Brother's War

Brother's War (2009)

In the last days of World War II, a captured German Captain (Tino Struckmann) and a British Major (Hugh Daly), who witnessed the Soviet murder of Polish government members, discover each other to be freemasons and attempt to escape to the advancing US army. Other than the captain sporting a square and compasses tattoo and the major once crying out, "Is there no help for the widow's son", there is little other masonic content, although publicity for the movie focused on this theme.

Yet another attempt to cash in on the current popular interest in Freemasonry, this film presents freemasons in a positive light while reinforcing popular conspiracy stereotypes and distorting historical facts. The text on the left is reproduced from the film's promotional website.

Freemasonry is the largest fraternal organization in the world and the oldest, with a recorded history dating back at least as far as the 1400's. When the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933 they outlawed all unions, social societies, Freemasonry and other such organizations. The German Freemasons went underground and abandoned their lodges. They started wearing a "Forget Me Not" flower or a blue flower lapel pin, rather than the traditional Compass and Square, for the purpose of enabling them to recognize each other. Many German Freemasons joined the German Army and blended in, waiting for better times where they again could meet at their Lodges.

FALSE: Although the earliest documented reference to freemasons as stoneworkers dates from the Halliwell Manuscript of 1400, the earliest extant record of Freemasonry as a body dates from 9 January 1598 with the Minute Book of the Lodge of Aitchison's Haven.

FALSE: Although Hitlar prohibited the lodges from meeting after 1933, several German Grand Lodges attempted to reconcile themselves with the Nazis and did not dissolve until 1935. See Alain Bernheim's "German Freemasonry and its Attitudes Toward the Nazi Regime".

FALSE: The blue forget-me-not was never worn by freemasons during the Nazi period. See Alain Bernheim's " The Blue Forget-Me-Not" , Another Side of the Story".

As German soldiers invaded the countries around them, the SS raided the various Lodges and sent all the Masonic regalia to the SS Museum in Berlin. An interesting note is that before Adolph Eichmann was put in charge of Jewish affairs in the SS, he served as secretary for the SS museum. Freemasons were rounded up along with the Jews and confined to work and labor camps, only to later perish in concentration camps.

TRUE: See Anti-masonic postage stamps.

Throughout history, authoritarian regimes have gone out of their way to persecute secret societies, even to the present day, despite the fact that it is well known that Masonic Lodges do not involve themselves in matters of religion or politics. One of the reasons the Nazis gave for this persecution was that the Masons were helping the Jews of Germany in their alleged "world conspiracy." This was supposedly proven by the book "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", claimed to have been written by a 32 degree Mason, which describes this supposed world conspiracy. The book was later proven to be a fraud created by the Soviet Intelligence Agency to discredit the Jews around the turn of the century.

FALSE: Although English-speaking Freemasonry prohibits its lodges from political and religious discussion, European and Latin American Freemasonry has often been politically active.

FALSE: Promoted by the Soviet Okhrana, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was not created by any Soviet intelligence agency. It began as a pamphlet entitled "Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu", published by French satirist Maurice Joly in 1864, as a defence of liberalism. Prussian spy, Hermann Goedsche (1815-1878) rewrote it as a jewish conspiracy, and only later, in 1890, did the Okhrana have it reworded and published for private circulation. It was never claimed to have been written by a 32º freemason.

It is believed that many of the top leaders in Germany during the war had been Freemasons, Heinrich Himmler took a great interest in the organization and it was said that Goering was a Mason as well. When the war ended and the Red Army occupied Berlin, the Soviets took possession of all the Masonic regalia in the museum and send it to Moscow where it was stored until the 1990's, at which time the regalia was returned to the European Lodges from which it had been siezed by the SS during the War.

The Freemasons faired little better during Soviet Communist rule in Eastern Europe, where they were also persecuted and banned as an organization.

FALSE: It is widely known that Hermann Göring was not a freemason. While conspiracy theorists are known to believe many things, the masonic association of German war-time leaders is undocumented. Many of the unsubstantiated claims derive from the origins of the Nazi Party within Rudolf Glandeck von Sebottendorff's Thule Gesellschaft.

Brother's War (2009), Directed by Jerry Buteyn, screenplay by Warren Lewis and Tino Struckmann. Tino Struckmann, Michael Berryman, Olivier Gruner, Hayley Carr, Hugh Daly, Jack Dimich, Adam Leadbeater, Tye Olson, Steve Holm, Dylan Kenin, Boris Kievsky, Time Winters, Joshua Minnick, Andreas T. Ramani, Mark Doerr. USA, English, Colour, Stereo. http://www.brotherswar.info/the_real_history.htm

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