For around ten years the rumor has circulated, especially among people attracted by conspiracy theories and simple solutions, that every newly elected German chancellor has to present himself in the United States in order to sign the so-called Kanzlerakte (Chancellor’s Document) before taking his or her oath of office. The rumor holds that this “document” defines the continuing German obligations toward the Allies.  It said to be part of a secret state treaty dating from 1949, according to which the Allies were assured of (among other things) sovereign control over the media in the BRD until the year 2099.  If these allegations are true, the Kanzlerakte proves that every chancellor of the Federal Republic from Adenauer to Merkel has been a puppet of the World War II Allies.

In September 1999, the monthly magazine Unabhängige Nachrichten announced that Hearst Publishing House of New York would soon publish a book in which a Prof. James Shirley would present evidence of a secret supplementary agreement to the Grundgesetz (Basic Law) of the German Federal Republic.  According to Unabhängige Nachrichtren, German publishers were unwilling to publish the book because “...a secret agreement concerning the Federal Republic’s Basic Law contains a clause according to which the licensed media (press, radio, television, and publishing houses), both in the present and far into the future, must remain under control of the Allies.”^[1]

Following this sensational announcement, nothing more was heard of Kanzlerakte for several years.

The debate over the ominous document flared up again in 2007 when Major General Gerd-Helmut Komossa, formerly Chief of the Federal German Military Counterintelligence Services, seemed to confirm the existence of the Kanzlerakte in his book Die deutsche Karte. Those for whom the existence of such documents fits into their world view and who “always knew such things existed” were jubilant and quickly concluded that the Kanzlerakte were not just rumor but fact.  The exact wording was not known, but still, the very monstrousness of the fact of the existence of a secret treaty was taken as evidence that the BRD had deceived the German nation for many decades.^[2]

General Komossa stated the following without qualifications: “The Geheime Staatsvertrag (Secret Treaty) of 21 May 1949 was classified by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service) as Strengste Vertraulichkeit (Strictly Confidential.)  In it, the victors of World War II set forth their limitations on the sovereignty of the Federal Republic until the year 2099.  Hardly anyone knows about this today...  For one thing, it established ‘...control of the Allied Powers  over German radio and television media’ until the year 2099.  In addition, it directed that every German chancellor must sign the socalled Kanzlerakte before taking the oath of office.  In addition to this, the gold reserves of the Federal Republic were attached and impounded by the Allies as surety.”^[3]

On the last point there can be no doubt: the German gold reserves are indeed stored in the cellars of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.  There is no record of German officials having ever been allowed to inspect their financial reserves.  But what about the actual contents of the Kanzlerakte?  At present, the only evidence of the actual existence of the secret treaty and Kanzlerakte is a photocopy of a letter dated 14 September 1996 written by a mysterious government minister named “Dr. Rickermann” and sent to an unnamed government minister.  There are in fact two known versions of this photocopy.  One does not need to be a criminologist to notice some striking peculiarities:

Peculiarity #1

Although at present more than 500 persons in Germany bear the name “Rickermann,” there has never been a minister in the Federal Republic with that name.^[4]

The title “Staatsminister” is a title bestowed by the President of the Federal Republic on recommendation of the Chancellor and with approval of the responsible minister, according to § 8 ParlStG (Section 8 of Parlamentare Staatssekretäre Gesetze (Laws Governing the Parliamentary Secretariat.)^[5]  There are government ministers in both the Chancellory and the Foreign Office.  However, the mysterious Dr. Rickermann was purportedly active, not in any government ministry, but rather in the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND -- Federal Intelligence Service!)

Peculiarity #2

If there were a government minister in the intelligence service, he or she would outrank the president of the Federal Intelligence Service.

As we learn from the “BNP Paper” however, Rickerman was assigned to the Kontroll-Abteilung (Control Department) II/OP of the BND.  In that case, however, he would be simply a departmental head and not a minister. Furthermore, the reference to “Kontrollabteilung II/OP” is also suspicious.  The BND consists of 8 departments, but its own monitoring department is not included in the official description.^[6]

Peculiarity #3

The letter was obviously written on an antiquated typewriter, which brings up the question of whether the Intelligence Service was still using antiquated typewriters in 1996.  For the sake of argument, we will say they were.  Even if they did use antiquated typewriters, however, the secret foreign service, like all government agencies, institutions and bureaus, also used printed letterheads that included the department’s various addresses, telephone numbers and FAX numbers.  It is is unrealistic to assume that in 1996 the control section of BND would have used nothing except an amateurish top line of capital letters as letterhead.  And this does not even take into account the fact that the official reception stamp is also missing.  This would have been unusual in any official correspondence, and incomprehensible in the bureaucratic routine of civil servants.

Peculiarity #4

Why does “Dr. Rickermann” bother to explain the Kanzlerakte and secret international treaty when it would normally be assumed that the “honorable minister” to whom the letter is addressed would be intrimately familiar with its existence and contents?  Why would he irresponsibly reveal the contents of a secret document in a letter, greatly increasing the danger of indiscretion?  Having “Dr. Rickermann” nonchalantly chat about a classified subject is obviously contrived to introduce the uninitated reader to the contents of the “Kanzlerakte!”

Peculiarity #5.

The “Rickermann” letter is liberally sprinkled with mistakes of logic and institutional etiquette.

A. It is significant that ministers are not addressed directly or personally.  Instead, correspondence addressed to them always begins with the formulaic “Sehr geehrter Herr Minister” (Honorable Minister.)  Furthermore there is nothing in the letter that tells us to which minister the letter is actually addressed.

B. An obvious discrepancy exists in the remark “Please destroy the original” which is written in Sütterlinschrift (old fashioned German handwriting.)  The archaic characters have been overdrawn, with the author obviously copying the letters from a handwriting guide.  It is clear that the composer is not familiar with Sütterlinschrift.  He has laboriously drawn one letter after another.  “Dr. Rickermann” then adds “z.d.A. (zu den Akten) in barely legible writing, followed by a notation of date, suggestively confirming that he has received the original.

C. Neither on 21 May 1949 nor at any time before or since has there been a “Provisional Government of West Germany.”  This designation has never been customary, not even under the four zonal governments of the immediate postwar occupation. Such usage is suggestive of the Soviet occupation government and its “Provisional Government of East Germany.”  Does this perhaps offer a clue to the real identity of the author of the letter?

Peculiarity #6

The security level mentioned is particularly significant.  This level is purportedly “VS (Verschlußsache) - Nur für den Dienstgebrauch” (Classified Matter, For Official Use Only), but there is also the notation “Official Secret” in the top margin.  In Section 11 of the departmental handbook we read that the reference “Amtlich geheimgehalten” is used only with the security classifications “streng geheim,” (top secret), “geheim” (secret) / and VS-vertraulich” (confidential).  The handbook prescribes that the notation “amtlich geheimgehalten” should be printed in the top and bottom margins of every page.  As for documents with the security classification “VS-NfD” (Nur für den Dienstgebrauch – For Authorized Persons Only), on the other hand, the additional remark “Amtlich geheimgehalten” (Official Secret) is not used at all.  Furthermore we note in the same handbook that documents with the security designation “VS-NfD” must be furnished with date and file number, and the abbreviation “VS-NfD” is to be added to the file number at the end of the message.  The letter from “Staatsminister Dr. Rickermann” contains neither date nor file number.

Peculiarity #7

The numerous errors of composition in the text are very striking.  They lead us to suspect not only sloppiness but a low educational level as well.  Where government ministers are concerned, we must rule out a low educational level.  In our letter, “Staatsminister Dr. Rickermann” strongly recommends “denying the authenticity of the secret treaty between the Allied powers and the provisional government of West Germany.”  He also uses the expressions “Medienhoheit der allierten Mächten” (media supremacy of the Allied Powers) and closes with “Hochachtungsvoll” (Respectully yours.)  On top of everything else a second version of this letter is now circulating in the media and Internet as well, showing a dilettantish attempt to correct the above mentioned errors.  In this second version it is quite obvious that the line lengths are different from those in the first version, providing clear evidence that at least one version of the letter is a counterfeit.

Peculiarity #8

We know for certain that the Federal Republic was founded on 23 May 1949.  How then could it be possible for a “Federal Republic of Germany” to conclude a “secret treaty” on 21 May 1949?  Thus, the main question is whether Komossa was really relying on the “Rickermann Paper.”

He confirmed this to the weekly Junge Freiheit in December of 2007, stating that he had “...a copy of the referenced paper of the Federal Republic” that he believed it to be a document from the year 1949.  He wrote: “In view of the security classification, I am using the so-called “BND Paper” that was available to me as part of my duties.  However, I could not and did not wish to evaluate it.  Even today I do not know whether it is genuine or fake.  I rather suspect the latter.  It was certainly a mistake not to have noted this in the book...  Regarding the reference to the “rights of the Allies,” it was not my intent to create or spread the impression that these rights are still in effect today.”^[7]

He went on to state:  “Unfortunately, the whole thing was misunderstood because the manuscript was so condensed in editorial reporting.  I regret this very much.”^[8]

These are astounding remarks!  It is unquestionably true that the Allies still exercise special rights in and over Germany.  And it is unquestionably true that the “enemy clause” of the 1949 UN Charter identifying Germany as an “enemy state” is still in effect, and that  the Transitional Treaty of 1955 specifies the Allied occupation rights that specifically continue in effect following conclusion of the Two Plus Four treaty in 1990.  Nevertheless, the “referenced paper of the Intelligence Service” cannot possibly be considered a “contemporary document” of the year 1949.^[9]

It is clear from “Rickermann’s” notation dated 14 August 1996 that the letter was not produced before the 1990s, rather than being composed in 1949.  The Federal Intelligence Service had not even been founded in 1949!  According to Reinhard Gehlen, head of the organization that preceded the BND, the new German intelligence organization “...was financed by the Americans, which is evidenced by the fact that the financing for it did not come from the occupation costs.  That is why the organization turned over all its findings to the Americans.”^[10]

From the BND’s official description we read: “The BND began its activities as a government agency attached to the Federal Chancery On 1 April 1956.”  Another statement of the Federal government of those days states: “A federal intelligence agency has been created...  It is attached to the chancellery.^[11]

In addition to this, Komossa remarked to a reader of the magazine Deutsche Stimme that the document had been available to him in conjunction with his official duties.  This can hardly have been possible, since the document, even if genuine, is supposed to have been written in 1996, long after Komossa retired.  It is much more likely that he received it through the mail and used it in his book without questioning its authenticity, which would seem very unlikely for a professional like himself.^[12]

As a grotesque culmination to all this: In September 2006 the magazine Politische Hintergrundinformationen (PHI), which in the past had often published controversial but unverifiable material, unequivocably stated the following: “This story is built on a pure fabrication by a Herr M. of Munich, since deceased, who was a long time subscriber to PHI and was a close personal friend of a PHI editor... Herr M. was a nationalist with strong convictions.”

“He showed our editor the original of his fake letter as well as the old typewriter on which he had written it.  In support of his counterfeit, he declared that the victors and the Jews had falsified so many documents to Germany’s disadvantage that he too had falsified a little something.  His purpose was to undermine the authority of what he called the ‘West German puppet government.’  He told our editor that he had invented a story to go with the letter as well, and  that someone in the Chancellery was searching the archives for a copy of the letter or some other corrspondence that made reference to the Kanzlerakte...  Our Herr M. invented this correspondence and sent the alleged copy to various organizations on the right, who industriously disseminated it, until an American professor even wrote a book on the subject.”^[13]

One would think that it would be easy to obtain a copy of this book, but such is not the case.  Late in 2007 the magazine Unabhängige Nachrichten published this announcement: “As early as 1999, we reported the ominous story of the Kanzlerakte with great reservations, since we could not confirm the authenticity of our information.  All our attempts to locate this Prof. James Shirley, who was said to have written a book on the subject, were unsuccessful.  The same has been true of our investigation of the title of the book as well as the alleged publisher, the Hearst Group in the USA.”^[14]

This investigation produced the same results as our investigation of the author.  The Hearst Corporation is a major US publisher of newspapers and magazines (Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Oprah), located in New York, that has also moved into television talk shows.  They have no record of having ever published anything by anyone named James Shirley.  Back to the Internet!  On the website Direkt zur Kanzlerin!, anyone can contact the office of Chancellor Merkel and ask questions.  On 6 October 2007 someone did just that, to contact Merkel regarding the Kanzlerakte.  Referring to Komossa’s book, this person asked whether the allegations were true. The answer of the Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung (BPA), dated 19 November 2007, was as follows: “The socalled Staatsvertrag to which you refer belongs in the realm of legend.  No such treaty exists.  It is absolutely not true that Chancellor Merkel was ordered by the Allies to sign any socalled Kanzlerakte before taking her oath of office.”^[15] Of course, one can point out that the BPA is also capable of lying.  This is undoubtedly true, but in view of the overwhelming totality of evidence, one is inclined to believe the BPA in this instance.  Furthermore, can one seriously support the naive assumption that the political string-pullers in the background (such as Bilderberger, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations) would not be in a position to influence or control every chancellor or head of state in the Anglo-American sphere of influence by intrigues, Secret Service operations, media manipulation, etc. without requiring him or her to put his signature on an abstruse piece of paper?

It is encouraging to note that the heads of the national opposition in Germany have retained a clear head and not fallen for the conspiracy theorists.  “What at first glance seemed a sensation, proved on closer inspection a total falsehood” is the studied and reasonable comment of Deutsche Stimme.^[16]

There is unquestionably a great deal if evidence that the governments of the Federal Republic have not acted in the interests of the German nation. In this regard we should mention the Federal Republic’s one sided, legally enforced anti-German historiography as well as its decades-long immigration policies, whose obvious intent is to change Germany culturally and demographically.  We should mention the relentless Islamization of the heart of Europe combined with increasingly drastic pro Zionist positions, increasing out-migration of Germany’s intellectual elite, the descent of layers of the native population into chronic poverty and the sending of German troops in support of Nato’s pro-Zionist expansionist policies. There is no need for abstruse conspiracy theories to explain the causes of these devastating developments.

An analysis of the basis on which the Federal Republic was founded leads to the answers we need.^[17] Here we have the acceptance of the doctrine of German collective guilt.  This is precisely what constitutes the heart and soul of the Federal Republic!  Many decades ago the political scientist Theodor Eschenburg formulated the foundations on which the West German state was constructed in the postwar period.  He wrote: “The acknowledgement of uncontested sole guilt of Hitler is in fact the foundation of the policies of the Bundesrepublik.”  The publicist Sebastian Haffner (in reality Raimund Pretzel, who immigrated to Britain in 1938), a strong supporter of the division of Germany and architect of postwar German “re-education,” also shared this opinion.  According to Haffner, anyone who disturbed the status quo was a threat to the peace of Europe.

And President of the Bundestag Philipp Jenninger, in his address to the German parliament on 9 November 1988, acknowledged that every political question in the Federal Republic relates to “full consciousness of Auschwitz.”  In 1994, former District Court President Rudolf Wassermann expressed his agreement: “Whoever disputes the truth about National Socialist extermination camps damages the foundation on which the Federal Republic was founded...  Whoever denies Auschwitz attacks not only the human dignity of the Jews but also the foundations of the self image of our society.”^[18]

As early as 1987, Joschka Fischer designated Auschwitz as the Federal Republic’s “Reason of State.”  While foreign minister, he reiterated his opinion in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung issue of 18 February 1999:  “Every democracy has a basis, a foundation. For France this is 1789 (the French Revolution.)  For the USA it is the Declaration of Independence.  For Spain it is the Spanish Civil War.  Well, for Germany it is Auschwitz.  It can be nothing but Auschwitz.  In my eyes, the only basis for the new Berlin Republic can be remembrance of Auschwitz, ‘Never-Again-Auschwitz.’” There are countless other similar expositions of the foundations of the Federal Republic.  The mentality of the representatives of the present system corresponds to their deeds.

On 20 June 2008 General Komossa sent the following email to the author: “It is particularly irritating that nobody objects today when the mass media continues to disseminate disproved allegations about the Wehrmacht during World War II, namely that they committed mass atrocities, in contrast to their opponents.  It is very irritating that in the year 2008, politically manipulative movies are shown on German TV, with the intent of disparaging and vilifying the surviving German veterans in the eyes of the world. The volume of such misinformation is increasing as the generation that experienced the war dies out. It is simply incomprehensible that German judges allow the common German soldier to be depicted as a murderer.  How courageous it would be if the so-called critics would intervene against this vilification of the German soldier, who is risking his life in many areas of unrest all over the world.  This vilification goes on day after day.  The insults against the military honor of our fathers and grandfathers who fought in good faith for our country, risked their lives for six years and lost so much – these insults violate the honor and dignity of the German soldier in our own day. The Bundeswehr was not created by murderers, it was made up of conscientious and responsible soldiers who had been required to fight for their country in the past and who agreed to serve their country again.”^[19]

The general’s estimation is entirely correct.  Such wretched policies as exist today could have grown nowhere except from the soil of the Federal Republic, and they have no need of fictitious “Kanzlerakte.” The apologists for these fantastical policies have contributed greatly to paralyzing critical thought in Germany and to our inclination to fatalism and nihilism.  Both of these factors result in political passivity.  Those who disseminate the Kanzlerakte lie are supporting the present regime.

Translated by James Damon.
© Dr. Claus Nordbruch, authorized version