Cold-war Fascist Collaborators

by Zoltanous

Accusations that the U.S. government exhibited ideological affinities for German Nazism or Italian Fascism have persisted in certain leftist discourses, particularly among segments of American communists during the mid-20th century. However, historical examination reveals that such claims often overlook the dominant influence of liberalism on U.S. leadership and the broader Western establishment. Liberalism, as a philosophical and political framework, emphasizes individual rights, market freedoms, and representative institutions. This tradition shaped U.S. policy from its founding era onward. While promoting ideals of liberty and progress, liberalism coexisted with systemic injustices that provide ample grounds for critique without invoking parallels to fascism, which emerged as a distinct response to interwar crises.

These injustices include the displacement and mass deaths of Native American populations through policies like the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to the Trail of Tears and an estimated 15,000 Cherokee fatalities during forced relocations in the 1830s. The institution of chattel slavery, beginning with the arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia in 1619 and persisting until the 13th Amendment in 1865, involved the forced labor and dehumanization of millions. In the early 20th century, the promotion of eugenics saw figures like Theodore Roosevelt endorse sterilization laws, influencing over 60,000 forced procedures in the U.S. by the 1970s. Imperial conflicts, such as the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), extended U.S. occupation until 1946 and resulted in hundreds of thousands of Filipino civilian deaths. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 caused immediate fatalities exceeding 100,000 and long-term radiation effects on survivors. These contradictions within liberalism highlight its complex historical legacy.

Fascism, in contrast, represented a revolutionary ideology blending ultranationalism, anti-capitalist rhetoric against finance and individualism, and state-directed economic policies. In its Italian variant under Benito Mussolini (1922–1943) and its German counterpart in Nazism (1933–1945), fascism featured protectionist trade barriers, nationalization of key industries (e.g., Italy’s Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale in 1933, which controlled major banks and firms), expropriation of private assets for national goals, and welfare programs tied to corporatist structures promoting class collaboration. Despite these elements, fascism’s implementation involved severe repression. Italy’s 1935–1937 invasion of Ethiopia, using chemical weapons and aerial bombings, killed tens of thousands of civilians and led to annexation. Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies, including the Holocaust, systematically murdered six million Jews through camps like Auschwitz and mobile killing units.

Fascism’s multifaceted nature extended beyond brutality, occasionally intersecting with anti-colonial movements. For example, Subhas Chandra Bose collaborated with Axis powers to advance Indian independence from British rule, forming the Indian National Army in 1942. Similarly, Nicola Bombacci, who co-founded the Italian Communist party in 1921, joined Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic in 1943, advocating socialist reforms within a fascist context. These alliances underscore the ideological fluidity and pragmatic opportunism that complicated fascism’s global positioning.

The Cold War prompted both the U.S. and USSR to integrate former fascists into their apparatuses, driven by strategic imperatives rather than shared doctrines. On the Western side, Operation Gladio established stay-behind networks in Italy and elsewhere, coordinated by NATO and the CIA from the late 1940s, to counter potential Soviet incursions. This involved recruiting ex-fascists and was implicated in acts like the 1972 Peteano bombing, initially blamed on leftists but later attributed to neo-fascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra through Judge Felice Casson’s investigations in the 1980s. In 1945, former Wehrmacht officer Walter Kopp contacted U.S. High Commissioner John Jay McCloy, warning of Soviet threats, and led a German Gladio subunit noted in CIA files for its “Nazi tendencies.”

The Bundeswehr’s establishment in 1955 relied on ex-Nazis, such as Adolf Heusinger, who planned Operation Barbarossa, served as the Bundeswehr’s first Inspector General in 1957, and later chaired the NATO Military Committee (1961–1964). Hans Speidel, involved in the 1944 plot against Hitler, became NATO Commander of Allied Land Forces Central Europe (1957–1963). Other figures included Johannes Steinhoff, a Luftwaffe pilot and NATO Military Committee Chairman (1971–1974); Johann von Kielmansegg, a Wehrmacht staff officer and Allied Forces Central Europe commander (1967–1968); Ernst Ferber (1973–1975); Karl Schnell (1975–1977); Franz Joseph Schulze (1977–1979); and Ferdinand von Senger und Etterlin (1979–1983). Operation Paperclip (1945–1959) relocated approximately 1,600 Nazi scientists, including Wernher von Braun, developer of the V-2 rocket, and Herbert A. Wagner, prioritizing their expertise for U.S. rocketry and aerospace programs despite their wartime roles. The Gehlen Organization, led by Reinhard Gehlen, integrated former Nazi intelligence officers into U.S.-backed anti-Soviet networks, forming the basis of West German intelligence.

The Soviet Union pursued similar strategies, often on a larger scale. Operation Osoaviakhim in October 1946 forcibly relocated over 2,200 German specialists, including physicist Peter Adolf Thiessen and electronics expert Manfred von Ardenne, to advance Soviet atomic and technological projects. Politically, East German Premier Otto Grotewohl disclosed a 1947 Soviet attempt to recruit Rudolf Hess from Spandau Prison to head a pro-communist party, though Hess declined. Former SA member Wilhelm Adam, captured at Stalingrad, joined the Soviet-sponsored National Committee for a Free Germany and co-founded the National Democratic party of Germany (NDPD) in 1948. The NDPD integrated ex-Nazis into East German structures, attracting low-level Nazi Party members and Wehrmacht officers to promote socialist patriotism while absorbing potentially dissident elements.

In West Germany, Otto Ernst Remer, who suppressed the 1944 July Plot, established the Socialist Reich Party in 1949 with covert Soviet and East German funding. The party amassed over 10,000 members before its 1952 ban; Remer later facilitated Soviet arms deals in Egypt and Syria. The Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, employed ex-SS officers like Joseph Setnik and Hans Sommer for espionage in West Germany, Latin America, and the Middle East. Former Gestapo officer Heinz Felfe spied for the KGB within West German intelligence from 1951 until his 1961 arrest. Within the Warsaw Pact, formed in 1955 to counter NATO’s inclusion of West Germany, the GDR’s National People’s Army (NVA) included ex-Wehrmacht personnel. While denazification efforts in the East were more aggressive than in the West, with over 12,000 convictions by 1949, nominal ex-Nazis were often allowed to serve in administrative or military roles to bolster the regime against Western threats.

Cold War realpolitik extended these patterns to ideologically diverse actors, prioritizing geopolitical leverage over consistency. The U.S. supported mujahideen groups in Afghanistan during the 1980s Soviet invasion, including precursors to the Taliban, through Operation Cyclone, providing billions in arms and training. It backed the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot in the late 1970s and 1980s against Vietnamese forces, offering diplomatic recognition and aid. In the 2010s, the U.S. allied with Kurdish-led forces in Rojava, Syria, against ISIS, providing military support despite their anarchist-leaning democratic confederalism. The U.S. also endorsed Augusto Pinochet’s regime in Chile (1973–1990), facilitating his coup and overlooking human rights abuses.

Conversely, the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia backed neo-fascists like France’s National Front (now National Rally) through financial and ideological ties in the 1980s and beyond. They supported socialist leaders like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez with arms deals and loans exceeding $10 billion. Since 2015, Russia has intervened militarily for Bashar al-Assad in Syria, providing air support against rebels. The USSR also aided African governments in Angola and Ethiopia during the 1970s–1980s civil wars with weapons and advisors and backed anti-Western nationalists like Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser with arms and economic aid in the 1950s–1960s. These alliances reflect the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” where immediate interests trumped ideological consistency amid superpower rivalry.

Such engagements undeniably involved morally compromised actors. However, equating them to doctrinal endorsements misrepresents the era’s dynamics. U.S. liberal hegemony, despite its flaws — such as Native American removals, slavery, eugenics, the Philippine occupation, and atomic bombings — differed from fascism’s emphasis on state collectivism and racial hierarchies. Soviet socialism, marked by atrocities like the Holodomor famine in Ukraine (1932–1933), which killed 3–5 million through engineered starvation, and the Gulag labor camp system, which imprisoned millions and caused over 1.5 million deaths, similarly exploited fascist remnants for tactical gains. A nuanced analysis reveals the Cold War as a period of blurred ideological lines, where survival and power trumped purity, a pattern that continues to inform contemporary international relations.