Pynchon's names: Karl Bopp

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Recently I came across a bibliographical reference that reads as follows:

Bopp, Karl R.: /Hjalmar Schacht: Central Banker/. University of Missouri 
Studies, 1939.

(The author later joined the Philadelphia Fed where he established the 
data processing department.
http://www.federalreservehistory.org/People/DetailView/205)

When I read the name Karl Bopp, the Pynchon bell in my brain rang and I 
remembered a passage from Vineland (p. 221):

"Pale blue unmarked little planes appeared, on days of VFR unlimited 
nearly invisible against the sky, flown by a private vigilante squadron 
of student antidrug activists, retired military pilots, government 
advisers in civvies, off-duty deputies and troopers, all working under 
contract to CAMP and being led by the notorious Karl Bopp, former Nazi 
/Luftwaffe/ officer and subsequently useful American citizen. During 
these weeks of surveillance, helicopter and plane crews were beginning 
to assemble each morning in a plasterboard ready room out in the flats 
below Vineland, near the airport, waiting for Kommandant Bopp to appear 
in the full regalia of his old profession and announce Der Tag."

Already during my first read in early 1990 this passage attracted my 
attention because of the obvious parallels to Gravity's Rainbow. And 
since the last two words mean The Day in German, one may think of 
Against the Day, too.  What interests me here, however, is the name Karl 
Bopp itself. One reason for Pynchon to chose it was probably the Cartoon 
like sound it makes when you pronounce the name aloud. But perhaps 
there's more to it, and in this context the study by Karl R. Bopp from 
1939 might have been an inspiration for Pynchon. Like Karl Bopp (the 
character from Vineland), Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht has a 
German-American history. His parents had lived in the US for for several 
years, and Schacht himself, during his economic education and career, 
met people like J.P. Morgan or John Foster Dulles and got integrated 
into the network of international banking. Which was, of course, very 
helpful when he joined the NSDAP in the early 1930s and then organized 
the financial dimension of their rise and early years in power.  By 
hinting at Schacht via the name Bopp, Pynchon evokes the international 
economic context of the rise of Nazism, as it seems to me.

Is this possible?

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