| | |

This article appears in the June 9, 2006 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Synarchist-Terrorist
Fifth Column in France

by Pierre Beaudry

On May 24, Lyndon LaRouche issued a public warning about the imminent dangers of a terrorist attack against the World Cup soccer tournament which starts in Germany June 9, as a prelude to a military strike against Iran, any time during the May-June period. In his statement, LaRouche made a direct correlation between the current danger and the fifth-column apparatus of the Synarchist International within France that financed the Nazi invasion of France in 1940. LaRouche stated:

"One is drawn to the parallel with the Nazi invasion in 1940. Contrary to most historical accounts, the cause of the Nazi overrun of France was not the failure of the Maginot Line, and similar defenses held against the Habsburg invaders during the 18th Century. The cause of the 1940 fall of France was the presence, within France, of a Synarchist fifth column, associated with the Lazard-sponsored Banque Worms circles.

"The security operations for the World Cup would be technically adequate and competent if the threats were coming exclusively from domestic sources, or even agencies like those behind the infamous 1972 Munich Olympics attacks. However, those capabilities are not geared for dealing with a fifth-column operation, of the sort being contemplated by Shultz, Rohatyn, Cheney, and their European Synarchist allies. No conventional defense is adequate to stopping that kind of assault."

LaRouche highlighted the insidious role that the Synarchist International banking cabal had played by opening the back door of France to the Nazi invasion. We report here on the strategic disaster that France faced then, because those very same banking Synarchist institutions in the United States, as well as in France, are posing the same threat to the world again today.

The Treasonous Synarchist Fifth Column
And the Sedan Gap

Prior to the May-June 1940 period of the Nazi invasion of France, a Synarchist fifth column within the French government had prepared a plan to let Hitler enter the country, without opposition, through the Ardennes region, and flank the French defense forces with precisely the rapid tank deployments that the French government had rejected from the plan of Charles de Gaulle.[1]

Strategically speaking, the success of the Synarchist plan of a German invasion required that the best French troops be sent into Belgium, in order for them to be cut off from the rest of the French Army, and captured from the rear. This policy implied, therefore, that the Maginot Line should not be extended to the sea, but that a gap be left open in the northern corridor region of the Ardennes for the invaders to come through. French military leader Marshal Henri Pétain had vetoed an appropriation for the extension of the Maginot Line called for by the government of Edouard Daladier (1938-40)—an extension precisely aimed at closing that northern Belgian corridor. Daladier lost the vote.

Consequently, in April 1940, a tactical gap had been created between Charleville and Sedan, that is, between the Maginot Line and the Weygand Line of defense. The command center of the French Army made sure that the Sedan entry point would not be closed or defended. During a period of three days, the German command pushed through that gap no less than 70 divisions and 3,500 tank units. At the Riom Trials (abortive trials of French leaders by the Vichy government in 1942), Colonel Rivet confirmed that the French Headquarters was aware, on April 20, 1940, that the Sedan-Charleville gap was going to be the entry point of the German invasion, and that Commander Watteau's artillery group had been forbidden to establish anti-tank defense on the narrow corridor where the Germans invaded. According to a French investigative reporter, Robert Husson, the official court report stated:

"The road through the Ardennes which represents the only access to the gap of Charleville and Sedan, was kept open deliberately for the invasion, and the fortifications were destroyed in May of 1940 by the orders of the G.Q.G. of the Second Army, General Huntziger" (The Watteau report at the Riom Trials).

General Huntziger was the Synarchist Vichy military commander who later signed the Armistice with Hitler. As a result of this deal made between the French Synarchist fifth column and Hitler, the Nazi invasion of France was so successful that after only two weeks of penetration, in May 1940, the British and French forces had been pushed all the way to the English Channel, and the German offensive was suddenly halted. Hitler and Churchill made a deal to save the British and French troops at Dunkirk because, had the British troops been taken prisoner, Hitler would have won World War II, right then and there. However, the Synarchy plan was not to win an early war, but to wage perpetual warfare. The British troops were spared to fight another day.

The point is that during the German invasion, and as early as May 1939, the Synarchy International had total control of the French government with six Ministers. The Synarchist fifth column was headed by: 1) Albert Pierre Sarraut, Interior Minister; 2) Raymond Patenotre, Minister of National Economy and Production; 3) Anatole de Monzie, Minister of Public Works; 4) Charles Pomaret, Minister of Labor; 5) Raoul Dautry, Minister of Armament; and 6) Camille Chautemps, Vice President of the Council. Five of them were from the original Comité Secret d'Action Revolutionaire (CSAR) of the Synarchist Movement of Empire (SME). Moreover, Chautemps, Monzie, Marchandeau, and Sarraut had been permanent Synarchist fixtures inside every French government, with the exception of those of Léon Blum, from as early as the Edouard Herriot government of June 1932.

Just prior to the invasion, the French Intelligence Service had reorganized the Cinquième Bureau, thereafter led by a selected group of about 60 members of the Synarchy. These Synarchists had been recruited into a very secretive function to compile and profile all information concerning approximately 600,000 people who were considered to be a "danger to national defense." This enormous file contained all of the militants of all of the political parties of France, unions, Protestants, etc. It was this giant P.C. VICTOR file which served to purge the southern part of France from all undesirable officers and NCOs.

As a result of this political selection, the right-wing elements that were made prisoner by the Germans were not more than about 10% of the total; that is, about 190,000 of a total of 1,900,000 French prisoners taken at the beginning of the invasion. Before the end of 1941, most of the 190,000 right-wing prisoners were returned to France, thanks to a follow-up selection made by the Germans themselves. This was the most perfidious act of premeditated genocide that the French financial oligarchy had ever committed against its own people: the most devastating purge of republican forces ever effected against any nation in European history, all of which was done under the pretext of avenging the bloodshed of 1789. Since the selection had been so effective, other lists were made up at the level of industries, trades, and among the general population. These were used for triage of the labor force that would be chosen for forced labor in Germany for the entire duration of the war.

In the end, the quasi-totality of so-called left, that is, the republican militants and sympathizers, were either shot by the Germans (70,000), died in the Vichy concentration camps (40,000), or were imprisoned in Germany (420,000). The number of French people sent to forced labor in Germany remains unknown.

Intelligence on the Synarchist Banque Worms

French and American intelligence reports from that period have revealed that systematic sabotage of the French industrial sector and of the military had been undertaken by this fifth column, and that a behind-the-scenes French-German collaboration had been effective for several years, prior to the invasion. For example, in a dispatch dated Jan. 7, 1942, U.S. Ambassador Anthony J. Drexel Biddle revealed to President Roosevelt the magnitude of the Synarchist financial control of the Vichy government that had been working with Germany:

"This group," wrote Biddle from London, "should be regarded not as Frenchmen, any more than their corresponding members in Germany should be regarded as Germans, for the interests of both groups are so intermingled as to be indistinguishable; their whole interest is focused upon furtherance of their industrial and financial stakes."

The Biddle dispatches go into detailed descriptions of the main Synarchist cabal of bankers and their connections to the Pierre Laval regime of Vichy. Some of those had been in the Daladier government before the war. Biddle's dispatches included the names of a very powerful group of commercial bankers who were servicing the blueblood oligarchy of Europe, and especially their Habsburg-Orleans-led Hitler dictatorship, above and beyond the political parties, that is, above Right and Left. First, there was Banque Worms, which was behind Admiral Darlan, Defense Minister of Vichy. The Synarchist control of the Vichy government was represented by Hippolyte Worms, Jacques Barnaud, and Gabriel Leroy-Ladurie, who were the top banking controllers of the entire Vichy government.

This banking-oligarchical brain-trust also oversaw the Banque Nationale du Commerce et de l'Industrie, which was the bank of Vichy Prime Minister Pierre Laval; the Banque de l'Indochine, which was controlled by Minister Paul Baudouin; the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas, which was run by Frederic Bloch Laine, and linked to the J.P. Morgan interests in the United States. All of the above were tied to the Lazard Frères banking interests in Paris, London, and New York.

A quick survey of Biddle's dispatches shows the key ministries over which the Synarchist bankers had control: "On the one hand, Pierre Pucheu (Interior), and Yves Bouthillier (National Economy) were members of the Worms clique. Gerard Bergeret (Secretary of State for Aviation) was included by some among Pétain's personal following, by others among the Worms group. Excluding Bergeret, the Secretaries of State were, almost to a man, associates of the same clique. They were Jacques Barnaud (Delegate-General for Franco-German Economic Relations), Jerome Carpopino (Education), Serge Huard (Family and Health), Admiral Platon (Colonies), René Belin (Labor), François Lehideux (Industrial Production), Jean Berthelot (Communications), and Paul Charbin (Food Supply)."[2]

The American Chief of the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services (1942-45), William L. Langer, reported also that "Jacques Benoit-Mechin (in charge of Franco-German relations) was a journalist long associated with [German Ambassador] Otto Abetz and, according to all reports, a mere stooge of the Germans. Among the Worms group should also be mentioned a large number of somewhat subordinate officials (chiefly secretaries-general) like Lamirand, Borotra, Ravalland, Bichelonne, Lafond, Million, Deroy, Filipi, Schwartz, and Billiet. From this list it appears at once that practically every ministry and secretaryship touching economic affairs was in the hands of one or another of the Worms clique."[3]

As Delegate-General, Jacques Barnaud was the top man to coordinate everything relating to financial or economic matters between France and Germany. It was Barnaud, the Felix Rohatyn of the Worms group, who had prepared the financial side of the Nazi invasion of France. Coincidentally, all of the key Lazard Frères and Banque Worms associates had already transferred large reserves of currency to the South of France just prior to the invasion.

Whatever Laval, Darlan, or Pétain decided to do with respect to Germany, had ultimately to be approved by Barnaud. The fact that this banking group was operating above and beyond French and German interests was further confirmed by other intelligence sources on the Synarchy, which had established that the conspiracy, which brought down the Third Republic of France in 1939-40, was actually based in London. A French Intelligence report signed by M.R. Degand had established on Oct. 6, 1944:

"The business of Banque Worms always follows the intimate Anglo-French entente, and operates from directives which are always given by London and agreed to by Paris. In fact, the Banque Worms is the bank whose policy had brought about the situation of August 1939, and that is where its unprecedented success finds its true explanation. This statement is valid for the period, which ends on September 2, 1939, but it appears to be even more surprising to find that the Banque Worms withstood the shock and was consolidated the day after the armistice. Growing under the Ministries of Léon Blum, Daladier, and Paul Reynaud, it is first of all very hard to explain how it was able to come out of the revolution, or out of the evolution that led to the collapse of the Third Republic, and triumph with the rise of the Pétain government. Logically, the bank should have collapsed with the government of Reynaud."[4]

This banking oversight is, however, not difficult to understand, once the distinction made by the founder of the Synarchy, Joseph-Alexandre Saint-Yves, called d'Alveydre, between Authority and Power, is established. The Banque Worms was protected by a financial oligarchy, acting as a Privy Council that Alveydre had defined as a Synarchy, that is, "a form of government where men who dispose of Power are subordinated to those who control the Authority." This is the key to the whole Synarchist business. Langer identified the crucial elements of interface between the Synarchist bankers and the Laval government, that is, Authority as distinct from Power:

"From this list it appears at once that practically every ministry or secretaryship touching economic affairs was in the hands of one or another of the Worms clique. Many of them, like Pucheu, Bouthillier, Barnaud, and Lehideux were able men—as able as they were self-interested and unscrupulous. Pucheu, of whom quite a bit became known through his trial for treason, was an excellent organizer and a man who, in point of ambition, was hardly second to Darlan himself. He had been closely associated with the Cagoulard and other pre-war fascist movements. As an agent of the Cartel siderurgique (steel) he had sought to promote cooperation between French and German heavy industries. In other words, he, like several of the others, had a collaborationist past and was not only willing, but also eager to join up with the enemy. Darlan could count on these men, who not only arranged for the shipments of goods and manufactured products to Germany, but also served as go-betweens in arranging the transfer of French manufacturing establishments to German ownership or control. Needless to say, they turned a pretty penny in the process and furthered their own affairs at the same time. This economic collaboration [Authority], which was a very real thing from the outset, was not affected by the vicissitudes of political collaboration [Power]. It was well established before the war and served well the purposes of both German and French interests.

"All of the collaborationist banks had considerable interests in North Africa and the other French colonies, and maintained branches there. The Banque Worms, for example, owned extensive mines, shipping lines, and commercial companies in North Africa. It and others like it rapidly drained North Africa of such resources as could be made available to the Germans. It has been estimated that during 1941 alone, some 5 million tons of goods were landed at French Mediterranean ports, mostly from North Africa. Included were such strategic materials as cobalt, molybdenum, manganese, and high-grade iron ore, to say nothing of foodstuffs. Probably 60 to 80% of all these imports went to the Germans. Fortunately for them, the great banking and industrial interests, always intent on playing safe, were permitted by the Germans to transfer their huge profits to their North African branches. Calculations have shown that prior to the invasion of North Africa, the French banks taken together transferred no less than 25 billion francs in this way."[5]

Today, the Banque Worms and Lazard Frères interests are essentially the same Nazi-international forces as those represented by Synarchist banker Felix Rohatyn. Also, the same Synarchist cabal is represented in France by the neo-con group of the Cercle Azincourt of former IMF director Michel Camdessus, Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, and Edouard de Rothschild, as well as the Publicis Group, which includes as directors Gerard Worms of Rothschild, Michel David-Weill of Lazard Frères, and Felix Rohatyn, also of Rothschild and formerly Lazard Frères.

This whole Synarchy International crowd represents the same danger of launching preemptive wars and perpetual warfare around the world today, as did the Banque Worms with Hitler in the France of 1940. That is the reason why Lyndon LaRouche repeated his emphatic point by saying: "Again, speaking bluntly, the gravest danger to the world today comes from the Synarchist International—including Shultz, Cheney, and Rohatyn. They are seeking a Reichstag Fire, or 9/11-type incident to give them the psychological leverage to launch their pre-planned attack on Iran. That can only be prevented by placing a very powerful public spotlight on their schemes, in advance. That is why I am speaking out today."

[1] As early as 1932, when he was detailed to the Secretariat General de la Défense Nationale, Col. Charles de Gaulle was preparing a strategic defense doctrine which, if it had been adopted by the High Command of the French Army, would have stopped Hitler's invasion of Europe, and would have prevented the Synarchist International-led Second World War.

De Gaulle was given the task of establishing the plans for security and for limitation of armaments, supplying the French Doumergue Cabinet, as he said, "with the elements for its decision when it chose to adopt a different course of action after the arrival of the Führer." His strategy of national defense was based on a totally mechanized, mobile professional army, capable of launching an attack with 3,000 tanks disposed in several echelons on a front 50 kilometers wide, and moving at a pace of 50 kilometers during one day of fighting. De Gaulle was not merely expanding on the capabilities that the French Army had demonstrated at the end of the First World War; he was making a crucial breakthrough in mechanized warfare, and was strategically warning Hitler that France was going to be ready to stop him, if ever he intended to invade. This was preemptive peace.

The High Command of the French Army, however, did not think in the same terms. The French generals intended to have "heavy tanks armed with light short pieces and intended for escorting infantry, not for rapid, independent action; interceptor aircraft designed for defending areas of [the] sky, beside which the Air Force could muster few bombers and no dive bombers; artillery designed to fire from fixed positions and with a narrow horizontal field of action, not [able] to push ahead through all sorts of country and fire at all angles." From: De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., 1998), p. 7.

The Maginot Line had traced the fixed front in advance. De Gaulle understood that this defeatist strategy was pre-calculated to have precisely the effect that it was intended to have. It meant that France would hold behind the Line, waiting, as he said, "for the blockade to wear the enemy down, and the pressure of the free world to drive him [Hitler] to collapse."

"To my mind," wrote de Gaulle, "such an orientation was as dangerous as could be. I considered that, from the strategic point of view, it handed the initiative over to the enemy, lock, stock, and barrel. From the political point of view, I believe that by proclaiming our intention to keep our armies at the frontier, Germany was being egged on to act against the weak, who were from that moment, isolated: the Saar, the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic States, Poland, and so on; that Russia was being discouraged from forming any bond with us; and that Italy was being assured that, whatever she might do, we would not impose any limit to her malevolence. Lastly, from the moral point of view, it seemed to me deplorable to make the country believe that war, if it came, ought to consist, for it, in fighting as little as possible." De Gaulle, op. cit., p. 8.

[2] William L. Langer, Our Vichy Gamble (New York: The Norton Library, 1947), p. 169.

[3] William L. Langer, op. cit., p. 169. More detailed information on the Worms group may be found in Worms et Cie (Coordinator of Information, Research and Analysis Branch, Report, March 3, 1942), and Activities of Banque Worms et Cie (Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch, Report, Nov. 15, 1943). See also Louis R. Franck: "The Forces of Collaboration," Foreign Affairs, October 1942, and Raymond Brugere, Veni, Vidi, Vichy (Paris, 1944), pp. 133ff.

[4] M.R. Degaud, Note sur le développement de la Banque Worms & Cie., French Intelligence report, Paris, Oct. 6, 1944, p. 15.

[5] Langer, op. cit., pp. 170-171. See also The Economic Contribution of French North Africa to the Axis, Board of Economic Warfare, Blockade and Supply Branch, Report, Sept. 12, 1942.

|
| | |