Peter Thiel’s extremist anti-democratic politics make perfect sense when you understand he was literally raised by a father repeatedly fleeing the prospect of democratic rule, seeking sanctuary among American white supremacists who offered a future of racial exclusion through different mechanisms.
Born in Germany in 1938 (formative childhood years under Nazi rule), his father Klaus trained as a chemical engineer and married before immigrating to the United States in 1968 with their one-year-old son Peter (born October 11, 1967 in Frankfurt). Klaus left just as the student movement was forcing Germany to more seriously confront its Nazi past, actively preventing his son from receiving the historical education designed to prevent ideological transmissions. A pattern emerges: the move was from Nazi Germany towards a Nazi-influenced territory under threat of majority rule to the epicenter of America’s emerging hard-right movement. In California a decade later the Thiel family found American extremists who shared their worldview about anti-democracy, racial hierarchy, and property rights over civil rights.
It’s hard to say economic migration was at hand for the Thiel family given the signs of ideological refuge-seeking for Klaus trying to avoid admitting who lost WWII. Klaus left the place where “Heil Hitler!” was normal conversation twice. First from Germany, and then from Swakopmund. He moved to California in 1977 when the conservative “tax” (anti-government) revolt was mobilizing and Reagan’s racist revolution was crystallizing. Klaus chose to live in “white flight” Foster City at the absolute highest peak, a so called “master plan” development of that time.
A young Afrikaner working for Klaus in 1976 put it like this, perhaps best revealing the family’s urge to move from Namibia to California:
“Heil Hitler!” said the black gas station attendant matter‐of‐factly to the department customer, raising his right arm to the traditional height. He offered the outdated salute after a pleasant conversation in which he explained the fluency of his German… it appeared not to be a joke, but rather a greeting that he had exchanged before with German customers.
[…]
A hitchhiker, a 23‐year‐old Afrikaner leaching woodworking at a uranium mine near here… thought he was typical of his generation, he said, more modern than that of his parents. […] If majority rule comes, he said, they will probably cross the border with many others.
As project manager for construction of Namibia’s Rössing uranium mine in the mid-1970s, Klaus inserted himself into South Africa’s overtly illegal nuclear supply chain during the height of apartheid (South Africa occupied Namibia by rejecting UN Security Council Resolution 435). His illegal project supplied uranium for multiple national nuclear programs and operated despite international criticism of working conditions and racial segregation. He moved his family to Swakopmund during the mine’s construction phase, where Peter was placed into “German-language” schools.
In other words Klaus skips out of Germany just as denazification lands, headed to America. But then he skips from prosperous 1970s America to instead go to work in an overtly illegal apartheid South Africa nuclear weapons proliferation project during the height of international sanctions.
One unverified claim suggests Klaus’ American colleagues during this time even called him “The Gestapo,” though the source and context of this characterization remain unclear. More significantly, Klaus’s decision to leave the occupation and reconstruction of Germany to oversee South Africa’s weapons development under the apartheid system during the 1970s—when international sanctions and moral opposition were intensifying—reveal a preference for racist authoritarianism.
Perhaps that explains Klaus’ hard line on always remaining a German citizen and speaking German at home for 51 years, while never living in Germany, instead claiming to have his home in America while working abroad. This decision was highly unusual—while his wife Susanne became a naturalized U.S. citizen, Klaus maintained his German passport throughout his entire American “residence” until his death.
Klaus maintaining German citizenship like this for five decades was genuinely aberrant behavior for his generation. And yet there appears to be no evidence of naturalization applications, rejections, or legal barriers that would explain this choice. INS and USCIS records from Klaus’s era (1968-1970s) are held in National Archives C-Files, but no evidence emerged of any citizenship proceedings. This suggests Klaus’s rejection of American citizenship to stay German, while also fleeing Germany to prevent Peter from denazification, was entirely voluntary for his entire life, rather than circumstantial.
The timing, choices, and context create a genuinely suspicious pattern that deserves serious scrutiny rather than dismissal.
On top of that, when Peter proudly entered Stanford he bragged to classmates that apartheid “works” and was “economically sound”. He clearly was referring to his father’s work in apartheid-era Namibia specifically to construct uranium mining infrastructure for South Africa’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, in an operation where Black migrant workers were “dying like flies” from radiation exposure while white managers like Klaus enjoyed country club privileges with son Peter.
Klaus’ documented toxic career represents exactly the kind of German technical expertise that found ideological comfort in systems of racial domination and nuclear intimidation. Peter’s current politics are a direct result of his father’s efforts to preserve Nazi beliefs through migration to South Africa (occupied Namibia) and America.
Peter Thiel expending huge financial resources to push J.D. Vance into office, let alone his other campaigns and candidate choices, aren’t mysterious contrarian positions or intellectual quirks. They’re direct inheritance from his father’s extremist German views of the world, driving racial authoritarianism to justify race-based political domination.
Klaus successfully transmitted his ideology through geographic positioning, economic integration, and ideological reproduction.
- Nazi Germany (fled after defeat to avoid denazification of Peter)
- Nazi-influenced Namibia (fled approaching majority rule, again seeking Nazi sanctuary)
- Reagan’s California (found American white supremacist movement)
Culmination of the multi-generational Nazi project means the 1940s were able to bubble along via the tech industry into 2020s American authoritarianism by families who never accepted defeat, just adapted their methods and hid among American and Afrikaner enclaves. The Thiel family represents a direct genealogical link between Hitler’s Germany and Trump’s America.
