This is a commentary on an Internet site called \u2018Sharkhunters\u2019 and its owner, one Harry Cooper.<\/p>\n
Mr. Harry Cooper<\/p>\n
P.O.Box 1539<\/p>\n
Hernando, Florida<\/p>\n
sharkhunters@earthlink.net<\/p>\n
This site, which reflects a very right-wing, neo-Nazi point of view and tries to connect these views with a history of German WWII submarines is, to be kind, bizarre.<\/p>\n
Mr. Cooper constantly claims Hitler escaped from Germany at the end of World War II and settled in Argentina. He either went to that country by a U Boat or a plane so Cooper takes paying guests to various places in the Argentine where Hitler, Bormann and other top Nazis allegedly had homes and businesses and also to various former Nazi-prominent places in Germany.<\/p>\n
Although working with the late right-wing neo-Nazi Willis Carto and a constant espouser of Hitlerian views, there are constantly recurring rumors from Chicago that Sharkhunters head, Harry Cooper, neo-Nazi and Hitler supporter though he might be, is actually Jewish and was a member of the Beth Israel Congregation in that city.<\/p>\n
It would seem difficult to believe, considering the immense propaganda about the enormous German death camps, their huge gas chambers, the production in these mythic camps of lampshades, shrunken heads and boxes of hand soap, that any person of the Jewish faith would want to have any positive connection with the Third Reich.<\/p>\n
However, where there is money to be made, conceptions can be modified.<\/p>\n
Here is an example of the hype being posted in support of Mr. Cooper\u2019s business:<\/p>\n
\u201cSOUTH AMERICA PLANE! – One of our South American S.E.I.G. Agents has found an elderly lady who remembers thing big plane landing on that remote estancia\/ranch and she has much more information for us.\u00a0 Cooper is going down there in February to speak with this lady.\u00a0 We expect much more history to be revealed here.\u00a0 We will keep you informed. this was our first book on the escape of Adolf Hitler and it was all the memories of Don Angel Alcazar de Velasco, the agent who worked in the Berlin Bunker for the last three months of the war – and he saw Hitler and Eva Braun forcibly drugged under orders of Martin Bormann and removed from the bunker long before the alleged suicide.\u00a0 He met with Hitler in South American in 1952 and this is all corroborated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps Cooper\u2019s most elaborate rewriting of history is his enthusiastically overwrought explanation of how Hitler did not commit suicide in the Berlin bunker, but in fact escaped and lived out the remainder of his life in South America. Cooper claims that the source material for Escape from the Bunker was a letter given to him by a Spanish-German double agent named \u201cDon Angel Alcazar de Velasco,\u201c who, Cooper says, was personally involved in the operation to smuggle Hitler and Martin Bormann out of Berlin and into Argentina.<\/p>\n
Published in 2010 with the support of the late Willis Carto, Escape from the Bunker also alleges that the FBI and other intelligence agencies were fully aware of Hitler\u2019s escape, and were complicit in propagating the lie that Hitler had died during the war in an effort to bring closure to a country traumatized by war. Moreover, \u201cDon Angel\u201d supposedly bought up the possibility of Hitler having two surviving children, living \u201csomewhere in Mexico\u201d. In an interview with white supremacist radio host Jeff Rense, Cooper said he was looking for two individuals who might be those children.<\/p>\n
Cooper is so attached to this conspiracy theory that he has conducted several \u201cpatrols\u201d in Argentina, visiting locations which he is convinced are the sites where Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials lived after the war.<\/p>\n
The Sharkhunters trip reports are cagey about where exactly these locations are, referring to the small German-influenced Argentinian village they visited only as \u201cStadt\u201d (the German word for \u201ccity\u201d).<\/p>\n
The island that Cooper alleges held a \u201cGerman nuclear research facility\u201d remains unnamed, although Cooper claims this laboratory was so advanced that in the 1940s and 1950s its scientists accomplished so-called cold fusion \u2014 a feat yet to be accomplished by modern scientists.<\/p>\n
Cooper and the Sharkhunters also visited an abandoned mansion, which they hint may be a former residence of Hitler himself!<\/p>\n
A posting on Axis History Forum concerning Cooper<\/p>\n
I researched Sharkhunters a few years ago and it was not really an organization \u2013 it was basically just Harry Cooper, his wife and his daughter and his daughter was just part time.<\/p>\n
It was chartered in Florida as a FOR PROFIT corporation. At that time it was located in a trailer in Harry\u2019s backyard. There was one other person listed if I remember correctly. Harry and his wife were the officers.<\/p>\n
The Advisory Board is a complete sham.<\/p>\n
I contacted some of them and found the following:<\/p>\n
None of them knew or had ever met any of the others.<\/p>\n
They never met as a group.<\/p>\n
They were never consulted as a group.<\/p>\n
They never provided any advice on Sharkhunter matters\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 as a group.<\/p>\n
In short the Advisory Board did not function as an advisory board.<\/p>\n
Their names simply make Sharkhunters look legitimate while most of the people themselves have almost nothing to do with Sharkhunters.<\/p>\n
The Advisory Board had no authority or control over Sharkhunters or Harry Cooper at all yet Harry frequently told newcomers to Sharkhunters that he couldn\u2019t do this or had to do that because of an Advisory Board decision.<\/p>\n
I suspect that many of the \u2018life memberships\u2019 were simply given to these folks but I can\u2019t prove it. In the case of one of the Advisory Board members I happened to know, I was told he simply joined Sharkhunters as a normal member years ago and got an e-mail from Harry a few years ago asking if he would serve on the Advisory Board. Before he could even reply to the e-mail he got another one from Harry congratulating him for becoming an Advisory Board member.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The last time I checked he had never met another active Advisory Board member nor had he ever been asked to make a decision on Sharkhunter matters as an Advisory Board member. His name on the Advisory Board list was apparently all Harry wanted.<\/p>\n
In the case of Otto Kretschmer who was actually asked for his advice on occasion, Harry kept him listed on his Advisory Board on the Sharkhunters web site for long after he had died. When he was confronted with this he moved him to his past advisors list where he is still listed today. However Otto Kretschmer resigned from the Advisory Board in disgust on 5 July, 1998 and asked to have his name removed from the list of Advisory Board members.<\/p>\n
To date I have come in contact with a number of former Sharkhunter members and not one of them had anything good to say about Sharkhunters or Harry Cooper.<\/p>\n
The rag Harry calls the Sharkhunters KTB is basically a forum for Harry to rant about anything he dislikes. Anyone who challenges him or his statements is demonized in the KTB. You get Harry\u2019s point of view and nothing else.<\/p>\n
Many of the U-boat men he initially got to provide stories and information (for free) that he published in his KTB (not for free) will no longer have anything to do with him so he has switched to the SS and Russian submariners for new content. I expect he still publishes some of the old stories too of course.<\/p>\n
Harry got to the U-boat men years ago when they were still being demonized by rehashed WWII propaganda and after years of Germany re-educating its population that everything that happened during WWII was evil etc. In short the U-boat men were \u201cpolitically incorrect\u201d even at home. He came across as a friend and they gave him their stories and signed photographs for free and he sold them for profit through Sharkhunters.<\/p>\n
Many of these elderly gentlemen were, in my opinion, simply duped. Harry also has a travel agency that specializes in tours of Germany (for a price of course) and Harry was able to get some of the U-boat men to ride on the bus and show up for a meal with his tours or even act as a tour guide for a portion of a tour.<\/p>\n
His web site features cheap mugs, mouse pads and video tapes of his tours as well as other junk and bogus conspiracy-theory books about Hitler escaping to Argentina etc. \u2013 all for profit.<\/p>\n
All of this has provided Harry Cooper and his family a living and that is what Sharkhunters is all about as far as I can tell.<\/p>\n
The claims of all the money he donates to the U-boat Archiv and the U-boat memorial in Germany are also suspect. Horst Bredow who founded, and still runs, the U-boot Archiv told me that not only had Harry never given him a penny, when his tours come to the Archiv they don\u2019t leave donations either.<\/p>\n
If you want an example of delusions of grandeur and an ego that just won\u2019t quit see what Harry wrote about himself in his bio at: http:\/\/pths57.com\/bio_htm_pages\/cooper_harry.htm.<\/p>\n
Sharkhunters is not what it seems to be. Talk to former members before getting involved with it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a commentary on an Internet site called \u2018Sharkhunters\u2019 and its owner, one Harry Cooper. Mr. Harry Cooper P.O.Box 1539 Hernando, Florida sharkhunters@earthlink.net This site, which reflects a very right-wing, neo-Nazi point of view and tries to connect these views with a history of German WWII submarines is, to be kind, bizarre. Mr. Cooper constantly claims Hitler escaped from Germany at the end of World War II and settled in Argentina. He either went to that country by a…<\/p>\n