Thomas Pietzcker was a last minute replacement for Hermann Abs, the head of the Deutsche Bank and Pietzcker’s boss. Abs had been forced to resign from the committee due to the outcry from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles about his role as “Hitler’s banker” and a director of IG Farben, which ran its own slave labor camp at Auschwitz. After the war, Abs was placed in charge of allocating funds from the Marshall Plan to German industry. This position made him a pivotal figure in the establishment of Gladio. Abs, like Macioce, was a knight of the SMOM.53 The finances of Holy Mother
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