in by the Americans; in fact, originally the American spy network in East Germany was just called the “Gehlen Organisation”.
Allen Dulles had been working on that since his time in Zurich during the war.
The various appendages of the oligarchy went into immediate action with the death of FDR.
Not a conspiracy, but a broadly shared intent across a particular class.
To support your point about the natural source of senior officers in Germany being former Wehrmacht officers, one could point to the several former NVA (nationalvolksarmee, the East German Army) officers who also served in the Wehrmacht as general officers: Mueller, Korfes, von Lenski, and Adam, just off the top of my head. One should point out that the NVA turned them out relatively quick–most were out of uniform by 1960 or so and, given the organization of the Warsaw Pact, they did not hold high ranking alliance roles (whereas several ex Wehrmacht generals in the Bundeswehr served in top NATO roles as well).
The actual name of ‘The Warsaw Pact’ was the ‘Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA)’. ‘Warsaw pact’ is a western propaganda term.
Humorously the EastBloc referred to NATO as ‘The North Atlantic Pact’.
The Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was also a Treaty of non-agression. But in good American, western way of belitling, some have regimes and others have administrations or governments. ANd some have treaties and other have Pacts. Yellow, yellow, yellow through and through.
I think if the author looks at the Nato logo and sees the swastika, he is reading a bit too much into this.
I’m sure there is some merit to the general premise. But there’s three points I think are more important:
Ever since nazis were invented, most countries do have them. And let’s not forget being a nazi is not defined by hating russians. Russians have nazis, and they obviously think russians are the bees knees. The current regime in Israel is nazis in all but name, and they do not care about russians. ICE nazis don’t like latin people instead… But unless your whole society is nazi, you basically have two choices on where to put yours – to man the guns, or behind bars. In the army hating others is a productive trait; most everywhere else, counterproductive.
If you occupy a country and change the regime to suit your needs, what you want to do is to not replace the elite. The already in place elite knows how to run the country. If you wipe them out, you need to rebuild the country up from the ground. For an example of what happens if you do that, check out what followed the Iraq war. So if you need to build an army for West Germany, where else do you get the officers from, but from the nazi military leadership. Let’s not forget nazi officers were extremely competent, too. So if you have them, some of them will end up in alliance positions too.
Third, the explanation of how Nato got started is not that important for what it is now. Communism might sound scary, but the military does not care about the -ism the enemy brings, they care about the tanks the enemy brings. And when communism fell… No system wants to shut down, and every system wants to expand. A big military alliance of a considerable bureaucracy and military-industrial complex is not going to disband just because their enemy had a setback, lost some territory, changed government, and had to rename itself. You take the opportunity to gain ground, and the game goes on. Should you manage to defeat your enemy, there will be more to be found.
Sorry, but NATO was a political union first and foremost, not military. At the time all western military intelligence agencies were adamant that Soviet Union was not a threat – Stalin hold on to every agreement made in Yalta and Potsdam and allowed the Greek communists to be annihilated while actually withdrawing the Red Army everywhere else but Germany and Poland (and Poland only because the logistics to Germany had to be secured).
USA, on the other hand, reneged on every agreement made in Yalta and Potsdam. Germany was not to be divided but controlled was the agreement. A collective security arrangement in Europe was the agreement. Neither of which was acceptable for the US State Department, at the time totally run by the Wall Street. So USA betrayed Soviet Union, UK and France (and many other countries in Europe).
From the Russian/Soviet point of view NATO was designed to maintain conflict in Europe and was a stab in the back from the former allies. So, eventually the Red Army rolled back to Eastern Europe because instead of collective security there was military threats and buffer zones. And to add insult to the injury, West Germany with it’s Nazi officer corps was included in NATO.
So, I think that the explanation of how NATO got started has the seeds for everything that has followed, and must be touted often and loud instead of burying it.
That said, I doubt it was the Nazis that made NATO russophobic, it was the russophobes that made NATO (and took the Nazis in). What the Nazis did do, they propagated this subhuman image of the Russians, the “eastern hordes”, that eventually led to the hubris preceding the Ukrainian “counter-attack” two years ago. While the NATO strategists lapped all the lies of the Eastern Front up without any scepticism, Soviet military had most of the German war diaries and other documents to peruse, study and use as teaching material.
Agree. Author is barking up the wrong tree by looking at the former Nazis in the military leadership. This is what you expect if you want to quickly reconstitute the armed forces during the Cold War. Bundeswehr leadership or even NATO military leadership does not decide on foreign policy or dictate how NATO countries deal diplomatically with Russia. They don’t have a big say in whether NATO should be disbanded or not.
I wouldn’t argue any of the claims made here on German Wehrmacht high ranked officials who were incorporated in NATO ranks when Germany entered NATO. In fact I find it completely unsurprising as many if not most of the high rank military in Germany by 1955 probably came from the WWII Wehrmacht. Whether these officials were crucial or had any role on the Russo-phobic NATO expansionist turn which took place after, let’s say, 1989 one can have serious doubts. I might be mistaken but then this was mostly a US push. IMO, this Historia Arcana take has now little interest, except for the record, given the poor role NATO is having in the conflict. Not that one should miss the Russophobic wave in many European countries but this is not a NATO thing but something to be examined in each particular country. More so given the position of the current US administration.
This is a very valuable piece. German Nazis didn’t just find homes in NATO; hundreds of Nazi scientists found glory and employment in the USA (Von Braun being the most celebrated); hundreds more war criminals fled via Vatican ratlines to South America, where they formed the basis of Nazi-style military regimes in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brasil and elsewhere; the US operation Gladio provided money and work for former Nazis as European terrorists; while CIA cultivated the Banderite Nazis in Ukraine.
A consistent foreign policy, if ever there was one!
Another negative development with the US accepting the German Generals was that the US accepted the Germans’ defective military strategies, like maneuver warfare, Blitzkrieg, etc., despite the fact that the Germans failed miserably. These methods worked against third rate militaries in the Middle East, but did not work in Vietnam or Korea or other attritional warfare. The most striking example of this failure is the war in the Ukraine. US military academies also accept these defective doctrines, and therefore, the whole system needs to be re-educated. Whether the Ukraine catastrophic defeat will cause this to happen remains to be seen. It appears that the US is trying to pass off the defeat onto Europe, and will not take responsibility for it.
That’s an intriguing take I’d never considered.
I’ve always argued that due to a quirk of geography the Anglophonic nations are power projectors in that they unlike everyone else get to fight their wars in other people’s countries due to their geographic isolation. This means they have the luxury of manoeuvre warfare because they don’t have to give up their own key regions. They’ve not had to fight a Sedan or Stalingrad in over a century. So they always advise their proxies this form of fighting even though it is impossible for them.
As an aside this is the basis of the sneering at The Maginot Line which as is well know worked quite well.
Since Yves was gracious enough to name-check me, I thought I had better say a few words. (This is my second attempt: the first was swallowed whole by the system.) I’ve had a look at the essay, and if the author was my student he’d get a fail. The subjects he touches on, from fears of military intimidation in the late 1940s, to the militarisation of NATO after Korea, to the continuation of NATO after 1990 and the shambolic process of expansion are massively documented and have been studied and written about to death in many languages. If you’re going to propose a striking new interpretation with previously-undiscovered facts–and the author doesn’t–you need at least to reference the wide academic consensus that exists on such subjects, and the general agreement more recently about the events that people like me were involved in. A “secret history” is what people like Graham Hancock write.
Germany was not originally a NATO member and its accession was very controversial. It was therefore tied down by being denied its own military HQ (everything had to be done through NATO) and it publicly traced its origins not to the Wehrmacht but back to the Stauffenburg conspiracy in 1944, and cultivated the philosophy of innere furhung. or “internal leadership” emphasising the responsibility of the individual soldier and the norms of liberal democracy. This comforted both the pacifist mood of much of Germany at the time, and the fears of its neighbours. Curiously, the NVA, set up by the Soviet Union in 1956, was in much the same position. It too had many former Wehrmacht officers in its ranks, and it was put under even tighter Soviet political control than other WP militaries, which is saying something.
The Bundeswehr had a low status in Bonn, and didn’t even have its own Ministry. It had almost no influence on German security policy, and none on that of NATO. Its job was really to pretend to be an Army to placate the US and others (“our Army is not intended to fight” as its officers used to say during the Cold War) whilst not looking threatening to its neighbours. For example, when the German Embassy organised a celebration of Unification in 1990 (I was there) Bonn originally insisted that the musicians come in plain clothes, in case anyone was offended.
Much of the argument seems to be based on a simple misunderstanding that five minute’s research would have cleared up. Chairman of the Military Committee is a largely honorific, bureaucratic post, typically given to a senior officer nearing the end of his career. Nations have Permanent Representatives in Brussels, diplomats with the rank of Ambassador, who deal with the day-to-day political issues of the Alliance. In parallel, but with much less status, is the Military Committee, which deals with pedestrian military administrative matters. It is not the “General Staff” of NATO because NATO has no “General Staff.” Almost no assets are permanently allocated to NATO anyway. On mobilisation; NATO forces are commanded by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, invariably an American General, and his Deputy, frequently but not always from the UK. In normal times, all forces are under national command, but there are procedures for “chopping” them to SACEUR, whose staff obviously have both a planning capability and a command structure beneath. That German officers should feature in both is not surprising since, especially during the Cold War, Germany was a major troop contributor.
The author is a Serb, and this is standard Germanophobia that anyone who knows the region will have heard before. Back in the early 1990s, Serbs were trying to convince me that the Bundeswehr was going to be deployed to Croatia to fight the Serbs and in return Germany would get a naval base at Dubrovnik. It all goes around in circles.
The US & the UK armed and organised the Bundesgrenzschutz almost immediately in 1951 and they were an army in all but name and they were not in reality under German command because NATO, established in 1949, was undoubtedly ensuring they were under their control. The former Nazi commanders were all too happy to focus on their familiar eastern foes while hiding their Drang nach Osten until much later, mainly under the guise of Pomeranian revanchism.
The main difference is that in the two Germanies there was no shadow military state as under the Prussian Militarism with which German ethno-nationalism was fused to create Nazism. The Prussian Militarism military government model had a veto over the civilian government. This seems to have been taken over by the USA but to a far lesser extent in West Germany.
I should add that the author’s nationality isn’t really relevant as there’s a host of differing views in any nation and that bring it up really detracts from your point.
Blitzkrieg seems to be taken from Russian “deep battle” doctrine. Some of that thinking made it into US “AirLand Battle” doctrine.
Big Serge, in one of his Substack posts, had a lengthy discussion about the contrast between Blitzkrieg and Deep Battle. I may not be doing a good job summarizing his point, but his rough argument was:
1. Blitzkrieg ultimately depended on rapid and aggressive movement of subordinate units at the initiative of relatively junior officers that was incorporated into the general doctrine. This, in turn, derived from the historic Prussian practice. So, Rommel’s Ghost Division (the 7th Panzer) conducting rapid attack on its own, often without contact with higher headquarters, but remaining within the broad framework of German strategy in France, circa 1940, would be a perfect illustration of Blitzkrieg in practice. Basically, a sprinter, or a whole team of them.
2. Russian concept of Deep Battle was always much more centrally controlled and depended on waves of secondary echelons backing up the first wave. The core of Deep Battle was not some spearhead led by a military maverick racing ahead and wreaking havoc on the enemy rear, but waves of troops arriving rapidly to reinforce and replace the spearhead as they wore down. More like a relay tem, rather than a team of sprinters.
Ha, ha, ha! It was all one enormous lie. All the West’s talk about freedom, democracy, human rights, was all one monumental hoax, designed to cover the post-World War II rampage the U.S. was planning before the ink on the Nazi surrender documents signed at Reims and Berlin on the 7th and 8th of May, 1945, even had time to to dry. The U.S. now appears to be headed for economic ruin. Its fall may be the only chance the rest of the world has for survival..