Welcome to the third installment in my examination of the notorious
Thule Society,
a secret society with occult trappings that was founded in Germany
toward the end of the First World War I. The legacy of Thule is a mixed
bag, with mainstream historians largely dismissing it as insignificant
while conspiracy theorists have long cited the Society as being the
smoking gun for the occult roots of Nazism. As with many things, the
truth is far more complex than either of these two positions.
Thus, with the
first installment
in this series I tried to chronicle some of the common misconceptions
surrounding Thule, especially in regards to popular conspiracy culture
staples such as the
Vril Society and the
Lance of Longinus. In part
two
I began to breakdown some of the ideologies, groups and individuals
that laid the ground work for the emergence of Thule, most notably the
Germanenorden. The
Germanenorden was itself a secret society with rituals derived largely from the
Volkisch movement,
Ariosophy and
Freemasonry. It was from a breakaway group of
Germanenorden lodges that Thule emerged from.
But before I begin addressing Thule in earnest I must give some background details concerning one specific individual: Baron
Rudolf von Sebottendorff,
the founder of the Thule Society, for it is impossible to fully
appreciate the significance of Thule without some understanding of the
man who founded it.
Von Sebottendorff was not born into nobility and in fact came from
somewhat modest origins. His name had originally been Adam Alfred Rudolf
Glauer ad he was born to a locomotive engineer in
Hoyerswerda
towards the tail end of 1875. The day of von Sebottendorff's birth,
November 9, is most curious. This date has gained something of an
ominous reputation in German culture and for good reason. Consider:
- on 11/9/1848 liberal leader Robert Blum was executed, an event seen by many as playing a key role in the failure of the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states (apparently
von Sebottendorff's paternal grandfather was killed during the street
fighting in Berlin during the Revolution, but I have been able to
determine when or under what circumstances).
- 11/9/1918 would mark the end of monarchy in the German state and the beginning of the doomed Weimer Republic;
this date also marked the beginning of the reactionary
counterrevolution that would ultimately lead to the rise of the Nazi
party. Von Sebottendorff reportedly gave a rousing speech to Thule on
his forty-third birthday that helped spur the counterrevolution in
Bavaria, as we shall see.
- 11/9/1923 witnessed the conclusion of Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch, an event that would become heavily mythologized by the Nazi party in latter years and would even produce the so-called Blutfahne (blood flag), a lone Nazi flag that became a kind of holy relic to the party.
- the night of 11/9/1938 witnessed the beginning of the Kristallnacht
(also known as "crystal night" or "the night of broken glass") in which
Jewish property and synagogues were burned and destroyed and which led
to the arrest and incarceration of over 30,000 Jews in concentration
camps
- and finally, 11/9/1989 witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that led to the reunification of Germany.
Benito Mussolini founded the
Partito Nazionale Fascista
(PNF), the fascist political party that would go on to rule Italy from
1922 till 1943, on November 9, 1921 as well. Thus, this day is quite
significant in the history of fascism in general. And here we have Von
Sebottendorff's birthday falling on the so-called "11/9 days" to boot.
While this is likely a mere coincidence, it surely is an ominous one
considering the influence von Sebottendorff would have on Germany's
destiny. But moving along.
The first twenty-five years of Von Sebottendorff's life are rather
unremarkable. While born to common origins, von Sebottendorff's father
was able to bequeath his son a modest inheritance upon his death in
1893. Von Sebottendorff studied engineering for a time, but his
adventurer's spirit eventually got the best of him. By 1898 von
Sebottendorff had departed Germany and had begun to see the world while
working as a sailor. But it was not until 1900, when von Sebottendorff
arrived in the Near East, that the future baron's interest in occult
doctrines began to take root.
"... in June 1900, Glauer journeyed to Egypt, armed with a letter of
introduction to a wealthy, influential pasha given him Coolgardie by a
Parsee, a follower of Zoroaster. Perhaps it was at this crossroads where
the young adventurer turned towards a lifelong exploration of hidden
doctrines. Glauer disembark at Alexandria in July 1900 after a sea
voyage via Colombo, Aden, and the Suez Canal and traveled straightway to
Cairo. There he met the secretary of Hussein Pasha, a Turkish landowner
who was summering near Constantinople. By Sebottendorff's account, a
telegram from Hussein Pasha summoned him to Turkey. Glauer met the pasha
at his mansion on the Bosporus, two hours' journey from the old
imperial capital in a narrow-hulled caique. Possibly the Hussein of
Sebottendorff's account was actually Abraham Pasha, a landowner near
Beikos. A more prosaic version from the pen of a colleague, however,
places him in Egypt from 1897 to 1900, working for the Egyptian
government as a technician. While it is almost certainly incorrect that
Glauer was in Egypt before 1900, those dates may reflect the truth of a
slightly longer, less whirlwind stay in Egypt than Sebottendorff allowed
in his writings. While in Egypt, Glauer visited the Mevlevi, an
ecstatic Sufi order, and Cheops, where an Egyptian companion called
Ibrahim informed him of the great pyramid's numerological significance.
Sebottendorff would remain fascinated by the mystical Islam of the
Sufis, whose practices derived from shamanism and Eastern Christianity
as well as Koranic sources, and later claimed initiation into one of
their orders.
"Glauer enjoyed the friendly concern of the pasha after his arrival in
Turkey and was offered a position as surveyor of his estate in the
vilayet of Hudawengiar (Khudarinddighair). Glauer apparently learn
Turkish at this time, studying Arabic calligraphy under the imam of the
mosque at Beikos. By 1901 he was employed on the pasha's Anatolian
estates near Bandirma and Bursa, on the slopes of Uluda, known to the
ancients as Mount Olympus...
"Glauer's interest in the occult increased during long conversations on
the inner life with the pasha, who was devoted to Sufism. He was also
befriended by Kabbalist an alchemist called Termudi, a descendant of
Sephardic Jews who had emigrated in the sixteenth century to Salonica, a
crossroads city where Eastern Orthodox Christians and Sunni Muslims
mingled with Jews and Sufis. A banker and traitor in silk as well as an
occultist, Termudi initiated Glauer into a Freemason lodge in Bursa, and
eventually bequeathed him a library of texts on alchemy, Kabbalism,
Rosicrucianism, and Sufism. Glauer's fascination with Sufism was
sharpened by the discovery of a note by the pasha in one of Termudi's
books, describing alchemical exercises practiced by the Bektashi, the
Sufi order to which Sebottendorff would claim initiation. The Parsee
from Coolgardie and the Turk and the Jew from Bursa were links in an
occult network stretching across the globe, crossing lines of ethnicity
and the outer forms of religion. The image Sebottendorff presented in
his autobiographical writings as an adventurer traveling in those
circles is at odds with the militant racism and anti-Semitism he
expounded in the Thule Society.
"In later years Sebottendorff would explain that the magical exercises
of 'Oriental freemasonry' contain the secrets of the Rosicrucians and
the alchemists, and preserve those esoteric teachings that modern
Freemasonry had forgotten. According to him, the ancient Freemasons were
concerned with ennobling individuals in the hope of eventually
reforming society, while modern Freemasonry is concerned with reforming
society in the hope of ennobling its members.
"Termudi's lodge was probably affiliated with the Rite of Memphis, which
had spread into many lands after its foundation in Paris in 1838.
Freemasonry was often considered a liberalizing, even subversive force,
the engine of political reform. This was true in the Ottoman Empire,
where 'masonry led a harassed existence.' The Rite of Memphis, however,
was an anomaly in Freemasonry because supreme power was invested in its
grandmaster, giving it an autocratic character. The Memphis order was
steeped in Kabbalism and Rosicrucianism, the latter esoteric doctrine
providing Sebottendorff with a link to those German Masons who could be
termed right wing and would survive the persecution of the Masonry under
the Nazis."
(Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen, pgs. 46-48)
The
Rite of Memphis, which by the early twentieth century had merged with the similarly Egyptian-themed
Misraim rite to form the
Rite of Memphis-Misraim
in irregular masonic lodges, has faced much speculation from conspiracy
theorists over the years. These arcane rites originated from the
legendary
Enlightenment-era occultist known popularly as
Cagliostro who pioneered an "Egyptian" from of Freemasonry in the late eighteenth century.
"Cagliostro had established the system of 'Egyptian' Freemasonry (the
mother lodge was set up in Lyons in 1782), which consisted of both male
and female lodges, the latter being headed by his wife Serafina. Levi
described this as an attempt 'to resuscitate the mysterious worship of
Isis.'
"The fruits of Cagliostro's researches into the occult societies of Europe were a body of knowledge known as the Arcana Arcanorum
(Secret of Secrets), or A. A. He took this term from the original
Rosicrucianism of the seventeenth century, but his corpus consisted of
descriptions of magical practices that especially stressed 'internal
alchemy...'
"It was under Cagliostro's authority that the Rite of Misraim (Hebrew
for 'Egyptians') was created in Venice in 1788. Around 1810 the three
Bedarride brothers brought the system to France, where it was
incorporated into the Rectified Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
"The Rite of Misraim was the direct antecedent of the Rite of Memphis –
which had... been founded by Jacques-Etienne Marconis de Negre... (The
two systems unified as the rite of Memphis-Misraim in 1899 under the
Grand Mastership of Papus, who remained at the helm until his death in
1918.) The Rite of Memphis was also closely associated with a secret
society called the Philadelphians that have been founded by the Marquis
de Chefdebien in 1780 – another offshoot of von Hund's Strict Templar
Observance, although it was specifically formed to acquire occult
knowledge. Marconis de Negre stressed the close ties with the
Philadelphians and named one of the grades of his movement 'The
Philadelphes.'
"Neither rite – of Memphis or Misraim – was in itself particularly
influential. But taken together, as Memphis-Misraim, they were a power
to be reckoned with, and their influence spread like title wades through
the occult underground of Europe. Among their members were such dark
stars as the British occultist Aleister Crowley and mystic luminaries
like Rudolf Steiner. And there was also Karl Kellner, who was
eventually, with Theodore Reuss, to found the Order of the Templars of
the Orient, better known simply as the OTO.
"This organization was – and is – explicitly about sex magic. And
although it is widely thought to represent the Westernizing of Tantrism,
it was also very much the logical development of secrets taught in
Memphis-Misrim – which themselves derived from the knowledge acquired by
Cagliostro from the alchemical Rosicrucian groups of Germany and the
Strict Templar Observance lodges...
"Another offspring of the Memphis/Misraim movement took shape in England
in the late nineteenth century. This was the hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, whose members included Bram Stoker the theater manager most
famous for being the author of Dracula; Aleister Crowley, the
Irish poet, patriot and mystic, W. B. Yeats, and sociable Constance
Wilde, wife of the doomed Oscar. Founded in 1888 by Mcgregor Mathers and
W. Wynn Westcott, it's direct line of descent went back to the Gold and
Rosy Cross, the Strict Templar Observance order from Germany... as did
many of its actual grade names and rituals. The Golden Dawn also used
rites taken from Memphis/Misraim..."
(The Templar Revelations, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, pgs. 177)
There has long been speculation by conspiracy theorists as to whether there were any ties between
Crowley and/or the
OTO
to the Thule Society. As far as this researcher has been able to
discern there does not seem to have been any direct links. But according
to David Luhrssen in
Hammer of the Gods Franz Hartmann, a Bavarian born member of the
Theosophical Society, may provide an indirect link to the OTO and Ariosophy.
Hartmann was a co-founder of German Theosophy in 1884 and helped spread
Blavatsky's system through out the nation vigorously. At some point he became acquainted with
Guido von List (effectively Ariosophy's founder who, along with the
List Society, was discussed briefly in
part two
of this series) and joined the List Society in 1908 upon its founding.
Hartmann, according to Luhrssen, was also an associate of the
above-mentioned
Theodor Reuss.
In some accounts Hartmann is even said to have co-founded the OTO as
early as 1902. But beyond Hartmann this researcher is unaware of any
other links between the OTO and Ariosophy, and none concerning the Thule
Society.
 |
| Hartmann |
It is interesting to note, however, that OTO co-founder Reuss was
reputedly working as a German agent during WWI (per Luhrssen) while
Crowley was writing German propaganda for the American based
The Fatherland and
The International during 1910s. These publications were in turn founded by
George Sylvester Viereck, a German-American who claimed to be a relation of
Kaiser Wilhelm I.
Viereck was famously convicted of being a German agent in 1941, but
this researcher has not been able to definitively confirm whether or not
Viereck was working in this capacity during WWI (though this seems
highly probable). Crowley himself of course claimed to have been an
agent of British intelligence, and
compelling evidence
has emerged to confirm such assertion over the years. Thus, it seems
likely Crowley would have been trying to infiltrate the ranks of Reuss
and Viereck for other masters.
 |
| Crowley |
But returning to von Sebottendorff. The future baron was also apparently quite taken with
Rosicrucianism,
as where many other leading Ariosophists. This is hardly unsurprising
as the movement largely seems to have originated in Germany (the
seventeenth century Germanic Rosicrucrucian groups have long been
reputed to have engaged in some type of sex magic, as noted above).
"The origins of the Rosicrucians (or 'Great White Brotherhood,' as
devotees called it) is obscure, enlightened neither by its own claims of
an ancient pedigree in Pharaonic Egypt nor the best efforts of recent
scholarship. Secret societies, if they are truly covert and have reason
to fear repression, did not always leave paper trails. Occult lodges
calling themselves Rosicrucian surfaced in the seventeenth century with
the anonymous publication in Germany of manifestos calling for the
reformation of the entire world. Cited as the movements father was the
legendary German knight Christian Rosenkreutz, said to be a traveler in
the East during the sixteenth century. Tales of Rosenkreutz may well
have lit the imagination of Glauer, a traveler in the East during the
twentieth century. Organized in Masonic fashion with an initiatory,
hierarchical structure around the belief that human potential remainded a
largely untapped reservoir, the Rosicrucians began to dabble in
clandestine politics as early as the seventeenth century, when initiates
backed plots to restore the Stuarts to the British throne. Especially
in Germany, Rosicrucianism became 'right-wing, aristocratic and
restorationist.' By the 1780s Prussian king Frederick Wilhelm III was
himself a member of the Berlin Lodge. Rosicrucians became an influence
on the occult underground that emerged in Europe. By the close of the
nineteenth century, inspiring secretive organization such as the Order
of the Golden Dawn, and esteemed cultural figure such as Swedish writer
August Strindberg, a correspondent of Ariosophist Jorg Lanz. Zanoni, a widely read novel by English author and occultist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, was steeped in Rosicrucianism.
"Like the Theosophists who sensed the dawning of another epoch, the
Rosicrucians believe that history was giving way to a new age in which
the original planetary harmony would be restored. Little wonder that
Guido von List was eager to paint Ariosophy in Rosicrucian colors,
claiming that their lodges had preserved knowledge of pre-Christian,
Germanic Europe..."
(Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen, pgs. 48-49)
Von Sebottendorff returned to Germany and spent six years there. This
time he was briefly married for two years, but sought a divorce in
Berlin during 1907. The future baron was also accused of forgery and
swindling during this time. By 1908 he had returned to Turkey for a
second sojourn that lasted until 1913. It was during this time that von
Sebottendorff acquired said last name and his title of nobility.
Glauer's rebirth as Baron von Sebottendorff officially began in 1911. It
was during this year that von Sebottendorff claimed that he was
naturalized as a Turkish citizen and subsequently adopted by an
expatriate Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorff under Turkish law. As this
act was not recognized by German law, von Sebottendorff had the adoption
repeated by another von Sebottendorff, Siegmund, in
Wiesbaden in 1914. Eventually Siegmund's widow also repeated the adoption for good measure.
Von Sebottendorff also claimed to have been naturalized and adopted by an American member of the noble family in
Constantinople
in 1908 as well, but this claim is more sketchy. Regardless, the
Sebottendorff family would vigorously endorse Rudolf's claim and his
title of nobility was ultimately acknowledged by German authorities.
 |
| Rudolf von Sebottendorff |
Before leaving this topic, its interesting to note that the
Sebottendorff clan originated during the Middle Ages along the Baltic
coast where the family were lords of several villages there. A family
member was knighted by
Emperor Otto II
during the tenth century, establishing the clan's claim to nobility.
They continued to reside in the Baltic until the late twelfth century
when they began to migrate to
Silesia.
Given the significance the Baltic will have by the end of this series, I
find the Sebottendorff family's origins in the Baltic most curious if
almost surely a mere coincidence. But moving along.
For much of von Sebottendorff's early life the adventurer comes off as a
rather cosmopolitan figure, a kind of cross between the legendary
Baron Munchhausen and
T.E. Lawrence.
By all accounts the man enjoyed close relations with both Jews and
Turks alike during his sojourns in the Near East and on the whole there
is little evidence of the flagrant racist tendencies that would come to
dominate von Sebottendorff's thinking during his time with the
Germanenorden
and Thule in latter years. Von Sebottendorff's dramatic shift in
attitude has long puzzled serious scholars. One compelling possibility
for this ideological shift is the potential association von
Sebottendorff had with the
Young Turks movement during his second extended stay in the nation before the outbreak of World War I.
"Sebottendorff implied that his return to Turkey was motivated by the
economic opportunities created by the Committee of Union and Progress
(CUP), the loose-knit group that became the leading force in the even
more loosely knit revolutionary movement known as the Young Turks. The
conspiratorial CUP seized power in a bloodless revolution in 1908 and
forced Sultan Abdulhamid II to appoint its members to key positions in
government. Ostensibly CUP pursued a policy of Westernization and
economic development. Unable, however, to find work with the
German-financed Anatolian Railroad Company or the many other
construction projects underway in Turkey, Sebottendorff accepted a
teaching post in a Jewish community on the slopes of Alemdag near
Scutari (Uskuedar), the town on the Asiatic shore of the Bosporus where
Florence Nightingale had treated British wounded during the Crimean War.
"Interestingly, the lodge he had been admitted to by the Jewish
occultist Termudi was, before the Young Turks seized power, the secret
Bursa cadre of CUP. Even before the formation of CUP, Turkish Freemasons
had been involved in murky conspiracies against the Sublime Porte. That
Masons became active with the Young Turks was in step with their
centuries-old tradition of dissidence. Jewish Freemasons, especially
prominent members of the Salonica community, joined CUP, 'making their
lodges available for secret meetings and for the storage of secret
correspondence and records.' Ironically, given Sebottendorff's future
associations, Ottoman opponents of CUP and Allied propagandists during
World War I maintained that the committee was little more than a front
for a cabal of Salonican Jews.
"There were several tendencies at work among the Turkish nationalists in
whose circles Sebottendorff traveled. The regime founded after World
War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire by Kemal Ataturk, who had
been a relatively pragmatic member of CUP, represented a more moderate
vision of Turkish nationalism. Based on his pursuits upon returning to
Germany, one can speculate that Sebottendorff may have been infected by
the more radical strains that went by the names of Pan-Turkism and
Pan-Turanism, the latter referring to a projected nation-state of all
Turkic peoples to be called Turan, whose boundaries would stretch north
from the Tibetan plateau to the Arctic Ocean and east from Asia Minor to
the Pacific Ocean to encompass the Caucasian and Central Asian Turkic
domains of the Russian Empire and China...
"Analogous with the search for pre-Christian values by their volkisch
counterparts in German-speaking Europe, and contradicting the Western,
positivist materialism of many CUP intellectuals, the Pan-Turkists and
Pan-Turanians were fascinated with traces of pre-Islamic shamanism found
among rural Turks. 'The Turkish peasant of Anatolia, previously the
object of contempt by the elite, began to be romanticized as the
embodiment of national values.' As with the volkisch movement,
Pan-Turkism and Pan-Turanism originated in the obscure researches of
mainly European scholars, notably Mustafa Celaleddin Pasha, a Polish
exile whose Les Turcs Anciens et Modernes (1869) emphasized the
ethnic unity of all Turkic peoples and their contributions to
civilization, and French historian David Leon Cahun, whose Introduction to the History of Asia
(1896) linked the Turks to such pre-Islamic conquerors as Genghis Khan,
who became a hero to some radical Turkish nationalist. Such beliefs
'spread rapidly among the intellectual classes of the empire,
particularly in Istanbul and Salonica,' the milieu inhabited by
Sebottendorff during his second Turkish sojourn. Certain factions of the
Young Turks showed 'a remarkable affinity with "proto fascist" currents
in Europe.' Unlike the Westernizers represented by Ataturk's circle,
the militant Pan-Turanians often despised Western values; interestingly,
their favorite European authors were Nietzsche and Gobineau. The
contradictory and incomplete evidence shows that some Pan-Tuanians were
fascinated by biological, Social Darwinist theories of race and
nationality, while others assumed that nationality is culturally
constructed and could be imposed or encouraged by assimilation, the
strategy favored by Ataturk and his successors in the present struggle
between Turkey and its Kurdish rebels.
"Historian Arnold Toynbee, in a report written for British naval
intelligence in 1917, noted the 'anti-Islamic tendencies' in the
Pan-Turanian movement, including the employment as a symbol of CUP's
youth movement of the Grey Wolf (the mythical beast who led the ancient
Turks on their westward migration), and a Turkish army order directing
troops to include the Grey Wolf in their prayers. Toynbee quotes from a
circular produced by Turkish Hearth, a Pan-Turkist group that exists
even today despite periods of suppression by the Turkish Republic. The
brochure condemns the 'monstrous figment of the imagination, which is
known as the community of Islam, and which has for long past stood in
the way of present progress generally, and of the realization of the
principles of Turanian unity in particular.' The language closely
parallels Ariosophical attacks on Christianity, which they despised as
an alien intrusion, an impediment to the recovery of Aryan culture and
values.
"The Grey Wolf was appropriated as a symbol under Ataturk, who tolerated
and repressed the Pan-Turanian movement according to his own shifting
political calculations. The Pan-Turanians and their symbols represented
the birth of the fascist tendency in modern Turkish politics. An extreme
right-wing terrorist gang, accused of enjoying links with organized
crime and factions of the Turkish security forces, continues to call
itself the Grey Wolves.
"Sebottendorff alludes only casually in his writings to the Young Turks.
But his membership in a Young Turk front organization, and his return
to the Ottoman Empire once they seized power, opens an intriguing avenue
of speculation. Parallels between volkisch Pan-Germanism and the
most radical Pan-Turanism advocated by elements of CUP are striking.
Some authors have gone so far as to suspect links between the Young
Turks and Nazism."
(Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen, pgs. 50-53)
 |
| the Young Turks' leadership circa 1907 |
Before wrapping things up, a point should be made about the
Grey Wolves. This far right terror network would go on to play a key role in Turkey's
Gladio network in the post-World War II years.
Operation Gladio is far to complex a topic to address at length here but
in brief: It began during the early years of the Cold War and was in
theory supposed to serve as a stay-behind network of guerrilla fighters
in the event Western Europe was overrun and occupied by the Soviet
Union. In actuality Gladio was a vast international terror and
assassination network that recruited heavily from Nazi and fascist
supporters in the post-war years and would go on to include branches in
virtually every U.S. client-state (though Operation Gladio is generally
thought to have only included Europe and Turkey, it was actually an
international network directed by a private organization known as the
World Anti-Communist League [which this blog has
addressed at length
before], but more on that later) the world over. Frequently these
paramilitary-style terror networks were controlled by a series of
bizarre secret societies. Easily the most famous of these organizations
was the notorious Italian
Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge. The equally notorious
Opus Dei as well as the rarely addressed
Sovereign Military Order of Malta have also been frequently
linked to this network.
 |
| the emblem of the Italian "stay-behind" network |
The origins of the Grey Wolves paramilitary organization are hazy, but
some researchers believe they date back to the final days of the Ottoman
Empire, the time period in which Sebottendorff's second Turkish sojourn
unfolded. By the 1950s they seem to have become a tool of Gladio.
"The Grey Wolves, far from being a youth organization, were a brutal
network of trained and armed men ready to use violence to further the
cause of Pan-Turkism. 'The creed of the Grey Wolves' an article in Bozkurt,
the official magazine of the organization, specified the ideology and
the strategy of the movement in the following way: 'Who are we? We are
the members of the Grey Wolf (Bozkurtcu). What is our ideology? The
Turkism of the Grey Wolf (Bozkurt). What is the creed of the Bozkurtcu?
They believe that the Turkish race and the Turkish nation are superior.
What is the source of this superiority? The Turkish blood.' With roots
going back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the
Turks into several countries the article stressed the Pan-Turkish
struggle: 'Are the Bozkurtcu Pan Turks? Yes! It is the holy aim of the
Bozkurt Turks to see that the Turkish state grows to become a nation of
65 millions. What justification do you have for this? The Bozkurtcu have
a long time ago declared their principles on this issue. You do not
receive right, you get it yourself.' In order to attain its aims the
Grey Wolves specifically trained to use violence: 'War? Yes, war, if
necessary. War is a great and holy principle of nature. We are the sons
of warriors. The Bozkurtcu believe that war, militarism and heroism
should receive the highest possible esteem and praise.'
"It was this national fascist movement which the CIA exploited and
supported while running it secret army in Turkey. After the discovery of
NATO's secret stay-behind armies across Western Europe in 1990, it was
revealed in Turkey that CIA liaison officer Turks had recruited heavily
among the Grey Wolves to staff the secret stay-behind army, which in
Turkey operated under the name Counter-Guerrilla. Yet due to the broad
public support which the Grey Wolves enjoyed, and due to their known
brutality even in the 1990s, few in Turkey and beyond had the courage to
address the issue in frank terms. Among those who spoke out was General
Talat Turhan. In 1960 Turhan together with other officers had taken
part in the coup d'etat, four years later he was dismissed from the
Turkish army in the rank of General. After the coup of 1971, the
military tried to do away with him and the Counter-Guerrilla tortured
him as he kept to be most outspoken about the darkest secrets of the
Turkish security system. Already then he declared: 'This is the secret
unit of the NATO countries,' but within the Cold War context of the
1970s nobody was eager to listen."
(NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Daniele Ganser, pgs. 228-229)
 |
| the flag of the Turkish MHP political party that is frequently used by the Grey Wolves |
In this context von Sebottendorff's activities during World War II
become rather eyebrow-raising. After falling afoul of the Nazi regime in
the early 1930s and being imprisoned von Sebottendorff reportedly
became a spy for Germany during World War II.
"... Although the circumstances remain unclear, the Nazis apparently
released Sebottendorff, who returned to his beloved Turkey. Germany's
intelligence chief in Istanbul from the middle of World War II, Herbert
Rittlinger, claimed that the aging Ariosophist, by then a man of
seventy, was one of his operatives, an inheritance from his
predecessor's list of spies. In Rittlinger's memory, Sebottendorff was a
kindly, penurious gentlemen, and amiable companion ('I did not find his
humorous bonhomie unsympathetic'), who spoke more of Tibet and
Rosicrucianism then Nazi Germany, but not a good spy. 'As an agent, he
was a zero.' Unfamiliar with Sebottendorff's past, Rittlinger later
wondered whether highly placed friends arranged his release from
imprisonment. He was also concerned that Sebottendorff may also have
been working for the Allies, committing years after the war, 'Our
counterintelligence man thought it was certain, but could never prove
it, and I myself thought it was quite possible...'"
(Hammer of the Gods, David Luhrssen, pgs. 199-200)
 |
| a bust of von Sebottendorff |
Reportedly Sebottendorff committed suicide on May 9, 1945 by throwing himself in the
Bosporus,
but this has never been conclusively proven. And neither has
Sebottendorff's ties to the Young Turks, and certainly not the Grey
Wolves, for that matter. And yet here we have a man with extensive ties
to Turkish nationalists possibly operating as an Allied spy in Turkey
during the final years of World War II, a little over a decade before
the Grey Wolves seem to have become a key cog in the Gladio network
(though contact between the Allies and the Grey Wolves may have begun
much earlier). These circumstances are certainly curious, to say the
least.
And with that I shall wrap things up for now. Keep Gladio in mind dear
readers as the similarities between the organizations used in this
network and the
Freecorps
are quite striking, as we shall see. In the next installment I shall
began to addressing the Freecorps as well as finally getting around to
the Thule Society. Stay tuned.
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