Shadow Ritual by Eric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne Page A
Authors: Eric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne
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Nazi power, including the upper echelons of the SS.
We have few documents on this dangerous sect, but we know that two members of the Thule were in charge of the Freemason archives. One of them, a certain Wolfram Sievers, general secretary of the Ahnenerbe and a dignitary in the Thule, was sentenced at Nuremberg. During his trial, one of our Freemason brothers, a captain in charge of interrogations, learned that Ahnenerbe researchers were on the verge of making a breakthrough that would be key to the future of the Aryan race, one that would be more important than the V-2 rockets. Our brother took down Sievers’s statement but observed that he seemed to have lost his mind.
Marcas stopped reading and looked at Mareuil. “So what if Sievers seemed nuts? The Nazis were a bunch of crazies, as Zewinski would say.”
“We know that economic, social, political, and cultural factors all contributed to the rise of Nazism. Hitler was probably not a puppet of the Thule, and he was entirely responsible for the regime’s atrocities, but it is clear that there was a time in his life when the Thule influenced him. Read on. The key to Sophie’s murder is perhaps connected to those archives.”
Marcas shrugged and focused again on the dog-eared pages.
When the Germans sensed that the tide was turning after the defeat of Stalingrad in 1943, they took precautions. The Masonic archives were split up and sent to several destinations—mostly castles and salt mines—where they could not be easily seized.
In April 1944, with Germany losing the war, SS high command intensified its operation to hide the stolen archives. Whole trains were commissioned to move tons of documents from place to place.
When the Soviets invaded Germany in 1945, Russian intelligence units tracked down everything that the Nazis had stolen. At the end of the war, more than forty train cars full of recovered documents were sent to Moscow. Ultimately, all the Masonic documents stolen from France ended up in the hands of Russian intelligence.
Our grand master has requested the return of those documents. The Soviet Union, however, claims that none of them are in their possession.
The text stopped there. Marcas looked up and gave the papers back to Mareuil. “Someone clearly thought the documents were important. What happened after that?”
“Nothing for forty years, until the fall of communism, when the issue surfaced again. The Russians admitted that they had our archives, and negotiations for the return of the documents got under way. We received the first batch in 1995, with the rest coming in installments through 2002. In theory, they have now gotten everything back to us.”
“In theory?”
“That’s where Sophie Dawes comes in.”
Mareuil sipped his wine before continuing. “The documents were inventoried twice: once by the Germans and once by the Russians. It became clear that the Germans had listed more documents than the Russians. Some were missing.”
“Are you saying that Moscow deliberately kept part of the collection?”
“That’s what we thought at first, but then Sophie found this.”
Mareuil pulled out an envelope. “It’s a copy of an interrogation led by the French Army in April 1945 in a small German village. A man named Le Guermand was arrested when he tried to return to France. He was an SS officer in the Charlemagne Division, a unit composed of French soldiers. They were defending Berlin at the end.”
“You’re giving me a history lesson here. What’s the connection to the lost archives?”
“I’m getting there. A little before the Reich fell, Le Guermand and other SS officers were pulled off the front for a final assignment: to lead a convoy west, no matter what it took. Russian troops took down Le Guermand’s truck a few miles from Berlin, but he managed to escape. A French patrol caught him a week later. He was delirious, going on about priceless documents on letterhead with a square and a compass.”
“Why did he say
We have few documents on this dangerous sect, but we know that two members of the Thule were in charge of the Freemason archives. One of them, a certain Wolfram Sievers, general secretary of the Ahnenerbe and a dignitary in the Thule, was sentenced at Nuremberg. During his trial, one of our Freemason brothers, a captain in charge of interrogations, learned that Ahnenerbe researchers were on the verge of making a breakthrough that would be key to the future of the Aryan race, one that would be more important than the V-2 rockets. Our brother took down Sievers’s statement but observed that he seemed to have lost his mind.
Marcas stopped reading and looked at Mareuil. “So what if Sievers seemed nuts? The Nazis were a bunch of crazies, as Zewinski would say.”
“We know that economic, social, political, and cultural factors all contributed to the rise of Nazism. Hitler was probably not a puppet of the Thule, and he was entirely responsible for the regime’s atrocities, but it is clear that there was a time in his life when the Thule influenced him. Read on. The key to Sophie’s murder is perhaps connected to those archives.”
Marcas shrugged and focused again on the dog-eared pages.
When the Germans sensed that the tide was turning after the defeat of Stalingrad in 1943, they took precautions. The Masonic archives were split up and sent to several destinations—mostly castles and salt mines—where they could not be easily seized.
In April 1944, with Germany losing the war, SS high command intensified its operation to hide the stolen archives. Whole trains were commissioned to move tons of documents from place to place.
When the Soviets invaded Germany in 1945, Russian intelligence units tracked down everything that the Nazis had stolen. At the end of the war, more than forty train cars full of recovered documents were sent to Moscow. Ultimately, all the Masonic documents stolen from France ended up in the hands of Russian intelligence.
Our grand master has requested the return of those documents. The Soviet Union, however, claims that none of them are in their possession.
The text stopped there. Marcas looked up and gave the papers back to Mareuil. “Someone clearly thought the documents were important. What happened after that?”
“Nothing for forty years, until the fall of communism, when the issue surfaced again. The Russians admitted that they had our archives, and negotiations for the return of the documents got under way. We received the first batch in 1995, with the rest coming in installments through 2002. In theory, they have now gotten everything back to us.”
“In theory?”
“That’s where Sophie Dawes comes in.”
Mareuil sipped his wine before continuing. “The documents were inventoried twice: once by the Germans and once by the Russians. It became clear that the Germans had listed more documents than the Russians. Some were missing.”
“Are you saying that Moscow deliberately kept part of the collection?”
“That’s what we thought at first, but then Sophie found this.”
Mareuil pulled out an envelope. “It’s a copy of an interrogation led by the French Army in April 1945 in a small German village. A man named Le Guermand was arrested when he tried to return to France. He was an SS officer in the Charlemagne Division, a unit composed of French soldiers. They were defending Berlin at the end.”
“You’re giving me a history lesson here. What’s the connection to the lost archives?”
“I’m getting there. A little before the Reich fell, Le Guermand and other SS officers were pulled off the front for a final assignment: to lead a convoy west, no matter what it took. Russian troops took down Le Guermand’s truck a few miles from Berlin, but he managed to escape. A French patrol caught him a week later. He was delirious, going on about priceless documents on letterhead with a square and a compass.”
“Why did he say
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