From: "Charles J. Reid" 
Subject: IUFO: Adolf and the conservatives
Date: 12 Mar 1999 00:45:22 -0500
To: IUFO 


->  IUFO  Mailing List

Here's some info about the right-wing and their love affair with Adolf.
Acts of commission are a bit more ominous that acts of omission.
My answer to all the hulabaloo about China, which goes back to the late
40s and Joe McCarthy. I don't think it'll work this time.

//CJR

_____________
From

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton
Chaitkin 


Chapter - II - The Hitler Project

Bush Property Seized--Trading with the Enemy

In October 1942, ten months after entering World War II, America was
preparing its first assault against Nazi military forces. Prescott Bush
was managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman. His 18-year-old son
George, the future U.S. President, had just begun training to become a
naval pilot. On Oct.  20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of
Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted
by Prescott Bush.

Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union
Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property
Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares, all of which were
owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland `` Bunny '' Harriman, three Nazi
executives, and two other associates of Bush.@s1

The order seizing the bank `` vests '' (seizes) `` all of the capital
stock of Union Banking Corporation, a New York corporation, '' and names
the holders of
its shares as: 

          `` E. Roland Harriman--3991 shares ''
          [chairman and director of Union Banking Corp. (UBC); this is ``
Bunny '' Harriman, described by Prescott Bush as a place holder who didn't
get much into banking affairs; Prescott managed his
          personal investments] 

          `` Cornelis Lievense--4 shares ''
          [president and director of UBC; New York resident banking
functionary for the Nazis] 

          `` Harold D. Pennington--1 share ''
          [treasurer and director of UBC; an office manager employed by
Bush at Brown Brothers Harriman] 

          `` Ray Morris--1 share ''

          [director of UBC; partner of Bush and the Harrimans]

          `` Prescott S. Bush--1 share ''
          [director of UBC, which was co-founded and sponsored by his
father-in-law George Walker; senior managing partner for E. Roland
Harriman and Averell Harriman] 

          `` H.J. Kouwenhoven--1 share ''
          [director of UBC; organized UBC as the emissary of Fritz Thyssen
in negotiations with George Walker and Averell Harriman; managing director
of UBC's Netherlands affiliate under Nazi
          occupation; industrial executive in Nazi Germany; director and
chief foreign financial executive of the German Steel Trust] 

          `` Johann G. Groeninger--1 share ''
          [director of UBC and of its Netherlands affiliate; industrial
executive in Nazi Germany] 

          `` all of which shares are held for the benefit of ... members
of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals ... of a designated
enemy country.... '' 

By Oct. 26, 1942, U.S. troops were under way for North Africa. On Oct. 28,
the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by
the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the
Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.@s2

U.S. forces landed under fire near Algiers on Nov. 8, 1942; heavy combat
raged throughout November. Nazi interests in the Silesian-American
Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George
Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov.
17, 1942. In this action, the government announced that it was seizing
only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis' U.S. partners to carry on the
business.@s3

These and other actions taken by the U.S. government in wartime were,
tragically, too little and too late. President Bush's family had already
played a central role in financing and arming Adolf Hitler for his
takeover of Germany; in financing and managing the buildup of Nazi war
industries for the conquest of Europe and war against the U.S.A.; and in
the development of Nazi genocide theories and racial propaganda, with
their well-known results.

The facts presented here must be known, and their implications reflected
upon, for a proper understanding of President George Herbert Walker Bush
and of the danger to mankind that he represents. The President's family
fortune was largely a result of the Hitler project. The powerful
Anglo-American family associations, which later boosted him into the
Central Intelligence Agency and up to the White House, were his father's
partners in the Hitler project. 

President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley,
signed Vesting Order Number 248 seizing the property of Prescott Bush
under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The order, published in obscure
government record books and kept out of the news,@s4 explained nothing
about the Nazis involved; only that the Union Banking Corporation was run
for the `` Thyssen family '' of `` Germany and/or Hungary ''--`` nationals
... of a designated enemy country. ''

By deciding that Prescott Bush and the other directors of the Union
Banking Corp. were legally front men for the Nazis, the government avoided
the more important historical issue: In what way were Hitler's Nazis
themselves hired, armed and instructed by the New York and London clique
of which Prescott Bush was an executive manager? Let us examine the
Harriman-Bush Hitler project from the 1920s until it was partially broken
up, to seek an answer for that question.

Origin and Extent of the Project

Fritz Thyssen and his business partners are universally recognized as the
most important German financiers of Adolf Hitler's takeover of Germany. At
the time of the order seizing the Thyssen family's Union Banking Corp.,
Mr.  Fritz Thyssen had already published his famous book, I Paid
Hitler,@s5 admitting that he had financed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
movement since October 1923.  Thyssen's role as the leading early backer
of Hitler's grab for power in Germany had been noted by U.S. diplomats in
Berlin in 1932.@s6 The order seizing the Bush-Thyssen bank was curiously
quiet and modest about the identity of the perpetrators who had been
nailed.

But two weeks before the official order, government investigators had
reported secretly that `` W. Averell Harriman was in Europe sometime prior
to 1924 and at that time became acquainted with Fritz Thyssen, the German
industrialist. '' Harriman and Thyssen agreed to set up a bank for Thyssen
in New York.  `` [C]ertain of [Harriman's] associates would serve as
directors.... '' Thyssen agent `` H. J. Kouwenhoven ... came to the United
States ... prior to 1924 for conferences with the Harriman Company in this
connection.... ''@s7

When exactly was `` Harriman in Europe sometime prior to 1924 ''? In fact,
he was in Berlin in 1922 to set up the Berlin branch of W.A. Harriman &
Co.  under George Walker's presidency. 

The Union Banking Corporation was established formally in 1924, as a unit
in the Manhattan offices of W.A. Harriman & Co., interlocking with the
Thyssen-owned Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart (BHS) in the Netherlands. 
The investigators concluded that `` the Union Banking Corporation has
since its inception handled funds chiefly supplied to it through the Dutch
bank by the Thyssen interests for American investment. ''

Thus by personal agreement between Averell Harriman and Fritz Thyssen in
1922, W.A. Harriman & Co. (alias Union Banking Corporation) would be
transferring funds back and forth between New York and the `` Thyssen
interests '' in Germany. By putting up about $400,000, the Harriman
organization would be joint owner and manager of Thyssen's banking
operations outside of Germany.

How important was the Nazi enterprise for which President Bush's father
was the New York banker?

The 1942 U.S. government investigative report said that Bush's Nazi-front
bank was an interlocking concern with the Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United
Steel Works Corporation or German Steel Trust) led by Fritz Thyssen and
his two brothers. After the war, Congressional investigators probed the
Thyssen interests, Union Banking Corp. and related Nazi units. The
investigation showed that the Vereinigte Stahlwerke had produced the
following approximate proportions of total German national output:

          50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
          41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
          36.0% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
          38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
          45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
          22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
          35.0% of Nazi Germany's explosives.@s8 

Prescott Bush became vice president of W.A. Harriman & Co. in 1926. That
same year, a friend of Harriman and Bush set up a giant new organization
for their client Fritz Thyssen, prime sponsor of politician Adolf Hitler.
The new German Steel Trust, Germany's largest industrial corporation, was
organized in 1926 by Wall Street banker Clarence Dillon. Dillon was the
old comrade of Prescott Bush's father Sam Bush from the `` Merchants of
Death '' bureau in World War I.

In return for putting up $70 million to create his organization, majority
owner Thyssen gave the Dillon Read company two or more representatives on
the board of the new Steel Trust.@s9

Thus there is a division of labor: Thyssen's own confidential accounts,
for political and related purposes, were run through the Walker-Bush
organization;  the German Steel Trust did its corporate banking through
Dillon Read.

The Walker-Bush firm's banking activities were not just politically
neutral money-making ventures which happened to coincide with the aims of
German Nazis. All of the firm's European business in those days was
organized around anti-democratic political forces.

In 1927, criticism of their support for totalitarianism drew this retort
from Bert Walker, written from Kennebunkport to Averell Harriman: `` It
seems to me that the suggestion in connection with Lord Bearsted's views
that we withdraw from Russia smacks somewhat of the impertinent.... I
think that we have drawn our line and should hew to it. ''@s1@s0

Averell Harriman met with Italy's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. A
representative of the firm subsequently telegraphed good news back to his
chief executive Bert Walker: `` ... During these last days ... Mussolini
... has examined and approved our c[o]ntract 15 June. ''@s1@s1

The great financial collapse of 1929-31 shook America, Germany and
Britain, weakening all governments. It also made the hard-pressed Prescott
Bush even more willing to do whatever was necessary to retain his new
place in the world. It was in this crisis that certain Anglo-Americans
determined on the installation of a Hitler regime in Germany.

W.A. Harriman & Co., well-positioned for this enterprise and rich in
assets from their German and Russian business, merged with the
British-American investment house, Brown Brothers, on January 1, 1931.
Bert Walker retired to his own G.H. Walker & Co. This left the Harriman
brothers, Prescott Bush and Thatcher M. Brown as the senior partners of
the new Brown Brothers Harriman firm. (The London, England branch of the
Brown family firm continued operating under its historic name--Brown,
Shipley.)

Robert A. Lovett also came over as a partner from Brown Brothers. His
father, E.H. Harriman's lawyer and railroad chief, had been on the War
Industries Board with Prescott's father. Though he remained a partner in
Brown Brothers Harriman, the junior Lovett soon replaced his father as
chief executive of Union Pacific Railroad. 

Brown Brothers had a racial tradition that fitted it well for the Hitler
project! American patriots had cursed its name back in U.S. Civil War
days. Brown Brothers, with offices in the U.S.A. and in England, had
carried on their ships fully 75 percent of the slave cotton from the
American South over to British mill owners. Now in 1931, the virtual
dictator of world finance, Bank of England Governor Montagu Collet Norman,
was a former Brown Brothers partner, whose grandfather had been boss of
Brown Brothers during the U.S. Civil War.  Montagu Norman was known as the
most avid of Hitler's supporters within British ruling circles, and
Norman's intimacy with this firm was essential to his management of the
Hitler project.

In 1931, while Prescott Bush ran the New York office of Brown Brothers
Harriman, Prescott's partner was Montagu Norman's intimate friend Thatcher
Brown.  The Bank of England chief always stayed at the home of Prescott's
partner on his hush-hush trips to New York. Prescott Bush concentrated on
the firm's German activities, and Thatcher Brown saw to their business in
old England, under the guidance of his mentor Montagu Norman.@s1@s2

Hitler's Ladder to Power

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany January 30, 1933, and absolute
dictator in March 1933, after two years of expensive and violent lobbying
and electioneering. Two affiliates of the Bush-Harriman organization
played great parts in this criminal undertaking: Thyssen's German Steel
Trust;  and the Hamburg-Amerika Line and several of its executives.@s1@s3

Let us look more closely at the Bush family's German partners. 

Fritz Thyssen told Allied interrogators after the war about some of his
financial support for the Nazi Party: `` In 1930 or 1931 ... I told
[Hitler's deputy Rudolph] Hess ... I would arrange a credit for him with a
Dutch bank in Rotterdam, the Bank fu@aur Handel und Schiff [i.e. Bank voor
Handel en Scheepvaart (BHS), the Harriman-Bush affiliate]. I arranged the
credit ... he would pay it back in three years.... I chose a Dutch bank
because I did not want to be mixed up with German banks in my position,
and because I thought it was better to do business with a Dutch bank, and
I thought I would have the Nazis a little more in my hands... . 

`` The credit was about 250-300,000 [gold] marks--about the sum I had
given before. The loan has been repaid in part to the Dutch bank, but I
think some money is still owing on it.... ''@s1@s4

The overall total of Thyssen's political donations and loans to the Nazis
was well over a million dollars, including funds he raised from others--in
a period of terrible money shortage in Germany.

Friedrich Flick was the major co-owner of the German Steel Trust with
Fritz Thyssen, Thyssen's long-time collaborator and occasional competitor. 
In preparation for the war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg, the U.S.
government said that Flick was `` one of leading financiers and
industrialists who from 1932 contributed large sums to the Nazi Party ...
member of `Circle of Friends' of Himmler who contributed large sums to the
SS. ''@s1@s5

Flick, like Thyssen, financed the Nazis to maintain their private armies
called Schutzstaffel (S.S. or Black Shirts) and Sturmabteilung (S.A.,
storm troops or Brown Shirts).

The Flick-Harriman partnership was directly supervised by Prescott Bush,
President Bush's father, and by George Walker, President Bush's
grandfather.

The Harriman-Walker Union Banking Corp. arrangements for the German Steel
Trust had made them bankers for Flick and his vast operations in Germany
by no later than 1926.

The Harriman Fifteen Corporation (George Walker, president, Prescott Bush
and Averell Harriman, sole directors) held a substantial stake in the
Silesian Holding Co. at the time of the merger with Brown Brothers, Jan.
1, 1931.  This holding correlated to Averell Harriman's chairmanship of
the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, the American group owning
one-third of a complex of steel-making, coal-mining and zinc-mining
activities in Germany and Poland, in which Friedrich Flick owned
two-thirds.@s1@s6

The Nuremberg prosecutor characterized Flick as follows: 

`` Proprietor and head of a large group of industrial enterprises (coal
`Wehrwirtschaftsfuh@aurer',
1938 [title awarded to prominent industrialists for merit in armaments
drive--`Military Economy Leader'].... ''@s1@s7 

For this buildup of the Hitler war machine with coal, steel and arms
production, using slave laborers, the Nazi Flick was condemned to seven
years in prison at the Nuremberg trials; he served three years. With
friends in New York and London, however, Flick lived into the 1970s and
died a billionaire. 

On March 19, 1934, Prescott Bush--then director of the German Steel
Trust's Union Banking Corporation--initiated an alert to the absent
Averell Harriman about a problem which had developed in the Flick
partnership.@s1@s8 Bush sent Harriman a clipping from the New York Times
of that day, which reported that the Polish government was fighting back
against American and German stockholders who controlled `` Poland's
largest industrial unit, the Upper Silesian Coal and Steel Company.... ''

The Times article continued: `` The company has long been accused of
mismanagement, excessive borrowing, fictitious bookkeeping and gambling in
securities. Warrants were issued in December for several directors accused
of tax evasions. They were German citizens and they fled. They were
replaced by Poles. Herr Flick, regarding this as an attempt to make the
company's board entirely Polish, retaliated by restricting credits until
the new Polish directors were unable to pay the workmen regularly. ''

The Times noted that the company's mines and mills `` employ 25,000 men
and account for 45 percent of Poland's total steel output and 12 percent
of her coal production. Two-thirds of the company's stock is owned by
Friedrich Flick, a leading German steel industrialist, and the remainder
is owned by interests in the United States. ''

In view of the fact that a great deal of Polish output was being exported
to Hitler Germany under depression conditions, the Polish government
thought that Prescott Bush, Harriman and their Nazi partners should at
least pay full taxes on their Polish holdings. The U.S. and Nazi owners
responded with a lockout.  The letter to Harriman in Washington reported a
cable from their European representative: `` Have undertaken new steps
London Berlin ... please establish friendly relations with Polish
Ambassador [in Washington]. ''

A 1935 Harriman Fifteen Corporation memo from George Walker announced an
agreement had been made `` in Berlin '' to sell an 8,000 block of their
shares in Consolidated Silesian Steel.@s1@s9 But the dispute with Poland
did not deter the Bush family from continuing its partnership with Flick.

Nazi tanks and bombs `` settled '' this dispute in September, 1939 with
the invasion of Poland, beginning World War II. The Nazi army had been
equipped by Flick, Harriman, Walker and Bush, with materials essentially
stolen from Poland.

There were probably few people at the time who could appreciate the irony,
that when the Soviets also attacked and invaded Poland from the East,
their vehicles were fueled by oil pumped from Baku wells revived by the
Harriman/Walker/Bush enterprise.

Three years later, nearly a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of the Nazis' share in the
Silesian-American Corporation under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Enemy
nationals were said to own 49 percent of the common stock and 41.67
percent of the preferred stock of the company.

The order characterized the company as a `` business enterprise within the
United States, owned by [a front company in] Zurich, Switzerland, and held
for the benefit of Bergwerksgesellschaft George von Giesche's Erben, a
German corporation.... ''@s2@s0

Bert Walker was still the senior director of the company, which he had
founded back in 1926 simultaneously with the creation of the German Steel
Trust. Ray Morris, Prescott's partner from Union Banking Corp. and Brown
Brothers Harriman, was also a director.

The investigative report prior to the government crackdown explained the
`` NATURE OF BUSINESS: The subject corporation is an American holding
company for German and Polish subsidiaries, which own large and valuable
coal and zinc mines in Silesia, Poland and Germany. Since September 1939,
these properties have been in the possession of and have been operated by
the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance
to that country in its war effort. ''@s2@s1

The report noted that the American stockholders hoped to regain control of
the European properties after the war.

Control of Nazi Commerce

Bert Walker had arranged the credits Harriman needed to take control of
the Hamburg-Amerika Line back in 1920. Walker had organized the American
Ship and Commerce Corp. as a unit of the W.A. Harriman & Co., with
contractual power over Hamburg-Amerika's affairs.

As the Hitler project went into high gear, Harriman-Bush shares in
American Ship and Commerce Corp. were held by the Harriman Fifteen Corp.,
run by Prescott Bush and Bert Walker.@s2@s2

It was a convenient stroll for the well-tanned, athletic, handsome
Prescott Bush: From the Brown Brothers Harriman skyscraper at 59 Wall
Street--where he was senior managing partner, confidential investments
manager and adviser to Averell and his brother `` Bunny ''--he walked
across to the Harriman Fifteen Corporation at One Wall Street, otherwise
known as G.H. Walker & Co.--and around the corner to his subsidiary
offices at 39 Broadway, former home of the old W.A. Harriman & Co., and
still the offices for American Ship and Commerce Corp., and of the Union
Banking Corporation.

In many ways, Bush's Hamburg-Amerika Line was the pivot for the entire
Hitler project. 

Averell Harriman and Bert Walker had gained control over the steamship
company in 1920 in negotiations with its post-World War I chief executive,
Wilhelm Cuno, and with the line's bankers, M.M. Warburg. Cuno was
thereafter completely dependent on the Anglo-Americans, and became a
member of the Anglo-German Friendship Society. In the 1930-32 drive for a
Hitler dictatorship, Wilhelm Cuno contributed important sums to the Nazi
Party.@s2@s3

Albert Voegler was chief executive of the Thyssen-Flick German Steel Trust
for which Bush's Union Banking Corp. was the New York office. He was a
director of the Bush-affiliate BHS Bank in Rotterdam, and a director of
the Harriman-Bush Hamburg-Amerika Line. Voegler joined Thyssen and Flick
in their heavy 1930-33 Nazi contributions, and helped organize the final
Nazi leap into national power.@s2@s4

The Schroeder family of bankers was a linchpin for the Nazi activities of
Harriman and Prescott Bush, closely tied to their lawyers Allen and John
Foster Dulles.

Baron Kurt von Schroeder was co-director of the massive Thyssen-Hu@autte
foundry along with Johann Groeninger, Prescott Bush's New York bank
partner.  Kurt von Schroeder was treasurer of the support organization for
the Nazi Party's private armies, to which Friedrich Flick contributed.
Kurt von Schroeder and Montagu Norman's prote@aage@aa Hjalmar Schacht
together made the final arrangements for Hitler to enter the
government.@s2@s5

Baron Rudolph von Schroeder was vice president and director of the
Hamburg-Amerika Line. Long an intimate contact of Averell Harriman's in
Germany, Baron Rudolph sent his grandson Baron Johann Rudolph for a tour
of Prescott Bush's Brown Brothers Harriman offices in New York City in
December 1932--on the eve of their Hitler-triumph.@s2@s6

Certain actions taken directly by the Harriman-Bush shipping line in 1932
must be ranked among the gravest acts of treason in this century. 

The U.S. embassy in Berlin reported back to Washington that the `` costly
election campaigns '' and `` the cost of maintaining a private army of
300,000 to 400,000 men '' had raised questions as to the Nazis' financial
backers.  The constitutional government of the German republic moved to
defend national freedom by ordering the Nazi Party private armies
disbanded. The U.S.  embassy reported that the Hamburg-Amerika Line was
purchasing and distributing propaganda attacks against the German
government, for attempting this last-minute crackdown on Hitler's
forces.@s2@s7

Thousands of German opponents of Hitlerism were shot or intimidated by
privately armed Nazi Brown Shirts. In this connection we note that the
original `` Merchant of Death, '' Samuel Pryor, was a founding director of
both the Union Banking Corp. and the American Ship and Commerce Corp.
Since Mr.  Pryor was executive committee chairman of Remington Arms and a
central figure in the world's private arms traffic, his use to the Hitler
project was enhanced as the Bush family's partner in Nazi Party banking
and trans-Atlantic shipping.

The U.S. Senate arms-traffic investigators probed Remington after it was
joined in a cartel agreement on explosives to the Nazi firm I.G. Farben. 
Looking at the period leading up to Hitler's seizure of power, the
Senators found that `` German political associations, like the Nazi and
others, are nearly all armed with American ... guns.... Arms of all kinds
coming from America are transshipped in the Scheldt to river barges before
the vessels arrive in Antwerp. They then can be carried through Holland
without police inspection or interference. The Hitlerists and Communists
are presumed to get arms in this manner. The principal arms coming from
America are Thompson submachine guns and revolvers. The number is great.
''@s2@s8

The beginning of the Hitler regime brought some bizarre changes to the
Hamburg-Amerika Line--and more betrayals.

Prescott Bush's American Ship and Commerce Corp. notified Max Warburg of
Hamburg, Germany, on March 7, 1933, that Warburg was to be the
corporation's official, designated representative on the board of
Hamburg-Amerika.@s2@s9

Max Warburg replied on March 27, 1933, assuring his American sponsors that
the Hitler government was good for Germany: `` For the last few years
business was considerably better than we had anticipated, but a reaction
is making itself felt for some months. We are actually suffering also
under the very active propaganda against Germany, caused by some
unpleasant circumstances. These occurrences were the natural consequence
of the very excited election campaign, but were extraordinarily
exaggerated in the foreign press. The Government is firmly resolved to
maintain public peace and order in Germany, and I feel perfectly convinced
in this respect that there is no cause for any alarm whatsoever. ''@s3@s0

This seal of approval for Hitler, coming from a famous Jew, was just what
Harriman and Bush required, for they anticipated rather serious `` alarm
'' inside the U.S.A. against their Nazi operations.

On March 29, 1933, two days after Max's letter to Harriman, Max's son,
Erich Warburg, sent a cable to his cousin Frederick M. Warburg, a director
of the Harriman railroad system. He asked Frederick to `` use all your
influence '' to stop all anti-Nazi activity in America, including ``
atrocity news and unfriendly propaganda in foreign press, mass meetings,
etc. '' Frederick cabled back to Erich: `` No responsible groups here
[are] urging [a] boycott [of] German goods[,] merely excited individuals.
'' Two days after that, On March 31, 1933, the American-Jewish Committee,
controlled by the Warburgs, and the B'nai B'rith, heavily influenced by
the Sulzbergers (New York Times), issued a formal, official joint
statement of the two organizations, counseling `` that no American boycott
against Germany be encouraged, '' and advising `` that no further mass
meetings be held or similar forms of agitation be employed.  ''@s3@s1

The American Jewish Committee and the B'nai B'rith (mother of the ``
Anti-Defamation League '') continued with this hardline,
no-attack-on-Hitler stance all through the 1930s, blunting the fight
mounted by many Jews and other anti-fascists.

Thus the decisive interchange reproduced above, taking place entirely
within the orbit of the Harriman/Bush firm, may explain something of the
relationship of George Bush to American Jewish and Zionist leaders. Some
of them, in close cooperation with his family, played an ugly part in the
drama of Naziism. Is this why `` professional Nazi-hunters '' have never
discovered how the Bush family made its money?

The executive board of the Hamburg Amerika Line (Hapag) met jointly with
the North German Lloyd Company board in Hamburg on Sept. 5, 1933. Under
official Nazi supervision, the two firms were merged. Prescott Bush's
American Ship and Commerce Corp. installed Christian J. Beck, a long-time
Harriman executive, as manager of freight and operations in North America
for the new joint Nazi shipping lines (Hapag-Lloyd) on Nov. 4, 1933.

According to testimony of officials of the companies before Congress in
1934, a supervisor from the Nazi Labor Front rode with every ship of the
Harriman-Bush line; employees of the New York offices were directly
organized into the Nazi Labor Front organization; Hamburg-Amerika provided
free passage to individuals going abroad for Nazi propaganda purposes; and
the line subsidized pro-Nazi newspapers in the U.S.A., as it had done in
Germany against the constitutional German government.@s3@s2

In mid-1936, Prescott Bush's American Ship and Commerce Corp. cabled M.M. 
Warburg, asking Warburg to represent the company's heavy share interest at
the forthcoming Hamburg-Amerika stockholders meeting. The Warburg office
replied with the information that `` we represented you '' at the
stockholders meeting and `` exercised on your behalf your voting power for
Rm [gold marks] 3,509,600 Hapag stock deposited with us. ''

The Warburgs transmitted a letter received from Emil Helfferich, German
chief executive of both Hapag-Lloyd and of the Standard Oil subsidiary in
Nazi Germany: `` It is the intention to continue the relations with Mr. 
Harriman on the same basis as heretofore.... '' In a colorful gesture,
Hapag's Nazi chairman Helfferich sent the line's president across the
Atlantic on a Zeppelin to confer with their New York string-pullers.

After the meeting with the Zeppelin passenger, the Harriman-Bush office
replied: `` I am glad to learn that Mr. Hellferich [sic] has stated that
relations between the Hamburg American Line and ourselves will be
continued on the same basis as heretofore. ''@s3@s3

Two months before moving against Prescott Bush's Union Banking
Corporation, the U. S. government ordered the seizure of all property of
the Hamburg-Amerika Line and North German Lloyd, under the Trading with
the Enemy Act. The investigators noted in the pre-seizure report that
Christian J.  Beck was still acting as an attorney representing the Nazi
firm.@s3@s4

In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement
was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the
U.S.A.  The Harriman International Co., led by Averell Harriman's first
cousin Oliver, was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to
conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States.@s3@s5

This pact had been negotiated in Berlin between Hitler's economics
minister, Hjalmar Schacht, and John Foster Dulles, international attorney
for dozens of Nazi enterprises, with the counsel of Max Warburg and Kurt
von Schroeder.

John Foster Dulles would later be U.S. Secretary of State, and the great
power in the Republican Party of the 1950s. Foster's friendship and that
of his brother Allen (head of the Central Intelligence Agency), greatly
aided Prescott Bush to become the Republican U.S. Senator from
Connecticut. And it was to be of inestimable value to George Bush, in his
ascent to the heights of `` covert action government, '' that both of
these Dulles brothers were the lawyers for the Bush family's far-flung
enterprise.

Throughout the 1930s, John Foster Dulles arranged debt restructuring for
German firms under a series of decrees issued by Adolf Hitler. In these
deals, Dulles struck a balance between the interest owed to selected,
larger investors, and the needs of the growing Nazi war-making apparatus
for producing tanks, poison gas, etc.

Dulles wrote to Prescott Bush in 1937 concerning one such arrangement. The
German-Atlantic Cable Company, owning Nazi Germany's only telegraph
channel to the United States, had made debt and management agreements with
the Walker-Harriman bank during the 1920s. A new decree would now void
those agreements, which had originally been reached with non-Nazi
corporate officials. Dulles asked Bush, who managed these affairs for
Averell Harriman, to get Averell's signature on a letter to Nazi
officials, agreeing to the changes. Dulles wrote: 

Sept. 22, 1937 

Mr. Prescott S. Bush 

59 Wall Street, New York, N.Y. 

Dear Press, 

I have looked over the letter of the German-American [sic] Cable Company
to Averell Harriman.... It would appear that the only rights in the matter
are those which inure in the bankers and that no legal embarrassment would
result, so far as the bondholders are concerned, by your acquiescence in
the modification of the bankers' agreement.

Sincerely yours, 

John Foster Dulles 

Dulles enclosed a proposed draft reply, Bush got Harriman's signature, and
the changes went through.@s3@s6

In conjunction with these arrangements, the German Atlantic Cable Company
attempted to stop payment on its debts to smaller American bondholders.
The money was to be used instead for arming the Nazi state, under a decree
of the Hitler government. 

Despite the busy efforts of Bush and Dulles, a New York court decided that
this particular Hitler `` law '' was invalid in the United States; small
bondholders, not parties to deals between the bankers and the Nazis, were
entitled to get paid.@s3@s7

In this and a few other of the attempted swindles, the intended victims
came out with their money. But the Nazi financial and political
reorganization went ahead to its tragic climax.

For his part in the Hitler revolution, Prescott Bush was paid a fortune. 

This is the legacy he left to his son, President George Bush. 

An Important Historical Note:

How the Harrimans Hired Hitler 

It was not inevitable that millions would be slaughtered under fascism and
in World War II. At certain moments of crisis, crucial pro-Nazi decisions
were made outside of Germany. These decisions for pro-Nazi actions were
more aggressive than the mere `` appeasement '' which Anglo-American
historians later preferred to discuss.

Private armies of 300,000 to 400,000 terrorists aided the Nazis' rise to
power. W.A. Harriman's Hamburg-Amerika Line intervened against Germany's
1932 attempt to break them up.

The 1929-31 economic collapse bankrupted the Wall-Street-backed German
Steel Trust. When the German government took over the Trust's stock
shares, interests associated with Konrad Adenauer and the anti-Nazi
Catholic Center Party attempted to acquire the shares. But the
Anglo-Americans--Montagu Norman, and the Harriman-Bush bank--made sure
that their Nazi puppet Fritz Thyssen regained control over the shares and
the Trust. Thyssen's bankrolling of Hitler could then continue unhindered.

Unpayable debts crushed Germany in the 1920s, reparations required by the
Versailles agreements. Germany was looted by the London-New York banking
system, and Hitler's propaganda exploited this German debt burden.

But immediately after Germany came under Hitler's dictatorship, the
Anglo-American financiers granted debt relief, which freed funds to be
used for arming the Nazi state.

The North German Lloyd steamship line, which was merged with
Hamburg-Amerika Line, was one of the companies which stopped debt payments
under a Hitler decree arranged by John Foster Dulles and Hjalmar Schacht.

Kuhn Loeb and Co.'s Felix Warburg carried out the Hitler finance plan in
New York. Kuhn Loeb asked North German Lloyd bondholders to accept new
lower interest steamship bonds, issued by Kuhn Loeb, in place of the
better pre-Hitler bonds. 

The Opposition

New York attorney Jacob Chaitkin, father of coauthor Anton Chaitkin, took
the cases of many different bondholders who rejected the swindle by
Harriman, Bush, Warburg, and Hitler. Representing a women who was owed $30
on an old steamship bond--and opposing John Foster Dulles in New York
municipal court--Chaitkin threatened a writ from the sheriff, tying up the
30,000 ton transatlantic liner Europa until the client received her $30.
(New York Times, January 10, 1934, p. 31 col. 3).

The American Jewish Congress hired Jacob Chaitkin as the legal director of
the boycott against Nazi Germany. The American Federation of Labor
cooperated with Jewish and other groups in the anti-import boycott. On the
other side, virtually all the Nazi trade with the United States was under
the supervision of the Harriman interests and functionaries such as
Prescott Bush, father of President George Bush.

Meanwhile, the Warburgs demanded that American Jews not `` agitate ''
against the Hitler government, or join the organized boycott. The
Warburgs' decision was carried out by the American Jewish Committee and
the B'nai B'rith, who opposed the boycott as the Nazi military state grew
increasingly powerful.

The historical coverup on these events is so tight that virtually the only
expose@aa of the Warburgs came in journalist John L. Spivak's `` Wall
Street's Fascist Conspiracy, '' in the pro-communist New Masses periodical
(Jan. 29 and Feb. 5, 1934). Spivak pointed out that the Warburgs
controlled the American Jewish Committee, which opposed the anti-Nazi
boycott, while their Kuhn Loeb and Co. had underwritten Nazi shipping; and
he exposed the financing of pro-fascist political activities by the
Warburgs and their partners and allies, many of whom were bigwigs in the
American Jewish Committee and B'nai B'rith.

Given where the Spivak piece appeared, it is not surprising that Spivak
called Warburg an ally of the Morgan Bank, but made no mention of Averell
Harriman.  Mr. Harriman, after all, was a permanent hero of the Soviet
Union.

John L. Spivak later underwent a curious transformation, himself joining
the coverup. In 1967, he wrote an autobiography (A Man in His Time, New
York:  Horizon Press), which praises the American Jewish Committee. The
pro-fascism of the Warburgs does not appear in the book. The former ``
rebel '' Spivak also praises the action arm of the B'nai B'rith, the
Anti-Defamation League. Pathetically, he comments favorably that the
League has spy files on the American populace which it shares with
government agencies. 

Thus is history erased; and those decisions, which direct history into one
course or another, are lost to the knowledge of the current generation. 


Return to the Table of Contents 


NOTES:

1. Office of Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order No. 248. The order
was signed by Leo T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian, executed October
20, 1942; F.R. Doc. 42-11568; Filed, November 6, 1942, 11:31 A.M.; 7 Fed.
Reg. 9097 (Nov. 7, 1942). See also the New York City Directory of
Directors (available at the Library of Congress). The volumes for the
1930s and 1940s list Prescott Bush as a director of Union Banking
Corporation for the years 1934 through 1943.

2. Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 259: Seamless Steel
Equipment Corporation; Vesting Order No. 261: Holland-American Trading
Corp.

3. Alien Property Custodian Vesting Order No. 370: Silesian-American Corp. 

4. The New York Times on December 16, 1944, ran a five-paragraph page 25
article on actions of the New York State Banking Department. Only the last
sentence refers to the Nazi bank, as follows:  `` The Union Banking
Corporation, 39 Broadway, New York, has received authority to change its
principal place of business to 120 Broadway. ''

The Times omitted the fact that the Union Banking Corporation had been
seized by the government for trading with the enemy, and even the fact
that 120 Broadway was the address of the government's Alien Property
Custodian.

5. Fritz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler, 1941, reprinted in (Port Washington,
N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1972), p. 133. Thyssen says his contributions began
with 100,000 marks given in October 1923, for Hitler's attempted `` putsch
'' against the constitutional government. 

6. Confidential memorandum from U.S. embassy, Berlin, to the U.S. 
Secretary of State, April 20, 1932, on microfilm in Confidential Reports
of U.S. State Dept., 1930s, Germany, at major U.S. libraries.

7. Oct. 5, 1942, Memorandum to the Executive Committee of the Office of
Alien Property Custodian, stamped CONFIDENTIAL, from the Division of
Investigation and Research, Homer Jones, Chief.  Now declassified in
United States National Archives, Suitland, Maryland annex. See Record
Group 131, Alien Property Custodian, investigative reports, in file box
relating to Vesting Order No. 248.

8. Elimination of German Resources for War: Hearings Before a Subcommittee
of the Committee on Military Affairs, United States Senate, Seventy-Ninth
Congress; Part 5, Testimony of [the United States] Treasury Department,
July 2, 1945. P. 507: Table of Vereinigte Stahlwerke output, figures are
percent of German total as of 1938; Thyssen organization including Union
Banking Corporation pp. 727-31.

9. Robert Sobel, The Life and Times of Dillon Read (New York: 
Dutton-Penguin, 1991), pp. 92-111. The Dillon Read firm cooperated in the
development of Sobel's book.

10. George Walker to Averell Harriman, Aug. 11, 1927, in the W. Averell
Harriman papers at the Library of Congress (designated hereafter WAH
papers). 

11. `` Iaccarino '' to G. H. Walker, RCA Radiogram Sept. 12, 1927. The
specific nature of their business with Mussolini is not explained in
correspondence available for public access.

12. Andrew Boyle, Montagu Norman (London: Cassell, 1967). 

Sir Henry Clay, Lord Norman (London, MacMillan & Co., 1957), pp. 18, 57,
70-71.

John A. Kouwenhouven, Partners in Banking ... Brown Brothers Harriman
(Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1969). 

13. Coordination of much of the Hitler project took place at a single New
York address. The Union Banking Corporation had been set up by George
Walker at 39 Broadway. Management of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, carried out
through Harriman's American Ship and Commerce Corp., was also set up by
George Walker at 39 Broadway.

14. Interrogation of Fritz Thyssen, EF/Me/1 of Sept. 4, 1945 in U.S. 
Control Council records, photostat on page 167 in Anthony Sutton, An
Introduction to The Order (Billings, Mt.: Liberty House Press, 1986).

15. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression--Supplement B, by the Office of United
States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, United States
Government Printing Office, (Washington: 1948), pp.  1597, 1686.

16. `` Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation - [minutes of the] Meeting
of Board of Directors, '' Oct. 31, 1930 (Harriman papers, Library of
Congress), shows Averell Harriman as Chairman of the Board.

Prescott Bush to W.A. Harriman, Memorandum Dec. 19, 1930 on their Harriman
Fifteen Corp. 

Annual Report of United Konigs and Laura Steel and Iron Works for the year
1930 (Harriman papers, Library of Congress) lists `` Dr. Friedrich Flick
... Berlin '' and `` William Averell Harriman ... New York '' on the Board
of Directors. 

`` Harriman Fifteen Corporation Securities Position February 28, 1931, ''
Harriman papers, Library of Congress. This report shows Harriman Fifteen
Corporation holding 32,576 shares in Silesian Holding Co. V.T.C. worth (in
scarce depression dollars) $1,628,800, just over half the value of the
Harriman Fifteen Corporation's total holdings.

The New York City Directory of Directors volumes for the 1930s (available
at the Library of Congress) show Prescott Sheldon Bush and W. Averell
Harriman as the directors of Harriman Fifteen Corp.

`` Appointments, '' (three typed pages) marked `` Noted May 18 1931
W.A.H., '' (among the papers from Prescott Bush's New York Office of Brown
Brothers Harriman, Harriman papers, Library of Congress), lists a meeting
between Averell Harriman and Friedrich Flick in Berlin at 4:00 P.M.,
Wednesday April 22, 1931. This was followed immediately by a meeting with
Wilhelm Cuno, chief executive of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. 

The `` Report To the Stockholders of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, ''
Oct. 19, 1933 (in the Harriman papers, Library of Congress) names G.H. 
Walker as president of the corporation. It shows the Harriman Fifteen
Corporation's address as 1 Wall Street--the location of G.H. Walker and
Co.

17. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression--Supplement B, op. cit., p. 1686. 

18. Jim Flaherty (a BBH manager, Prescott Bush's employee), March 19, 1934
to W.A. Harriman.

          `` Dear Averell: 

          In Roland's absence Pres[cott] thought it advisable for me to
let you know that we received the following cable from [our European
representative] Rossi dated March 17th [relating to conflict
          with the Polish government]....''

19. Harriman Fifteen Corporation notice to stockholders Jan. 7, 1935,
under the name of George Walker, President.

20. Order No. 370: Silesian-American Corp. Executed Nov. 17, 1942. Signed
by Leo T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian. F.R. Doc. 42-14183; Filed
Dec. 31, 1942, 11:28 A.M.; 8 Fed. 



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