The Paladin Group

The Paladin Group was a far-right organization founded in 1970 in Spain by former SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny: security consultancy group described as a "small international squad of commandos" - the military arm of the anti-Communist struggle during the Cold War. Ostensibly a legitimate security consultancy, the group's real purpose was to recruit and operate mercenaries for right-wing regimes worldwide as well as serve the role of political subversion in Europe.

The Nouvel Observateur magazine, of 23 September 1974, qualifies the group as a "strange temporary work agency of mercenaries" (étrange agence d’interim-barbouzes). 

---

Background

Created in 1970 in the Albufereta neighborhood of Alicante, Spain, by former SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny and former US Colonel James Sanders. A former special operationsofficer, Skorzeny had become a member of the ODESSA network after the war, helping to smuggle Nazi war criminals out of Allied Europe to Spain, South America and other friendly destinations to avoid prosecution for war crimes. Skorzeny himself resided after the war in Spain, protected by Franco. Skorzeny envisioned the Paladin Group as 

"an international directorship of strategic assault personnel [that would] straddle the watershed between paramilitary operations carried out by troops in uniforms and the political warfare which is conducted by civilian agents".

In addition to recruiting many former SS members, the Group also recruited from the ranks of various right-wing and nationalist organizations, including the French Nationalist OAS, the SAC, and from military units such as the ‘Légion étrangère’. 

The hands-on manager of the Group was Dr. Gerhard Hartmut von Schubert, formerly of Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, who had trained security personnel in Argentina and Egypt after the war. Under his guidance, Paladin provided support to the PFLP - EO led by Wadie Haddad. The Group's other clients included the South African Bureau of State Security and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi. They also worked for the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 and the Spanish Dirección General de Seguridad, who recruited some Paladin operatives to wage clandestine war against Basque separatists. The Group is also reputed to have provided personnel for José López Rega's notorious Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance death squad.

The Paladin Group was also allegedly allied with a number of other right-wing governments, including Salazar’s Portugal, and some of the Italian neo-fascists involved in the strategy of tension attacks of the 1970s and 80s. The Paladin Group also held offices in Zurich, Switzerland.

The Soviet news agency TASS alleged that Paladin was involved in training US Green Berets for Vietnam missions during the 1960s, but this is considered unlikely, since Skorzeny's methods were considered somewhat antiquated, and he resented the USA for its role in destroying Nazi Germany.

Von Schubert became the head of the Paladin Group after Otto Skorzeny’s death in 1975.

Otto Skorzeny - the most dangerous man in Europe

A former special operations officer of the SS, Skorzeny is described as "the Bond villain that never was". The British called him the most dangerous man in Europe - the man with the fearsome scar earned as an accomplished master of fencing.

He was everything a true villain of the cold war era should be. Did I say Cold War era? Make it the James Bond era - a giant of a man at a staggering 6’4”, he was Hitler’s favourite commando who was then elite soldier, who after fighting on the Eastern Front, accompanied the rescue mission that freed the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity before his countrymen could hand Il Duce over to the Allies. And he did all of this from a glider from a mountaintop. And that was just the start of an infamous if not outright illustrious career, all of whuch makes him read like a story that is simply larger than life - another example that real life outdoes fiction. 

Skorzeny was also the leader of Operation Greif of the Battle of the Bulge, in which German soldiers were to infiltrate through enemy lines, using their opponents' language, uniforms, and customs. At the end of the war, Skorzeny was involved with the Werwolf guerrilla movement that fought against the Allied occupation of Germany, the diehard SS man who became a legend.

"Any brief biography of SS Lieutenant Colonel Otto ‘Scarface’ Skorzeny reads like a character sketch from an Ian Fleming novel. A legend in his own lifetime, his exploits are spoken about in the kind of reverent tones normally reserved for the greatest of combat heroes, not an accused war criminal who escaped custody before he could fully face trial. But if Skorzeny’s resume reads a little too much like a far-fetched adventure story, it might be for good reason. If this real life Bond villain seems like he stepped from the pages of fiction, perhaps it’s because his legend is almost entirely that: fiction." (Author Stuart Neville)

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R81453 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

The Dachau Military Tribunal acquitted Skorzeny after the war. He fled from his holding prison in 1948, first to France, and then to Spain. He later lived in Ireland.

Skorzeny had become a member of the ODESSA network after the war, helping to smuggle Nazi war criminals out of Allied Europe to Spain, South America and other friendly destinations to avoid prosecution for war crimes. Skorzeny himself resided after the war in Spain, protected by Franco.

---

Links

http://operation-gladio.net

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin_Group

Pinnochio and Pushkin

Mark David  author's homepage The Elements community on google+

Follow The Elements homepage

At this time with Russia challenging the conventions of international law, it is interesting to note the Russian law passed by the Duma in 1998 - making all war-time works of art looted by the Russians to be legitimate. 

This little story starts in present day Turkey and the excavations of German archaeologist Schliemann in the then Ottoman Empire at the site of Classic Ilion, since proved to be the site of ancient Troy.

University of Cincinnati

The layer in which Priam's Treasure was alleged to have been found was assigned to Troy II, whereas Priam would have been king of Troy VI (or VII - after the fire or battle that ravaged the city in about 1200 BC.), occupied hundreds of years later. Schliemann smuggled what came to be known as 'Priam's Treasure' out of Anatolia. The officials were informed when his wife, Sophia, wore the jewels for the public. 

The Ottoman official assigned to watch the excavation received a prison sentence. The Ottoman government revoked Schliemann's permission to dig and sued him for its share of the gold. Schliemann went on to Mycenae. There, however, the Greek Archaeological Society sent an agent to monitor him. 

Later Schliemann traded some treasure to the government of the Ottoman Empire in exchange for permission to dig at Troy again. It is located in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The rest was acquired in 1881 by the Royal Museums of Berlin (Königliche Museen zu Berlin), in whose hands it remained until 1945, when it disappeared from a protective bunker beneath the Berlin Zoo. In fact, the treasure had been secretly removed to the Soviet Union by the Red Army. During the Cold War, the government of the Soviet Union denied any knowledge of the fate of Priam’s Treasure. 

The Pushkin Museum, Moscow

The tale of  how the Schliemann gold resurfaced half a century after its disappearance begins in October 1987, when the young curator of the Museum of Private Collections, a branch of the Pushkin Museum, stumbled across some papers in the basement of the Ministry of Culture. Grigorii Kozlov had gone in search of a photocopier - a rarity in the Soviet Union even in the late 1980s - at his former workplace. Instead, in a dusty, dimly lit room in the bowels of the ministry, he discovered a pile of documents, among them one titled "List of the Most Important Art Works Kept in the Special Depository of the Pushkin Museum," and another, "Unique Objects from the 'Large Trojan Treasure,' Berlin, Ethnographic Museum," dated 28 March 1957. Kozlov, trembling with excitement, realized he was looking at evidence that the Schliemann gold was stashed away in the Soviet Union.

The next day, Kozlov informed his former fellow student Konstantin Akinsha, a postgraduate at the Research Institute of Art History in Moscow, about his find. The two art historians immediately began to investigate the whereabouts of trophy art in the Soviet Union. In April 1991, they published an article in the American journal ARTnews, which listed some of the "missing" art works they knew were on Soviet territory, including the Schliemann gold.Initially, the government refused to comment. But two months after the attempted coup in August 1991, Minister of Culture Nikolai Gubenko finally admitted that Soviet museums had secret depositories filled with war booty. 

He stressed that his government would return artworks to Germany only if it received in exchange objects of equivalent "artistic quality" removed from the Soviet Union by the Germans. Denying any knowledge of the Schliemann gold's whereabouts, Gubenko implied that the Western Allies had gained possession of it at the end of the war.

Meanwhile, Kozlov had been visited by the KGB and interrogated by an outraged Irina Antonova, the director of the Pushkin Museum, who warned that if he continued publicizing the results of his investigations, the government might "return everything to the Germans free of charge!" Undaunted, both he and Akinsha carried on with their research into trophy art on Soviet territory, recruiting friends to sift through restitution documents in the Central Archive of Literature and Art. One friend found all the documents related to the transport of the Schliemann gold from Berlin as well as its arrival at the Pushkin Museum.It was not until fall 1994 - more than a year after Russia admitted to having the gold - that the museum allowed experts from abroad to view the treasure. 

The return of items taken from museums has been arranged in a treaty with Germany but, as of January 2010, is being blocked by museum directors in Russia. They are keeping the looted art, they say, as compensation for the destruction of Russian cities and looting of Russian museums by Nazi Germany in World War II. A 1998 Russian law, the Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displaced to the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territory of the Russian Federation, legalizes the looting in Germany as compensation and prevent Russian authorities from proceeding to restitutions.

Pinocchio's Door

The 259 objects were removed from a safe located in a two-room depository in the basement, where they had been hidden for some 50 years. The only way to reach that depository was from the tour guides' office through an iron door hidden behind a curtain. Museum staff called it "Pinocchio's door," because in the Russian version of the story, a magic door hidden by a painting of a fireplace leads to an enchanted paradise - "rather like the Communist ideal society," as Akinsha and Kozlov jokingly remark. 

There are doubts concerning the authenticity of the treasure.

Sources:

TRANSITIONS ONLINE: CULTURE: From Behind Pinocchio's Door
Link to article in the New York Times
Wikipedia on Priam's Treasure
Reconstruction of Troy by University of Cincinnati

Fictionalising the Cold War: No James Bonds here

By Mark David  

The Elements community on google+

Follow The Elements homepage

At the moment I've just seen the TV-series The Company. This wasn't ground breaking television, but it did a great job of visualising the cold war. The Company is a three part miniseries part being in East/West Berlin that was particularly atmospheric. Berlin in the fifties, East Berlin still a wreck from the war, it's all there. But before getting into a thread about The Company I want to backtrack a bit and explain the reason for my interest in this series.

I admit it, the Cold War fascincates me. Nowadays it seems any crime or mystery thriller revolves around the role of that little handheld computer we call the smartphone: GPS, tracking people, discovering messages revealing secrets. Television predominantly. The problem for fiction is, it often ties the story down to a series of often-seen incidents we have seen so often before. You know, where the protagonist gets that just-in-time sms or receives a tip off as he walks past the house where the bad guy lurks, or the police task group following someone to an area coordinating their position from the ubiquitous three sender-masts on the mobile grid, closing in for the kill. Yawn. It was interesting the first time around ...

Perhaps one of the main reasons I trashed the 21st century for the twentieth. It just seemed to make so much sense. No phones. Characters in extremis, cut-off from the outside world. I loved the idea of fictionalising the cold war because it's possible to go back to a time when agents and the victims of deception really were on their own. No online ... anything. No safety rope. No contact. Nada. Other than themselves and what an individual can pull from the mass of grey matter unencumbered by appointments, friend requests or surfing the net for the not-quite-essential info about the latest reality TV-show.

A Reference of Past

Perhaps another reason is I grew up under the cold war. It is a part of my psyche as much as JVC v. betamax, Video Killed The Radio Star and MTV. I was born of the radio age but grew up in the video age and have seen the entry and subsequent changes to society brought about by any small-packaged electronic device that ever came into existence. Except those used in the world of spies.

I decided to go with the flow on this one - use what you know, I told myself. And what is better than the knowledge of the way the world used to work, polished into understanding by the comfort of historical distance? I wanted something without mobile phones. I wanted isolation. And intrigue spiced with deception.

I'm currently developing the back plot of The Elements that involves experts in the shadows. Puppet masters who successfully nurture a psychology of fear and deception. I keep looking around for good fiction that has captured this in the way I want to but admit I have to look hard.

No James Bonds here

Who has ever heard of James Jesus Angleton? Otherwise known as 'Jim.' Well I had. Because of writing what I'm writing. This guy is total legend. The archetypal master of subterfuge, deception and counter deception. He was the one man who could navigate through the wilderness of mirrors. The man who collected and analysed thousands of small unrelated little pieces of information. He was the only one who knew the picture could only come into focus by relating these pieces to each other. 

It was about finding those relations. So the spy became the detective as well, except Angleton knew he was working against masterminds as chess masters - and the analogy is made in the last part of the 3-part series. The masters of the all-powerful KGB creating worlds within worlds for the CIA and MI6 to get lost in. 

One of the reasons - of many - for writing a cold-war based series was my interest in writing about the effect on the players of a hidden game of masters. The Company features real people, in particular Michael Keaton's portrayal of James Angleton was well conceived and executed. The gaol master too. Sleep deprivation. Perception of the game by just thinking it through. Year by painstaking year.

The Way It Was

Keaton comes real close to the kind of feel I've been looking for. If they could have gotten hold of Willem Dafoe - who really looks like Angleton himself - with the same depth Michael Keaton then the series could have been complete ... The thing is, The Company really brought the audience under the skin of ...  not knowing what the f*** was going on. Because that was the way it was. 

So much fiction these days dots the eyes and crosses the t's it seems like the creators regard their audience as children. I find very little that satisfies my ever-hungrey appetite for prime-quality fiction these days. The Company did that. Nothing is what it seems to be. Who can you trust? Who is the mole? We were kept guessing to the end. And even afterwards, provides a very good platform for reflection.

The point of this blog is to make a simple point that I think it's very okay to let the reader or watcher make up their own minds as they wander within the wilderness of mirrors. 

Elements scenes 1: Stevns Fort, Øresund strait Denmark

By Mark David  

The Elements community on google+

Follow The Elements homepage

In the research undertaken for a late cold-war spy-thriller series called The Elements, one of the most unique places I have had the pleasure to visit is the cold war Stevns Fort complex. Stevns Fort was built in response to the development of the Cold War and the threat of Soviet invasion.

A visit to this place is an experience like none other: A guided tour is a must. This was the front line and is a great visit for anyone interested in these things. No optical illusions here, the tunnel really is that long. And there's more than one. 

Visiting this place was very similar experience visiting the tunnels of the Maginot Line. But that was in the days before I got my first digital camera. Entry to the complex is afforded through the central entrance bunker. A deep stair takes the visitor to the cold depths that was the heart of the cold war in Denmark - the front line between East and West. 

The fort opened for the first time in 2008 and was built during the cold war in the years 1950-1953. It consists of an above ground radar and armoured battery and an underground tunnel complex carved out of the chalk cliffs of Stevns Klint.

The fort had a main armament of 4 150mm canon in two turrets that had previously been mounted on the german battleship Gneisenau from the second world war. These are still in mint condition.

The Gneisenau. 

The turrets seen in the recent picture above the battleship are the secondary turrets on the sides of the Gneisenau from world war II still in working order today. The main turrets of the Bismarck class battleship can still be seen at the wartime battery in Norway.

The two turrets are armed from the magazines located deep in the chalk tunnels directly below them, with hoists and vertical shafts still in operational condition. 

Each gun has an operational radius of 23 km making it possible to reach the Swedish coast and even the Køge bugt bay south of Copenhagen, due north of Stevns Klint Fort.

The guns are in mint working condition and were used for training at the close of the cold war. On the picture below the German origins of the canon are evident in the writing and stamps of origin. 

Command and radar station covering the Øresund stair, monitoring and registering all passing ship traffic. 

It was rumoured that intelligence concerning the sailing of missiles fromt the Soviet Union giving rise to the Cuban missile crisis was first identified and notified from Stevns Fort. 

 Rumours must be false however, since these ships did not sail through the Øresund but further West up through Storbælt strait between the islands of Denmark.

The experience of walking the tunnels is the really what a visit to Stevns Fort offers the visitor - opening out through the cliff face to the ocean beyond.

The green is algae growing on the cold damp chalk walls. It does not pose a health risk being a normal condition for places underground like this.

Sleeping quarters for the personnel at a time of alert.

As an anecdote - the blast proof steel doors below were removed from a wartime German bunker and rebuilt into the Stevns Fort.