It was today that the Italian head of state, Giulio Andreotti, revealed to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the neofascist force supposedly intended to be activated in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion, but in practice it worked to damage communism throughout Western Europe.

This documentary is a good resource on the operation, but for those of us who lack two hours to spare, here is an example from William Blum’s Killing Hope, pages 63–4:

While staging their commando attacks upon East Germany, American authorities and their German agents were apparently convinced that the Soviet Union had belligerent designs upon West Germany; perhaps a textbook case of projection. On 8 October 1952, the Minister‐President of the West German state of Hesse, Georg August Zinn, disclosed that the United States had created a secret civilian army in his state for the purpose of resisting a [Soviet] invasion.

This force of between 1,000 and 2,000 men belonged to the so‐called “Technical Service” of the German Youth Federation, the latter characterized by the New York Times as “a Right‐wing youth group frequently charged with extremist activities” (a reference to the terrorist tactics described above). The stalwarts of the Technical Service were hardly youths, however, for almost all appeared to be between 35 and 50 and most, said Zinn, were “former officers of the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht and the S.S. [Hitler’s Black‐shirts]”.

For more than a year they had received American training in infantry weapons and explosives and “political instruction” in small groups at a secluded site in the countryside and at a U.S. military installation.

The intelligence wing of the Technical Service, the state president revealed, had drawn up lists and card indexes of persons who were to be “put out of the way” when the Soviet tanks began to roll. These records, which contained detailed descriptions and intimate biographical information, were of some 200 leading Social Democrats (including Zinn himself), 15 Communists, and various others, all of whom were deemed “politically untrustworthy” and opponents of West German militarization.

Apparently, support for peaceful co‐existence and détente with the Soviet bloc was sufficient to qualify one for inclusion on the hit‐list, for one man was killed at the training site, charged with being an “East–West bridge builder”. It was this murder that led to the exposure of the entire operation.

[Washington] admitted its rôle in the creation and training of the guerrilla army, but denied any involvement in the “illegal, internal, and political activities” of the organization. But Zinn reported that the Americans had learned of the plotting in May and had not actually dissolved the group until September, the same month that German Security Police arrested a number of the group’s leaders.

At some point, the American who directed the training courses, Sterling Garwood, had been “supplied with carbon copies of the card‐index entries”. It appears that at no time did U.S. authorities communicate anything of this matter to the West German Government.

As the affair turned out, those who had been arrested were quickly released and the United States thwarted any further investigation in this the American Zone of occupied Germany. Commented Herr Zinn: “The only legal explanation for these releases can be that the people in Karlsruhe [the Federal Court] declared that they acted upon American direction.”⁹

To add to the furor, the national leader of the Social Democrats accused the United States of financing an opposition group to infiltrate and undermine his party. Erich Ollenhauer, whose name had also appeared on the Technical Service’s list, implied that American “clandestine” agencies were behind the plot despite the disapproval of high‐ranking U.S. officials.¹⁰

The revelations about the secret army and its hit‐list resulted in a storm of ridicule and denunciation falling upon the United States from many quarters in West Germany. In particular, the [supposed] irony of the Americans working hand‐in‐glove with “ex”‐Nazis did not escape the much‐castigated German people.

This operation in Germany, it was revealed many years later, was part of a much wider network—called “Operation Gladio”—created by the CIA and other European intelligence services, with similar secret armies all over Western Europe.

\ Extrastate neofascists, given their lower budgets, tend to execute false‐flag operations that are less violent. In the 2010s, for example, they published outrageous announcements—calls for violence against white women, prohibitions on dating whites, condemnations of St. Patrick’s Day, to name a few—and misattributed them to antifascist activists (antifa). Such operations are easy to spot, not only because they deliberately misunderstand antifascism, but also because neofascists keep forgetting that innocent people can screenshot their inane plans.

In contrast, the bourgeois state almost certainly continues its bloodier false‐flag operations today, and as in Operation Gladio’s case, the truth rarely reaches the public before it’s too late (Operation Northwoods being one notable exception).

Other events that happened today (October 24):

1910: Gunter d’Alquen, SS officer and journalist, was sadly born.
1922: The Fascists held a huge rally in Naples and made the final plans for the march on Rome.
1934: The Gestapo sent a telegram to every police station in the Reich ordering them to send to Berlin all files on men known for their ‘homosexual practices’.
1938: Joachim von Ribbentrop contacted Warsaw to suggest an anti‐Soviet alliance that would guarantee the Polish–German border for twenty‐five years.
1941: Axis troops shot 142 Greek hostages in another reprisal to discourage antifascism. Meanwhile, other Axis soldiers marched Jews from Odessa’s jail two kilometers down the road toward Dalnik, shooting any who fell behind.
1944: The Empire of Japan’s center force suffered temporary repulsion in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1945: A firing squad executed the infamous Vidkun Quisling, Minister President of Norway.