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.
