Anticipating the defeat of the Third Reich, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann set up 750 corporations in neutral countries, primed as vehicles to receive the liquid wealth of Germany in addition to patents and other proprietary industrial information. An organizational genius and the real power behind Hitler, Bormann, known as the "Brown Eminence", successfully fled Europe for South America and administered a "Reich in Exile" in the years following the war.
With remnants of the SS as an enforcement arm, former Gestapo chief General Heinrich Mueller as security director, the 750 corporations as a base of economic power and the willing silence and cooperation of the Western Allies, Bormann guided his organization to a position of consummate power. One banker quoted by Manning termed the Bormann Organization, the "world's most important accumulation of money power under one control in history".
Controlling Germany's major corporations, the Federal Republic itself and much of Latin America, the Bormann Organization also maintained a formidable circle of influence in the United States. Paul Manning has written the definitive text on the Bormann Organization.Manning worked with CBS radio during World War II in London as a member of the elite Edward R. Murrow/Walter Cronkite team. As part of his coverage duties, he was the only member actually allowed to fly on U.S. Air Force missions as a fully functional crew member. Having qualified as a gunner, his flights included B-17 missions with the 8th Air Force over Germany and several B-29 missions to Japan.
On behalf of CBS, he broadcasted the surrenders of Japan and Germany. In 1948, along with fifteen other distinguished war correspondents, he was awarded a medal for his reporting of the unconditional surrender of the Germans at Rheims.
After the war Manning continued his journalistic profession and also served as a speechwriter for Nelson Rockefeller.
