By Uwe Alschner
German Criticism against the push for war with Russia has so far been limited to voices with a background in the fringes of the political spectrum. It has therefore been noteworthy that in Jens van Scherpenberg, “an expert on U.S. policy at the German Institute for International and Security Studies in Berlin” until his retirement in 2006, has come out with a book that is highly critical of the German Government’s motives and strategy, coming to the conclusion that the conflict is being used by the Germans as a cover to attain the status of a European Superpower. Scherpenberg has diagnosed a new German Disease, Addiction to Power, or in German: Grossmachtsucht.
German Addiction to Power, or, Megalomania. Of course, that book’s title is designed to be descriptive of present day Germany, and it has received wide acclaim at least on the political left in Germany. Scherpenberg has been interviewed in a number of prominent publications on the political left.
What seems very odd, though, is that none of the interviewers did do the least of due diligence with respect to the author.
Jens van Scherpenberg himself was born in 1946, right after the end of WWII. He studied History and Macroeconomics and went on to become head of the America desk at the German Government’s think tank, Foundation for Science and Politics, SWP, founded in 1962 at Ebenhausen, outside of Munich. Scherpenberg himself, as well as his publisher use his SWP-affiliation actively, obviously to lend credit to his book’s message.
However, other affiliations they leave undisclosed: Scherpenberg’s family connections. He just happens to be the grandson of Hitler’s “Finance Wizard”, Hjalmar Schacht (who was “responsible for the National Socialist … rearmament programs”, and whom even an official Bundesbank publication accused of “lying” and a “proud bearer of the golden NSDAP party badge”1), as well as the nephew of Cordula Schacht, who legally handled and later outright owned the estate of Joseph Goebbels, into which “the devil’s royalties” flowed and, inter alia, expenses for the defense of Klaus Barbie, the Butcher from Lyon, were paid.
Of course, nobody should be held responsible for transgressions of family members.
But let’s take a look at the book’s message, which is of a leftist-anarchist kind such that someone like Leon Colgosz might have been proud of expressing before shooting President McKinley:
“The starting point is a critique of the logic of state power politics and, by extension, of the principle of the “state” as such—as an entity that has become independent of society and that, whether democratic or authoritarian in nature, regards the land and its people under its rule as mere means for the pursuit of its own power interests and treats them according to their highly varying usefulness to the state’s interests. (…)
Stripped of its ideological overtones, this instrumental relationship between states—especially between major and minor powers—can also simply be described as “imperialism.” (…)
By contrast, the classic form of imperialism—now referred to as the “protection of legitimate security interests”—remains as relevant as ever, if not more so: the appropriation of foreign territory, whether accompanied by or achieved through the killing and expulsion of the local population. (…)
Otherwise, “imperialism” is today primarily a term used by the left—though even here it is all too often employed merely as a moral battle cry, rather than as an objective description of the logic underlying the foreign policy of the major capitalist powers, as dictated by their interests. (…)
This book sets out to “examine the logic behind Germany’s rise from a defeated nation under the authority of the four occupying powers to a leading power in the EU, as well as the contradictions it encounters along the way.
Obviously an interesting layout for someone who has built his career on advising the governments of that “capitalist state”, but one which his experiencing a growing popularity, if only among the critics of “the establishment”, who also have grown in numbers exponentially over the past years, especially since the start of “the pandemic”, the conflict in Ukraine and the war in Gaza and against Iran. So the publisher certainly did show a considerable commercial talent in picking this author.
Or is there more to the story?
Well, Mr. van Scherpenberg not only glossed over his family’s odious past from his mother’s side. He also painted a remarkably modest picture about his own father and the family connection which that included. And which does give the attitude of “leftist anarchists” that Scherpenberg took pains to displaying during an interview with one of the most prominent leftist journalists in present day Germany, a truly hilarious appearance. Ironically that platform is named “Young & Naive”.
When at the start of the interview Scherpenberg was asked about his family background, he tried to portray his father as a leftist rank-and-file civil servant in the German Foreign Office, both, before and after the war. There is no mention of the extensive family connection to European diplomacy (both British and Dutch) of his father’s family (nor a mention of the connection to Hjalmar Schacht by his mothers descent).
Jens van Scherpenberg said that his father read “Das Kapital” by Marx, assuming that he was “in agreement”. In fact, that father, Hilger van Scherpenberg rose to become the managing secretary of state (Staassekretär) in Konrad Adenauer’s Foreign Office between 1958 and 1961, where he was, among other things, tasked with chairing the preparation of German participation at the Genva Conference of Foreign Ministers on the question as important as German Unification in 1959.
It turns out, Jens van Scherpenberg graduated from Highschool in Rome due to his father representing Germany at the Holy See from 1960 to 1964, which the interviewee also failed to disclose. During that time in Rome, quite delicate operations by NATO’s secret division GLADIO were conducted, as for example the execution of Enrico Mattei in 1962. Whilst Hilger van Scherpenberg was in Rome at the time, his cousin by marriage, Robert Hoyer Millar, who had been the British representative when Truman signed the NATO treaty, served in London as Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office. Millar later was created a hereditary peer, the 1st Baron Inchyra, whose honors included that of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) and Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO). It doesn’t get much higher than that.
The whole absurdity becomes apparent when, at 2:40:40 (appr.), Scherpenberg calls the EU a “capitalist” project which was not designed to “happiness of the people” (Volksbelustigung).
This he does without even flinching. He pelts “German capitalists”, who as he said had been supporting the Nazis, and were forced to bow out to “American” capitalists after WWII. Scherpenberg doesn‘t care to question these Americans for their ties to the global oligarchy of High Finance. Or maybe he takes utmost care not to make any such connection, because his brother’s godfather would have been a very senior figure in that cabal, having held the office of Governor of the Bank of England for more than 20 years until 1944. The name? Montague Norman, 1st Baron Norman.
It seems very odd for a trained historian such as Scherpenberg that he should exclude British Capitalism, especially the City of London, from his research. Unless, of course, he is beholden to that very exclusive oligarchy. A distinct possibility which must not be overlooked in this case as a matter of course.
How did American capitalists get to dominate the world? Who set up the Wall Street, and who ownes it? What might have been the connections between American and British “Capitalists”? What even the connection between British Capitalists and the Communist International? Why would Karl Marx have been working from out of London? What about the British Connection of Friedrich Engels? Or the anarchist movement? And what about his own family connections to the British Establishment, say, the Baron Inchyra, who happened to also act as ambassador of the United Kingdom to Germany in the 1950s, right when Scherpenberg’s father was rising in the Adenauer Administration, heading the Department of Trade in the German Foreign Office from 1953 (when not much more than trade would have been a political issue the Germans were allowed to handle on their own) and later (after the Treaty on Limited German sovereignty, or “Deutschlandvertrag“) he would act as secretary of state. That father, who went on to become appointed the German Ambassador to the Holy See in the early 1960s, around the time when, for instance, the secret NATO arm, Gladio, executed the leading Italian industrialist, Enrico Mattei, who not only was pressing for autonomy from the Anglo-American Energy Monopoly, which he (Mattei) called “the Seven Sisters”, but who also dealt intensively with Scherpenberg’s grandfather Schacht in the course of that project?
Is it a mere coincidence that not only was Mattei eliminated (who trusted in Schacht enough to employ him for his plans of an Italian refinery to be set up in Bavaria against the interests of the “Seven Sisters“) but also the Iranian prime minister Mossadegh — who had trusted in Schacht ten years earlier, and was ousted in a CIA led coup on behalf of the British (who had lost their oil claims due to Iranian nationalisation) shortly thereafter?
Could it be possible that it is somewhat of a family recipe for “success” to be able to seek and gain the trust of people2, but remain beholden to the network of international oligarchy? In any case, the family seems to have belonged since the days of the Dutch East India Company, with members of the family managing to serve Princes, Kings and Queens in places all over the globe, including the Netherlands (Queen Wilhelmina trusted one of Hilger van Scherpenberg’s cousins as her Chamberlain, another served as Foreign Secretary and as Dutch Ambassador to the Court of the British Monarch between 1913 and 1937).
Why would all of this not even be disclosed by a professional historian who was surely aware of the problem of conflicts of interest within the academic and political arenas? If his “leftist” positions would have been genuine, certainly they would have gained weight by the rueful repentance of one of the “elect few” coming clean of the sins of their ancestors and cousins, no? By withholding those crucial dynastic details, Scherpenberg — as well as his publishers — themselves become prone to questions about true motifs of theirs.
So what might be going on?
It is hard to tell with certainty what may be behind the untruthful charades of Westend and Scherpenberg. But it comes to mind that Westend was also involved in deceiving the public about, again, British geopolitical cornerstones when they “asked” the former aide to George Soros, member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and director of the German Marshall Fund, Ulrike Guerot, to comment on Halford Mackinder’s Heartland Theory.
Instead of recognising the importance of that strategy of the British oligarchy as relevant for today’s geopolitical “battlefield”, she chose to distract from it by writing it up as just being some irrelevant fantasy of an old misogynist, and Europe being the answer to American Imperialism. No mention there about the Royal Institute of International Affairs being the “mother-ship” of the Council of Foreign Relations. Of the British oligarchy running American Foreign Policy in what might be an attempt to kill the republican idea from within by turning it into an even bigger Empire — only keeping the hand that has been guiding all that policy completly obscure and in the background.
All this may be pure coincidence, especially on the part of the Westend publishing house. But then, it may be more than that, considering the improbable cluster of authors with some connection to the oligarchy at that small Frankfurt publisher. Apart from Guérot, who tries to ignore the doubts over her involvement with Soros’ Open Society and EFCR, and Scherpenberg (see above), there is the case of another Westend-author with some prominence in Germany, due to her political career in the state of Hesse, and some interesting relations to European High Nobility, the Greek-Austrian House of the Princes of Ypsilanti. That family was involved in diplomacy as well, but also in the political fight against the Ottoman Empire — which suited the British nicely.
Even this entails a contact between Jens van Scherpenberg’s father and the then Royal Greek ambassador to Germany, Thomas Ypsilanti. His nephew, Emanuel, married a German Lufthansa flight attendant, née Andrea Dill. The couple later divorced, and she went on to pursue a career in German state politics, in which course she took great pains to obfuscate her former husbands princely descent. “Had been Married to a Greek“ was the way it was phrased, which in her hometown with an Opel/GM factory seemed to imply a broken relationship with just a mortal auto-worker. Only once, after she failed to deliver an election victory in 2008 and was struggling to keep at the helm of her party, did a journal dare to give a headline “Princess Ypsilanti“ with a faint mention of her ex-husband‘s prominence. The article, however, is all but buried from the public.
Andrea Ypsilanti, who interestingly also campaigned on a social democrat platform where education equality ranked prominently, even though her own son attended an exclusive private school, also happened to be an author at Westend.
In 2018 she wrote „a little Utopia“ about „Tomorrow we will govern ourselves“. In it she calls for „a counterforce“ against
“Neoliberal globalization—which sometimes overwhelms people, marginalizes the neglected, and allows the so-called elites to act with ever-greater irresponsibility …“
Of course, neither she, nor Westend, the publisher, cared to mention that her ex-husband’s family leading was among the „so-called elites“ and among the wealthiest families in Austria as well as in Greece.
With regards to Jens van Scherpenberg, another detail may be pure coincidence: He joined the SWP thinktank right after completion of his degree in 1977. His grandfather had passed by then, but his father‘s close involvement in the Adenauer administration would have been known to the co-founder of the SWP, Klaus Ritter. Ritter had been one of Reinhard Gehlen‘s closest associates even during the war. They continued to work together in the “Gehlen-Org“, that was set up by the CIA, and out of which the German Intelligence Agency BND would evolve. Ritter himself was a CIA agent who reported, amongst other things, leftist tendencies within German newspapers and media. Ritter also was mentored by Henry Kissinger (a fan of Metternich and Talleyrand) who suggested that a “think tank” such as the CFR be set up in Germany. Ritter stayed on at the SWP even after he left the directorship in 1988. Ritter died age 96 and it is hard to imagine that he and Scherpenberg would not meet regularly and discuss matters of interest to both of them.
These are but a few examples which suggest a psy-op being run to deceive the public about a deeper agenda being pursued. This seems to be one of causing frustration about states, particularly nation states. That is especially obvious in the cases of both Scherpenberg and Guérot, but also in Ypsilanti‘s case. Who would benefit from a loss of faith in administrative structures? Who has fought the Nation State since it first came into existence with the American Revolution?
Sure, there is an awful lot of corruption among politicians and leading figures in public office. Together with a total travesty that the American Republic was turned into, being the world‘s most obvious imperial power, this may lead to a loss of faith in the concept of a Nation State. Which may just be the overarching goal: to finally do way with the idea of a sovereign republic, and with one of the best constitutions ever to come into effect.
Baby. Bathwater… Remember?
The Oligarchy would have a field day if it would finally be possible to overcome the idea of national sovereignty.
Footnotes
1 – Magnus Brechtken / Ingo Loose (eds.), “From the Reichsbank to the Bundesbank. People, generations and concepts between tradition, continuity and new beginnings”, Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2024, p. 9. Online version retrieved on Oct. 12, 2026. That publication, if only indirectly, points at an elaborate operation, including foreign press such as the New York Times writing about a “purge”, to prepare for Schacht’s image as “an enemy of Hitler” (Schacht). Instead, it is documented how, in “the ‘Wochenschau’ newsreel of 10 July 1940, millions of Germans had seen Schacht eagerly greeting Hitler at Berlin′s Anhalter Bahnhof railway station as the ‘Führer’ returned from the victorious war campaign in France. The images showed how Schacht, one-and-a-half years after his dismissal as Reichsbank president, continued to present himself as a prominent dignitary of the regime, cutting a distinctive figure in his dark suit amidst the line-up of uniformed generals.
The newsreel footage thus fitted in with other images that repeatedly emphasized Schacht′s role as a committed supporter of the regime. It was not just his role in financing Germany′s rearmament and his dedicated efforts towards securing the Nazi state that were well known. Anybody who wanted to could also read what was written (with his approval) in the biography penned by his friend Franz Reuter to mark his 60th birthday in 1937: namely that Schacht ‘played a valuable part’ in the victory of the National Socialists and had already been one of their “conscious aides” during their ascent.”
2– Quoting from the Bundesbank Publication again: “During his cross-examination by Nuremberg prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, Schacht said, displaying a characteristic combination of arrogance and naivety, that one had to deceive in order to achieve.” “From the Reichsbank to the Bundesbank. People, generations and concepts between tradition, continuity and new beginnings”, Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2024, p. 10.