Revealed: Germany’s Secret Army

“The Nazis went underground,” Plain Truth editor in chief Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in November 1949. In “Under Cover in Europe,” he described an “organized underground army” of “military experts, bankers, industrialists, scientists, artists, educators, clergymen—many of them men of influence and valuable contacts in foreign countries.” Mr. Armstrong said these men planned to secretly rebuild German power after their defeat in World War II.

Sixty years later, that sounds pretty far-fetched. Everyone knows there was no “secret German Army.”

But over the past couple of years, more and more evidence has seeped out of the German government—evidence revealing a post-war underground Nazi movement. We’ve learned that Germany’s finance ministry and foreign ministry were thoroughly infiltrated by former Nazis. We’ve discovered that its intelligence service let men like Adolf Eichmann get away.

Then this May brought the most shocking revelation yet: There literally was a secret Nazi army.

According to papers released by Germany’s intelligence agency, this army could have fielded 40,000 men in the event of war. It had 2,000 officers—including lieutenants and major generals from Hitler’s army.

Germany’s Spiegel newsmagazine analyzed the papers and determined that this army had high-level government connections and possibly an even wider Nazi network.

An Influential Network

The group began in 1949. Officers who had served in the German Army during the war were worried about how the nation could defend itself if the Soviets invaded. Although the Allies outlawed all “military-like” forces under penalty of life imprisonment, these officers decided to build the nation a secret army.

This army faded from the scene in the mid-1950s, when Germany established an official army, the Bundeswehr. But many of those who had led this secret army went on to hold prominent positions in the new force. The army’s organizer, Albert Schnez, a colonel in Hitler’s army, became a lieutenant general in the Bundeswehr and inspector of the army. He also was closely associated with German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss.

Spiegel reports, “Statements by Schnez quoted in the documents suggest that the project to build a clandestine army was also supported by Hans Speidel … and Adolf Heusinger.” Speidel became the NATO supreme commander of the Allied army in Central Europe, and Heusinger was the first inspector general of the Bundeswehr.

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