WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

"Science," the Greek word for knowledge, when appended to the word "political," creates what seems like an oxymoron. For who could claim to know politics? More complicated than any game, most people who play it become addicts and die without understanding what they were addicted to. The rest of us suffer under their malpractice as our "leaders." A truer case of the blind leading the blind could not be found. Plumb the depths of confusion here.

Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

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CHAPTER SEVEN: Who Financed Adolf Hitler?

The funding of Hitler and the Nazi movement has yet to be explored in exhaustive depth. The only published examination of Hitler's personal finances is an article by Oron James Hale, "Adolph Hitler: Taxpayer, [1] which records Adolph's brushes with the German tax authorities before he became Reichskanzler. In the 1920s Hitler presented himself to the German tax man as merely an impoverished writer living on bank loans, with an automobile bought on credit. Unfortunately, the original records used by Hale do not yield the source of Hitler's income, loans, or credit, and German law "did not require self-employed or professional persons to disclose in detail the sources of income or the nature of services rendered." [2] Obviously the funds for the automobiles, private secretary Rudolf Hess, another assistant, a chauffeur, and expenses incurred by political activity, came from somewhere. But, like Leon Trotsky's 1917 stay in New York, it is hard to reconcile Hitler's known expenditures with the precise source of his income.

Some Early Hitler Backers

We do know that prominent European and American industrialists were sponsoring all manner of totalitarian political groups at that time, including Communists and various Nazi groups. The U.S. Kilgore Committee records that:

By 1919 Krupp was already giving financial aid to one of the reactionary political groups which sowed the seed of the present Nazi ideology. Hugo Stinnes was an early contributor to the Nazi Party (National Socialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei). By 1924 other prominent industrialists and financiers, among them Fritz Thyssen, Albert Voegler, Adolph [sic] Kirdorf, and Kurt von Schroder, were secretly giving substantial sums to the Nazis. In 1931 members of the coalowners' association which Kirdorf headed pledged themselves to pay 50 pfennigs for each ton of coal sold, the money to go to the organization which Hitler was building. [3]


Hitler's 1924 Munich trial yielded evidence that the Nazi Party received $20,000 from Nuremburg industrialists. The most interesting name from this period is that of Emil Kirdorf, who had earlier acted as conduit for financing German involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution. [4] Kirdorf's role in financing Hitler was, in his own words:

In 1923 I came into contact for the first time with the National-Socialist movement .... I first heard the Fuehrer in the Essen Exhibition Hall. His clear exposition completely convinced and overwhelmed me. In 1927 I first met the Fuehrer personally. I travelled to Munich and there had a conversation with the Fuehrer in the Bruckmann home. During four and a half hours Adolf Hitler explained to me his programme in detail. I then begged the Fuehrer to put together the lecture he had given me in the form of a pamphlet. I then distributed this pamphlet in my name in business and manufacturing circles.

Since then I have placed myself completely at the disposition of his movement. Shortly after our Munich conversation, and as a result of the pamphlet which the Fuehrer composed and I distributed, a number of meetings took place between the Fuehrer and leading personalities in the field of industry. For the last time before the taking over of power, the leaders of industry met in my house together with Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Goering and other leading personalities of the party. [5]


In 1925 the Hugo Stinnes family contributed funds to convert the Nazi weekly Volkischer Beobachter to a daily publication. Putzi Hanfstaengl, Franklin D. Roosevelt's friend and protegé, provided the remaining funds. [6] Table 7-1 summarizes presently known financial contributions and the business associations of contributors from the United States. Putzi is not listed in Table 7-1 as he was neither industrialist nor financier.

In the early 1930s financial assistance to Hitler began to flow more readily. There took place in Germany a series of meetings, irrefutably documented in several sources, between German industrialists, Hitler himself, and more often Hitler's representatives Hjalmar Schacht and Rudolf Hess. The critical point is that the German industrialists financing Hitler were predominantly directors of cartels with American associations, ownership, participation, or some form of subsidiary connection. The Hitler backers were not, by and large, firms of purely German origin, or representative of German family business. Except for Thyssen and Kirdoff, in most cases they were the German multi-national firms — i.e., I.G. Farben, A.E.G., DAPAG, etc. These multi-nationals had been built up by American loans in the 1920s, and in the early 1930s had American directors and heavy American financial participation.

One flow of foreign political funds not considered here is that reported from the European-based Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil's great competitor in the 20s and 30s, and the giant brainchild of Anglo-Dutch businessman Sir Henri Deterding. It has been widely asserted that Henri Deterding personally financed Hitler. This argument is made, for instance, by biographer Glyn Roberts in The Most Powerful Man in the World. Roberts notes that Deterding was impressed with Hitler as early as 1921:

...and the Dutch press reported that, through the agent Georg Bell, he [Deterding] had placed at Hitler's disposal, while the party was "still in long clothes," no less than four million guilders. [7]


It was reported (by Roberts) that in 1931 Georg Bell, Deterding's agent, attended meetings of Ukrainian Patriots in Paris "as joint delegate of Hitler and Deterding." [8] Roberts also reports:

Deterding was accused, as Edgar Ansell Mowrer testifies in his Germany Puts the Clock Back, of putting up a large sum of money for the Nazis on the understanding that success would give him a more favored position in the German oil market. On other occasions, figures as high as £55,000,000 were mentioned. [9]


Biographer Roberts really found Deterding's strong anti-Bolshevism distasteful, and rather than present hard evidence of funding he is inclined to assume rather than prove that Deterding was pro-Hitler. But pro-Hitlerism is not a necessary consequence of anti-Bolshevism; in any event Roberts offers no proof of finance, and hard evidence of Deterding's involvement was not found by this author.

Mowrer's book contains neither index nor footnotes as to the source of his information and Roberts has no specific evidence for his accusations. There is circumstantial evidence that Deterding was pro-Nazi. He later went to live in Hitler's Germany and increased his share of the German petroleum market. So there may have been some contributions, but these have not been proven.

Similarly, in France (on January 11, 1932), Paul Faure, a member of the Chambre des Députés, accused the French industrial firm of Schneider-Creuzot of financing Hitler — and incidentally implicated Wall Street in other financing channels. [10]

The Schneider group is a famous firm of French armaments manufacturers. After recalling the Schneider influence in establishment of Fascism in Hungary and its extensive international armaments operations, Paul Fauré turns to Hitler, and quotes from the French paper LeJournal, "that Hitler had received 300,000 Swiss gold francs" from subscriptions opened in Holland under the case of a university professor named von Bissing. The Skoda plant at Pilsen, stated Paul Fauré, was controlled by the French Schneider family, and it was the Skoda directors von Duschnitz and von Arthaber who made the subscriptions to Hitler. Fauré concluded:

. . . I am disturbed to see the directors of Skoda, controlled by Schneider, subsidizing the electoral campaign of M. Hitler; I am disturbed to see your firms, your financiers, your industrial cartels unite themselves with the most nationalistic of Germans ....


Again, no hard evidence was found for this alleged flow of Hitler funds.

Fritz Thyssen and W.A. Harriman Company of New York

Another elusive case of reported financing of Hitler is that of Fritz Thyssen, the German steel magnate who associated himself with the Nazi movement in the early 20s. When interrogated in 1945 under Project Dustbin, [11] Thyssen recalled that he was approached in 1923 by General Ludendorf at the time of French evacuation of the Ruhr. Shortly after this meeting Thyssen was introduced to Hitler and provided funds for the Nazis through General Ludendorf. In 1930-1931 Emil Kirdorf approached Thyssen and subsequently sent Rudolf Hess to negotiate further funding for the Nazi Party. This time Thyssen arranged a credit of 250,000 marks at the Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. at 18 Zuidblaak in Rotterdam, Holland, founded in 1918 with H.J. Kouwenhoven and D.C. Schutte as managing partners. [12] This bank was a subsidiary of the August Thyssen Bank of Germany (formerly von der Heydt's Bank A.G.). It was Thyssen's personal banking operation, and it was affiliated with the W. A. Harriman financial interests in New York. Thyssen reported to his Project Dustbin interrogators that:

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. [13]


Thyssen's book I Paid Hitler, published in 1941, was purported to be written by Fritz Thyssen himself, although Thyssen denies authorship. The book claims that funds for Hitler — about one million marks — came mainly from Thyssen himself. I Paid Hitler has other unsupported assertions, for example that Hitler was actually descended from an illegitimate child of the Rothschild family. Supposedly Hitler's grandmother, Frau Schickelgruber, had been a servant in the Rothschild household and while there became pregnant:

... an inquiry once ordered by the late Austrian chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, yielded some interesting results, owing to the fact that the dossiers of the police department of the Austro-Hungarian monarch were remarkably complete. [14]


This assertion concerning Hitler's illegitimacy is refuted entirely in a more solidly based book by Eugene Davidson, which implicates the Frankenberger family, not the Rothschild family.

In any event, and more relevant from our viewpoint, the August Thyssen front bank in Holland — i.e., the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. — controlled the Union Banking Corporation in New York. The Harrimans had a financial interest in, and E. Roland Harriman (Averell's brother) was a director of, this Union Banking Corporation. The Union Banking Corporation of New York City was a joint Thyssen-Harriman operation with the following directors in 1932: [15]

E. Roland HARRIMAN / Vice president of W. A. Harriman & Co., New York

H.J. KOUWENHOVEN / Nazi banker, managing partner of August Thyssen Bank and Bank voor Handel Scheepvaart N.V. (the transfer bank for Thyssen's funds)

J. G. GROENINGEN / Vereinigte Stahlwerke (the steel cartel which also funded Hitler)

C. LIEVENSE / President, Union Banking Corp., New York City

E. S. JAMES / Partner Brown Brothers, later Brown Brothers, Harriman & Co.


TABLE 7-1: FINANCIAL LINKS BETWEEN U.S. INDUSTRIALISTS AND ADOLF HITLER

Date / American Bankers and Industrialists / U.S. Affiliated Firm / -- / German Source / -- / Intermediary for Funds/Agent

1923 / Henry FORD / FORD MOTOR COMPANY / -- / -- / -- / --

1931 / E.R. HARRIMAN / UNION BANKING CORP / -- / Fritz THYSSEN / 250,000 RM / Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. (Subsidiary of August Thyssen Bank)

1932-3 / -- / Flick (a director of AEG) / -- / Friedrich FLICK / 150,000 RM / Direct to NSDAP

February-March 1933 / -- / NONE / -- / Emil KIRDORF / 600,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand" a/c at Delbrück Schickler Bank

February-March 1933 / -- / Edsel B. FORD C.E. MITCHELL Walter TEAGLE Paul M. WARBURG / AMERICAN I.G. / -- / I.G. FARBEN / 400,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand"

February-March 1933 / -- / NONE / -- / Reichsverband der Automobilindustrie / 100,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand"

February-March 1933 / Gerard SWOPE Owen D. YOUNG C.H. MINOR E. Arthur BALDWIN / INTERNATIONAL GENERAL ELECTRIC / 25 percent / A.E.G./ 60,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand"

-- / -- / NONE / -- / DEMAG / 50,000 RM / --

February-March 1933 / Owen D. YOUNG / INTERNATIONAL GENERAL ELECTRIC / 16-2/3 percent / OSRAM G.m.b.H. / 40,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand"

February-March 1933 / Sosthenes BEHN / I.T.T. / -- / Telefunken / 35,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand"

February-March 1933 / -- / NONE / Karl Herrman / 300,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand"

February-March 1933 / -- / NONE / -- / A. Steinke (Director of BYBUAG) / 200,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand"

February-March 1933 / -- / NONE / -- / Karl Lange (Machine industry) / 50,000 RM / "Nationale Treuhand"

February-March 1933 / -- / NONE / -- / F. Springorum(Hoesch A.G. / 36,000 RM / Nationale Treuhand"

February-March 1933 / Edsel B. FORD / Ford Motor Co. / -- / Carl BOSCH (I.G. Farben & Ford Motor A.G.) / -- / --

1932-1944 / Walter TEAGLE J.A. MOFFETT W.S. FARISH / Standard Oil of N.J. / 94 percent / Emil HELFFRICH (German-American Petroleum Co) / -- / Heinrich Himmler S.S. via Keppler's Circle

1932-1944 / Sosthenes BEHN / I.T.T. / -- / Kurt von SCHRÖDER Mix & Genest Lorenz / -- / Heinrich Himmler S.S. via Keppler's Circle


Thyssen arranged a credit of 250,000 marks for Hitler, through this Dutch bank affiliated with the Harrimans. Thyssen's book, later repudiated, states that as much as one million marks came from Thyssen.

Thyssen's U.S. partners were, of course, prominent members of the Wall Street financial establishment. Edward Henry Harriman, the nineteenth-century railroad magnate, had two sons, W. Averell Harriman (born in 1891), and E. Roland Harriman (born in 1895). In 1917 W. Averell Harriman was a director of Guaranty Trust Company and he was involved in the Bolshevik Revolution. [16] According to his biographer, Averell started at the bottom of the career ladder as a clerk and section hand after leaving Yale in 1913, then "he moved steadily forward to positions of increasing responsibility in the fields of transportation and finance. [17] In addition to his directorship in Guaranty Trust, Harriman formed the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation in 1917, which soon became the largest merchant fleet under American flag. This fleet was disposed of in 1925 and Harriman entered the lucrative Russian market. [18]

In winding up these Russian deals in 1929, Averell Harriman received a windfall profit of $1 million from the usually hard-headed Soviets, who have a reputation of giving nothing away without some present or later quid pro quo. Concurrently with these successful moves in international finance, Averell Harriman has always been attracted by so-called "public" service. In 1913 Harriman's "public" service began with an appointment to the Palisades Park Commission. In 1933 Harriman was appointed chairman of the New York State Committee of Employment, and in 1934 became Administrative Officer of Roosevelt's NRA — the Mussolini-like brainchild of General Electric's Gerard Swope. [19] There followed a stream of "public" offices, first the Lend Lease program, then as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, later as Secretary of Commerce.

By contrast, E. Roland Harriman confined his activities to private business in international finance without venturing, as did brother Averell, into "public" service. In 1922 Roland and Averell formed W. A. Harriman & Company. Still later Roland became chairman of the board of Union Pacific Railroad and a director of Newsweek magazine, Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, a member of the board of governors of the American Red Cross, and a member of the American Museum of Natural History.

Nazi financier Hendrik Jozef Kouwenhoven, Roland Harriman's fellow-director at Union Banking Corporation in New York, was managing director of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. (BHS) of Rotterdam. In 1940 the BHS held approximately $2.2 million assets in the Union Banking Corporation, which in turn did most of its business with BHS. [20] In the 1930s Kouwenhoven was also a director of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke A.G., the steel cartel founded with Wall Street funds in the mid-1920s. Like Baron Schroder, he was a prominent Hitler supporter.

Another director of the New York Union Banking Corporation was Johann Groeninger, a German subject with numerous industrial and financial affiliations involving Vereinigte Stahlwerke, the August Thyssen group, and a directorship of August Thyssen Hutte A.G. [21]

This affiliation and mutual business interest between Harriman and the Thyssen interests does not suggest that the Harrimans directly financed Hitler. On the other hand, it does show that the Harrimans were intimately connected with prominent Nazis Kouwenhoven and Groeninger and a Nazi front bank, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. There is every reason to believe that the Harrimans knew of Thyssen's support for the Nazis. In the case of the Harrimans, it is important to bear in mind their long-lasting and intimate relationship with the Soviet Union and the Harriman's position at the center of Roosevelt's New Deal and the Democratic Party. The evidence suggests that some members of the Wall Street elite are connected with, and certainly have influence with, all significant political groupings in the contemporary world socialist spectrum — Soviet socialism, Hitler's national socialism, and Roosevelt's New Deal socialism.

Financing Hitler in the March 1933 General Election

Putting the Georg Bell-Deterding and the Thyssen-Harriman cases to one side, we now examine the core of Hitler's backing. In May 1932 the so-called "Kaiserhof Meeting" took place between Schmitz of I.G. Farben, Max Ilgner of American I.G. Farben, Kiep of Hamburg-America Line, and Diem of the German Potash Trust. More than 500,000 marks was raised at this meeting and deposited to the credit of Rudolf Hess in the Deutsche Bank. It is noteworthy, in light of the "Warburg myth" described in Chapter Ten that Max Ilgner of the American I.G. Farben contributed 100,000 RM, or one-fifth of the total. The "Sidney Warburg" book claims Warburg involvement in the funding of Hitler, and Paul Warburg was a director of American I.G. Farben [22] while Max Warburg was a director of I.G. Farben.

There exists irrefutable documentary evidence of a further role of international bankers and industrialists in the financing of the Nazi Party and the Volkspartie for the March 1933 German election. A total of three million Reichmarks was subscribed by prominent firms and businessmen, suitably "washed" through an account at the Delbruck Schickler Bank, and then passed into the hands of Rudolf Hess for use by Hitler and the NSDAP. This transfer of funds was followed by the Reichstag fire, abrogation of constitutional rights, and consolidation of Nazi power. Access to the Reichstag by the arsonists was obtained through a tunnel from a house where Putzi Hanfstaengel was staying; the Reichstag fire itself was used by Hitler as a pretext to abolish constitutional rights. In brief, within a few weeks of the major funding of Hitler there was a linked sequence of major events: the financial contribution from prominent bankers and industrialists to the 1933 election, burning of the Reichstag, abrogation of constitutional rights, and subsequent seizure of power by the Nazi Party.

The fund-raising meeting was held February 20, 1933 in the home of Goering, who was then president of the Reichstag, with Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht acting as host.
Among those present, according to I.G. Farben's von Schnitzler, were:

Krupp von Bohlen, who, in the beginning of 1933, was president of the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie Reich Association of German Industry; Dr. Albert Voegler, the leading man of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke; Von Loewenfeld; Dr, Stein, head of the Gewerkschaft Auguste-Victoria, a mine which belongs to the IG. [23]


Hitler expounded his political views to the assembled businessmen in a lengthy two-and-one-half hour speech, using the threat of Communism and a Communist take-over to great effect:

It is not enough to say we do not want Communism in our economy. If we continue on our old political course, then we shall perish .... It is the noblest task of the leader to find ideals that are stronger than the factors that pull the people together. I recognized even while in the hospital that one had to search for new ideals conducive to reconstruction. I found them in nationalism, in the value of personality, and in the denial of reconciliation between nations ....

Now we stand before the last election. Regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat, even if the coming election does not bring about decision, one way or another. If the election does not decide, the decision must be brought about by other means. I have intervened in order to give the people once more the chance to decide their fate by themselves ....

There are only two possibilities, either to crowd back the opponent on constitutional grounds, and for this purpose once more this election; or a struggle will be conducted with other weapons, which may demand greater sacrifices. I hope the German people thus recognize the greatness of the hour. [24]


After Hitler had spoken, Krupp von Bohlen expressed the support of the assembled industrialists and bankers in the concrete form of a three-million-mark political fund. It turned out to be more than enough to acquire power, because 600,000 marks remained unexpended after the election.

Hjalmar Schacht organized this historic meeting. We have previously described Schacht's links with the United States: his father was cashier for the Berlin Branch of Equitable Assurance, and Hjalmar was intimately involved almost on a monthly basis with Wall Street.

The largest contributor to the fund was I.G. Farben, which committed itself for 80 percent (or 500,000 marks) of the total. Director A. Steinke, of BUBIAG (Braunkohlen-u. Brikett-Industrie A.G.), an I.G. Farben subsidiary, personally contributed another 200,000 marks. In brief, 45 percent of the funds for the 1933 election came from I.G. Farben. If we look at the directors of American I.G. Farben — the U.S. subsidiary of I.G. Farben — we get close to the roots of Wall Street involvement with Hitler. The board of American I.G. Farben at this time contained some of the most prestigious names among American industrialists: Edsel B. Ford of the Ford Motor Company, C.E. Mitchell of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Walter Teagle, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Georgia Warm Springs Foundation.

Paul M. Warburg, first director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and chairman of the Bank of Manhattan, was a Farben director and in Germany his brother Max Warburg was also a director of I.G, Farben. H. A. Metz of I.G. Farben was also a director of the Warburg's Bank of Manhattan. Finally, Carl Bosch of American I.G. Farben was also a director of Ford Motor Company A-G in Germany.

Three board members of American I.G. Farben were found guilty at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials: Max Ilgner, F. Ter Meer, and Hermann Schmitz. As we have noted, the American board members — Edsel Ford, C. E. Mitchell, Walter Teagle, and Paul Warburg — were not placed on trial at Nuremburg, and so far as the records are concerned, it appears that they were not even questioned about their knowledge of the 1933 Hitler fund.


The 1933 Political Contributions

Who were the industrialists and bankers who placed election funds at the disposal of the Nazi Party in 1933? The list of contributors and the amount of their contribution is as follows:

FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO HITLER: Feb. 23-Mar. 13, 1933:

(The Hjalmar Schacht account at Delbruck, Schickler Bank)

Political Contributions by Firms (with selected affiliated directors) / Amount Pledged / Percent of Firm Total

Verein fuer die Bergbaulichen Interessen (Kitdorf) / $600,000 / 45.8

I.G. Farbenindustrie (Edsel Ford, C.E. Mitchell, Walter Teagle, Paul Warburg) / 400,000 / 30.5

Automobile Exhibition, Berlin (Reichsverbund der Automobilindustrie S.V.) / 100,000 / 7.6

A.E.G., German General Electric (Gerard Swope, Owen Young, C.H. Minor, Arthur Baldwin) / 60,000 / 4.6

Demag / 50,000 / 3.8

Osram G.m.b.H. (Owen Young) / 40,000 / 3.0

Telefunken Gesellsehaft ruer drahtlose Telegraphic / 85,000 / 2.7

Accumulatoren-Fabrik A.G. (Quandt of A.E.G.) / 25,000 / 1.9

Total from industry / 1,310,000 / 99.9


Plus Political Contributions by Individual Businessmen:

Karl Hermann / 300,000

Director A. Steinke (BUBIAG-Braunkohlen—u. Brikett —Industrie A.G.) / 200,000

Dir. Karl Lange (Geschaftsfuhrendes Vostandsmitglied des Vereins Deutsches Maschinenbau—Anstalten) / 50,000

Dr. F. Springorum (Chairman: Eisen-und Stahlwerke Hoesch A.G.) / 36,000

Source: See Appendix for translation of original document.


How can we prove that these political payments actually took place?

The payments to Hitler in this final step on the road to dictatorial Naziism were made through the private bank of Delbruck SChickler. The Delbruck Schickler Bank was a subsidiary of Metallgesellschaft A.G. ("Metall"), an industrial giant, the largest non-ferrous metal company in Germany, and the dominant influence in the world's nonferrous metal trading. The principal shareholders of "Metall" were I.G. Farben and the British Metal Corporation. We might note incidentally that the British directors on the" Metall" Aufsichsrat were Walter Gardner (Amalgamated Metal Corporation) and Captain Oliver Lyttelton (also on the board of Amalgamated Metal and paradoxically later in World War II to become the British Minister of Production).

There exists among the Nuremburg Trial papers the original transfer slips from the banking division of I.G. Farben and other firms listed on page 110 to the Delbruck Schickler Bank in Berlin, informing the bank of the transfer of funds from Dresdner Bank, and other banks, to their Nationale Treuhand (National Trusteeship) account. This account was disbursed by Rudolf Hess for Nazi Party expenses during the election. Translation of the I.G. Farben transfer slip, selected as a sample, is as follows: [25]

Translation of I.G, Farben letter of February 27, 1933, advising of transfer of 400,000 Reichsmarks to National Trusteeship account:

I.G. FARBENINDUSTRIE AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT
Bank Department

27 February 1933

Firm: Delbruck Schickler & Co.,
BERLIN W.8
Mauerstrasse 63/65, Frankfurt (Main) 20
Our Ref: (Mention in Reply)
B./Goe.

We are informing you herewith that we have authorized the Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt/M., to pay you tomorrow forenoon: RM 400,000 which you will use in favor of the account "NATIONALE TREUHAND" (National Trusteeship).

Respectfully,

I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft
by Order:

(Signed) SELCK (Signed) BANGERT

By special delivery.26


At this juncture we should take note of the efforts that have been made to direct our attention away from American financiers (and German financiers connected with American-affiliated companies) who were, involved with the funding of Hitler. Usually the blame for financing Hitler has been exclusively placed upon Fritz Thyssen or Emil Kirdorf. In the case of Thyssen this blame was widely circulated in a book allegedly authored by Thyssen in the middle of World War II but later repudiated by him. [27] Why Thyssen would want to admit such actions before the defeat of Naziism is unexplained.

Emil Kirdorf, who died in 1937, was always proud of his association with the rise of Naziism. The attempt to limit Hitler financing to Thyssen and Kirdorf extended into the Nuremburg trials in 1946, and was challenged only by the Soviet delegate. Even the Soviet delegate was unwilling to produce evidence of American associations; this is not surprising because the Soviet Union depends on the goodwill of these same financiers to transfer much needed advanced Western technology to the U.S.S.R.

At Nuremburg, statements were made and allowed to go unchallenged which were directly contrary to the known direct evidence presented above. For example, Buecher, Director General of German General Electric, was absolved from sympathy for Hitler:

Thyssen has confessed his error like a man and has courageously paid a heavy penalty for it. On the other side stand men like Reusch of the Gutehoffnungshuette, Karl Bosch, the late chairman of the I.G. Farben Aufsichtsrat, who would very likely have come to a sad end, had he not died in time. Their feelings were shared by the deputy chairman of the Aufsichtsrat of Kalle. The Siemens and AEG companies which, next to I.G. Farben, were the most powerful German concerns, and they were determined opponents of national socialism.

I know that this unfriendly attitude on the part of the Siemens concern to the Nazis resulted in the firm receiving rather rough treatment. The Director General of the AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitats Gesellschaft), Geheimrat Buecher, whom I knew from my stay in the colonies, was anything but a Nazi. I can assure General Taylor that it is certainly wrong to assert that the leading industrialists as such favored Hitler before his seizure of power. [28]


Yet on page 56 of this book we reproduce a document originating with General Electric, transferring General Electric funds to the National Trusteeship account controlled by Rudolf Hess on behalf of Hitler and used in the 1933 elections.

Similarly, von Schnitzler, who was present at the February 1933 meeting on behalf of I.G. Farben, denied I.G. Farben's contributions to the 1933 Nationale Treuhand:

I never heard again of the whole matter [that of financing Hitler], but I believe that either the buro of Goering or Schacht or the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie had asked the office of Bosch or Schmitz for payment of IG's share in the election fund. As I did not take the matter up again I not even at that time knew whether and which amount had been paid by the IG. According to the volume of the IG, I should estimate IG's share being something like 10 percent of the election fund, but as far as I know there is no evidence that I.G. Farben participated in the payments. [29]


As we have seen, the evidence is incontrovertible regarding political cash contributions to Hitler at the crucial point of the takeover of power in Germany — and Hitler's earlier speech to the industrialists clearly revealed that a coercive takeover was the premeditated intent.

We know exactly who contributed, how much, and through what channels. It is notable that the largest contributors — I.G. Farben, German General Electric (and its affiliated company Osram), and Thyssen — were affiliated with Wall Street financiers. These Wall Street financiers were at the heart of the financial elite and they were prominent in contemporary American politics. Gerard Swope of General Electric was author of Roosevelt's New Deal, Teagle was one of NRA's top administrators, Paul Warburg and his associates at American I.G. Farben were Roosevelt advisors. It is perhaps not an extraordinary coincidence that Roosevelt's New Deal — called a "fascist measure" by Herbert Hoover — should have so closely resembled Hitler's program for Germany, and that both Hitler and Roosevelt took power in the same month of the same year — March 1933.

_______________

Notes:

1. The American Historical Review, Volume LC, NO. 4, July. 1955. p, 830.

2. Ibid, fn. (2).

3. Elimination of German Resources, p. 648. The Albert Voegler mentioned in the Kilgore Committee list of early Hitler supporters was the German representative on the Dawes Plan Commission. Owen Young of General Electric (see Chapter Three) was a U.S. representative for the Dawes Plan and formulated its successor, the Young Plan.

4. Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, op. cit,

5. Preussiche Zettung, January 3, 1937.

6. See p. 116.

7. Glyn Roberts, The Most Powerful Man in the World, (New York: Covicl, Friede, 1938), p. 305.

8. Ibid., p. 313.

9. Ibid., p. 322.

10. See Chambre des Deputes — Debats, February 11, 1932, pp. 496-500.

11. U.S. Group Control Council (Germany, Office of the Director of Intelligence, Field Information Agency, Technical). Intelligence Report No. EF/ME/1,4 September 1945. "Examination of Dr. Fritz Thyssen," p, 13, Hereafter cited as Examination of Dr. Fritz Thyssen.

12. The Bank was known in Germany as Bank fur Handel und Schiff.

13. Examination of Dr. Fritz Thyssen.

14. Fritz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler, (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1941). p. 159.

15. Taken from Bankers Directory, !932 edition, p, 2557 and Poors, Directory of Directors. J.L. Guinter and Knight Woolley were also directors.

16. See Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, op. cit.

17. National Cyclopaedia, Volume G, page 16.

18. For a description of these ventures, based on State Department files, see Antony C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, Volume 1, op. cit.

19. See Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and FDR. Chapter Nine, "Swope's Plan," op. cit.

20. See Elimination of German Resources, pp. 728-30.

21. For yet other connections between the Union Banking Corp, and German enterprises, see Ibid., pp. 728-30.

22. See Chapter Ten.

23. NMT, Volume VII, p. 555.

24. Josiah E. Dubois, Jr., Generals in Grey Suits op. cit., p. 323.

25. Original reproduced on page 64.

26. NMT, Volume VII, p. 565. See p. 64 for photograph of original document.

27. Fritz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler, (New York: Toronto: Farrat & Rinehart, Inc., 1941).

28. NMT, Volume VI, pp. 1169-1170.

29. NMT, Volume VII, p. 565.
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:10 am

CHAPTER EIGHT: Putzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

Ernst Sedgewick Hanfstaengl (or Hanfy or Putzi, as he was more usually called), like Hjalmar Horaee Greeley Sehacht, was another German-American at the core of the rise of Hitlerism. Hanfstaengl was born into a well-known New England family; he was a cousin of Civil War General John Sedgewick and a grandson of another Civil War General, William Heine. Introduced to Hitler in the early l920s by Captain Truman-Smith, the U.S. Military Attache in Berlin, Putzi became an ardent Hitler supporter, on occasion financed the Nazis and, according to Ambassador William Dodd, "... is said to have saved Hitler's life in 1923."1

By coincidence, S.S. leader Heinrich Himmler's father was also Putzi's form master at the Royal Bavarian Wilhelms gymnasium. Putzi's student day friends at Harvard University were "such outstanding future figures" as Walter Lippman, John Reed (who figures prominently in Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution), and Franklin D. Roosevelt. After a few years at Harvard, Putzi established the family art business in New York; it was a delightful combination of business and pleasure, for as he says, "the famous names who visited me were legion, Pierpont Morgan, Toscanini, Henry Ford, Caruso, Santos-Dumont, Charlie Chaplin, Paderewski, and a daughter of President Wilson."2 It was also at Harvard that Putzi made friends with the future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

I took most of my meals at the Harvard Club, where I made friends with the young Franklin D. Roosevelt, at that time a rising New York State Senator. Also I received several invitations to visit his distant cousin Teddy, the former President, who had retired to his estate at Sagamore Hill.3


From these varied friendships (or perhaps after reading this book and its predecessors, Wall Street and FDR and Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, the reader may consider Putzi's friendship to have been confined to a peculiarly elitist circle), Putzi became not only an early friend, backer and financier of Hitler, but among those early Hitler supporters he was, "... almost the only person who crossed the lines of his (Hitler's) groups of acquaintances."4

In brief, Putzi was an American citizen at the heart of the Hitler entourage from the early 1920s to the late 1930s. In 1943, after falling out of favor with the Nazis and interned by the Allies, Putzi was bailed out of the miseries of a Canadian prisoner of war camp by his friend and protector President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When FDR's actions threatened to become an internal political problem in the United States, Putzi was re-interned in England. As if it is not surprising enough to find both Heinrich Himmler and Franklin D. Roosevelt prominent in Putzi's life, we also discover that the Nazi Stormtrooper marching songs were composed by Hanfstaengl, "including the one that was played by the brownshirt columns as they marched through the Brandenburger Tor on the day Hitler took over power.5 To top this eye-opener, Putzi averred that the genesis of the Nazi chant "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," used in the Nazi mass rallies, was none other than "Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah, rah, rah."

Putzi certainly helped finance the first Nazi daily press, the Volkische Beobachter. Whether he saved Hitler's life from the Communists is less verifiable, and while kept out of the actual writing process of Mein Kampf — much to his disgust — Putzi did have the honor to finance its publication, "and the fact that Hitler found a functioning staff when he was released from jail was entirely due to our efforts."7

When Hitler came to power in March 1933, simultaneously with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington, a private "emissary" was sent from Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. to Hanfstaengl in Berlin, with a message to the effect that as it appeared Hitler would soon achieve power in Germany, Roosevelt hoped, in view of their long acquaintance, that Putzi would do his best to prevent any rashness and hot-headedness. "Think of your piano playing and try and use the soft pedal if things get too loud," was FDR's message. "If things start getting awkward please get in touch with our ambassador at once.8

Hanfstaengl kept in close touch with the American Ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd — apparently much to his disgust, because Putzi's recorded comments on Dodd are distinctly unflattering:

In many ways, he [Dodd] was an unsatisfactory representative. He was a modest little Southern history professor, who ran his embassy on a shoestring and was probably trying to save money out of his pay. At a time when it needed a robust millionaire to compete with the flamboyance of the Nazis, he teetered around self-effacingly as if he were still on his college campus. His mind and his prejudices were small.9


In point of fact Ambassador Dodd pointedly tried to decline Roosevelt's Ambassadorial appointment. Dodd had no inheritance and preferred to live on his State Department pay rather than political spoils; unlike the politician Dodd was particular from whom he received money. In any event, Dodd commented equally harshly on Putzi, "... he gave money to Hitler in 1923, helped him write Mein Kampf, and was in every way familiar with Hitler's motives ...."

Was Hanfstaengl an agent for the Liberal Establishment in the U.S.? We can probably rule out this possibility because, according to Ladislas Farago, it was Putzi who blew the whistle on top-level British penetration of the Hitler command. Farago reports that Baron William S. de Ropp had penetrated the highest Nazi echelons in pre-World War II days and Hitler used de Ropp "... as his confidential consultant about British affairs.10 De Ropp was suspected as being a double agent only by Putzi. According to Farago:

The only person ... who ever suspected him of such duplicity and cautioned the Fuehrer about him was the erratic Putzi Hanfstaengl, the Harvard educated chief of Hitler's office dealing with the foreign press.


As Farago notes, "Bill de Ropp was playing the game in both camps — a double agent at the very top."11 Putzi was equally diligent in warning his friends, the Hermann Goerings, about potential spies in their camp. Witness the following extract from Putzi's memoirs, in which he points the accusing finger of espionage at the Goerings' gardener:

"Herman," I said one day, "I will bet any money that fellow Greinz is a police spy." "Now really, Putzi," Karin [Mrs. Herman Goering] broke in, "he's such a nice fellow and he's a wonderful gardener." "He's doing exactly what a spy ought to do," I told her, "he has made himself indispensable."12


By 1941 Putzi was out of favor with Hitler and the Nazis, fled Germany, and was interned in a Canadian prisoner of war camp. With Germany and the United States now at war Putzi re-calculated the odds and concluded, "Now I knew for certain that Germany would be defeated."13 Putzi's release from the POW camp came with the personal intervention of old friend President Roosevelt:

One day a correspondent of the Hearst press named Kehoe obtained permission to visit Fort Hens. I managed to have a few words with him in a corner. "I know your boss well," I told him. "Will you do me a small service?" Fortunately he recognized my name.

I gave him a letter, which he slipped into his pocket. It was addressed to the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. A few days later it was on the desk of my Harvard Club friend, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In it I offered to act as a political and psychological warfare adviser in the war against Germany.14


The response and offer to "work" for the American side was accepted. Putzi was installed in comfortable surroundings with his son, U.S. Army Sergeant Egon Hanfstaengl, also there as a personal aide. In 1944, under pressure of a Republican threat to blow the whistle on Roosevelt's favoritism for a former Nazi, Egon was shipped out to New Guinea and Putzi hustled off to England, where the British promptly interned him for the duration of the war, Roosevelt or no Roosevelt.

Putzi's Role in the Reichstag Fire

Putzi's friendships and political manipulations may or may not be of any great consequence, but his role in the Reichstag fire is significant. The firing of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933 is one of the key events of modern times. The fire was used by Adolf Hitler to claim imminent Communist revolution, suspend constitutional rights, and seize totalitarian power. From that point on there was no turning back for Germany; the world was set upon the course to World War II.

At the time the firing of the Reichstag was blamed on the Communists, but there is little question in historical perspective that the fire was deliberately set by the Nazis to provide an excuse to seize political power. Fritz Thyssen commented in the post-war Dustbin interrogations:

When the Reichstag was burned, everyone was sure it had been done by the communists. I later learned in Switzerland that it was all a lie.15


Schacht states quite emphatically:

Nowadays it would be quite clear that this action could not be fastened on the Communist Party. To what extent individual National Socialists co-operated in the planning and execution of the deed will be difficult to establish, but in view of all that has been revealed in the meantime, the fact must be accepted that Goebbels and Goering each played a leading part, the one in planning, the other in carrying out the plan.16


The Reichstag fire was deliberately set, probably utilizing a flammable liquid, by a group of experts. This is where Putzi Hanfstaengl comes into the picture. The key question is how did this group, bent on arson, gain access to the Reichstag to do the job? After 8 p.m. only one door in the main building was unlocked and this door was guarded. Just before 9 p.m. a tour of the building by watchmen indicated all was well; no flammable liquids were noticed and nothing was out of the ordinary in the Sessions Chamber where the fire started. Apparently no one could have gained access to the Reichstag building after 9 p.m., and no one was seen to enter or leave between 9 p.m. and the start of the fire.

There was only one way a group with flammable materials could have entered the Reichstag — through a tunnel that ran between the Reichstag and the Palace of the Reichstag President. Hermann Goering was president of the Reichstag and lived in the Palace, and numerous S.A. and S.S. men were known to be in the Palace. In the words of one author:

The use of the underground passage, with all its complications, was possible only to National-Socialists, the advance and escape of the incendiary gang was feasible only with the connivance of highly-placed employees of the Reichstag. Every clue, every probability points damningly in one direction, to the conclusion that the burning of the Reichstag was the work of National-Socialists.17


How does Putzi Hanfstaengl fit into this picture of arson and political intrigue?

Putzi — by his own admission — was in the Palace room at the other end of the tunnel leading to the Reichstag. And according to The Reichstag Fire Trial, Putzi Hanfstaengl was actually in the Palace itself during the fire:

propaganda apparatus stood ready, and the leaders of the Storm Troopers were in their places. With the official bulletins planned in advance, the orders of arrest prepared, Karwahne, Frey and Kroyer waiting patiently in their cafe, the preparations were complete, the scheme almost perfect.18


Dimitrov also asserts that:

The National-Socialist leaders, Hitler, Goering and Goebbels, together with the high National-Socialist officials, Daluege, Hanfstaengl and Albrecht, happened to be present in Berlin on the day of the fire, despite that the election campaign was at its highest pitch throughout Germany, six days before the poll. Goering and Goebbels, under oath, furnished contradictory explanations for their "fortuitous" presence in Berlin with Hitler on that day. The National-Socialist Hanfstaengl, as Goering's "guest," was present in the Palace of the Reichstag President, immediately adjacent to the Reichstag, at the time when the .fire broke out, although his "host" was not there at that time.19


According to Nazi Kurt Ludecke, there once existed a document signed by S.A. Leader Karl Ernst — who supposedly set the fire and was later murdered by fellow Nazis — which implicated Goering, Goebbels, and Hanfstaengl in the conspiracy.

Roosevelt's New Deal and Hitler's New Order

Hjalmar Schacht challenged his post-war Nuremburg interrogators with the observation that Hitler's New Order program was the same as Roosevelt's New Deal program in the United States. The interrogators understandably snorted and rejected the observation. However, a little research suggests that not only are the two programs quite similar in content, but that Germans had no trouble in observing the similarities. There is in the Roosevelt Library a small book presented to FDR by Dr. Helmut Magers in December 1933.20 On the flyleaf of this presentation copy is written the inscription,

To the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in profound admiration of his conception of a new economic order and with devotion for his personality. The author, Baden, Germany, November 9, 1933.


FDR's reply to this admiration for his new economic order was as follows:21

(Washington) December 19, 1933

My dear Dr. Magers: I want to send you my thanks for the copy of your little book about me and the "New Deal." Though, as you know, I went to school in Germany and could speak German with considerable fluency at one time, I am reading your book not only with great interest but because it will help my German.

Very sincerely yours,


The New Deal or the "new economic order" was not a creature of classical liberalism. It was a creature of corporate socialism. Big business as reflected in Wall Street strived for a state order in which they could control industry and eliminate competition, and this was the heart of FDR's New Deal. General Electric, for example, is prominent in both Nazi Germany and the New Deal. German General Electric was a prominent financier of Hitler and the Nazi Party, and A.E.G. also financed Hitler both directly and indirectly through Osram. International General Electric in New York was a major participant in the ownership and direction of both A.E.G. and Osram. Gerard Swope, Owen Young, and A. Baldwin of General Electric in the United States were directors of A.E.G. However, the story does not stop at General Electric and financing of Hitler in 1933.

In a previous book, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, the author identified the role of General Electric in the Bolshevik Revolution and the geographic location of American participants as at 120 Broadway, New York City; the executive offices of General Electric were also at 120 Broadway. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was working in Wall Street, his address was also 120 Broadway. In fact, Georgia Warm Springs Foundation, the FDR Foundation, was located at 120 Broadway. The prominent financial backer of an early Roosevelt Wall Street venture from 120 Broadway was Gerard Swope of General Electric. And it was "Swope's Plan" that became Roosevelt's New Deal — the fascist plan that Herbert Hoover was unwilling to foist on the United States. In brief, both Hitler's New Order and Roosevelt's New Deal were backed by the same industrialists and in content were quite similar — i.e., they were both plans for a corporate state.

There were then both corporate and individual bridges between FDR's America and Hitler's Germany. The first bridge was the American I.G. Farben, American affiliate of I.G. Farben, the largest German corporation. On the board of American I.G. sat Paul Warburg, of the Bank of Manhattan and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The second bridge was between International General Electric, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Electric Company and its partly owned affiliate in Germany, A.E.G. Gerard Swope, who formulated FDR's New Deal, was chairman of I.G.E. and on the board of A.E.G. The third "bridge" was between Standard Oil of New Jersey and Vacuum Oil and its wholly owned German subsidiary, Deutsche-Amerikanische Gesellschaft. The chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey was Walter Teagle, of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was a trustee of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Georgia Warm Springs Foundation and appointed by FDR to a key administrative post in the National Recovery Administration.

These corporations were deeply involved in both the promotion of Roosevelt's New Deal and the construction of the military power of Nazi Germany. Putzi Hanfstaengl's role in the early days, up to the mid-1930s anyway, was an informal link between the Nazi elite and the White House. After the mid-1930s, when the world was set on the course for war, Putzis importance declined — while American Big Business continued to be represented through such intermediaries as Baron Kurt von Schroder attorney Westrick, and membership in Himmler's Circle of Friends.

_______________

Notes:

1. William E. Dodd, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933-1938, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1941), p. 360.

2. Ernst Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness, (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1957), p. 28.

3. Ibid., p.

4. Ibid., p. 52.

5. Ibid., p. 53.

6. Ibid., p. 59.

7. Ibid., p. 122.

8. Ibid., pp. 197-8.

9. Ibid., p. 214.

10. Ladislas Farago, The Game of the Foxes, (New York: Bantam, 1973), p. 97.

11. Ibid., p. 106.

12. Ernst Hanfstaengl, Unheard Witness, op. cit., p. 76.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., pp. 310-11.

15. Dustbin report EF/Me/1. Interview of Thyssen, p. 13.

16. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, Confessions of" The Old Wizard," (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956), p. 276.

17. George Dimitrov, The Reichstag Fire Trial, (London: The Bodley Head, 1934), p. 309.

18. Ibid., p. 310.

19. Ibid., p. 311.

20. Helmut Magers, Ein Revolutionar Aus Common Sense, (Leipzig: R. Kittler Verlag, 1934).

21. Nixon, Edgar B., Editor, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), Volume 1: January 1933-February 1934. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Hyde Park, New York.
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:19 am

CHAPTER NINE: Wall Street and the Nazi Inner Circle

During the entire period of our business contacts we, had no inkling of Farben's conniving part in Hitler's brutal policies. We offer any help we can give to see that complete truth is brought to light and that rigid justice is done. (F. W. Abrams, Chairman of the Board, Standard Oil of New Jersey, 1946.)


Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Josef Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler, the inner group of Naziism, were at the same time heads of minor fiefdoms within the Nazi State. Power groups or political cliques were centered around these Nazi leaders, more importantly after the late 1930s around Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, Reich-Leader of the S.S. (the dreaded Schutzstaffel). The most important of these Nazi inner circles was created by order of the Fuehrer; it was known first as the Keppler Circle and later as Himmler's Circle of Friends.

The Keppler Circle originated as a group of German businessmen supporting Hitler's rise to power before and during 1933. In the mid-1930s the Keppler Circle came under the influence and protection of S.S. chief Himmler and the organizational control of Cologne banker and prominent Nazi businessman Kurt von Schroder. Schroder, it will be recalled, was head of the J.H. Stein Bank in Germany and affiliated with the L. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation of New York. It is within this innermost of the inner circles, the very core of Naziism, that we find Wall Street, including Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.T.T., represented from 1933 to as late as 1944.

Wilhelm Keppler, founder of the original Circle of Friends, typifies the well-known phenomenon of a politicized businessman — i.e., a businessman who cultivates the political arena rather than the impartial market place for his profits. Such businessmen have been interested In promoting socialist causes, because a planned socialist society provides a most lucrative opportunity for contracts through political influence.

Scenting such profitable opportunities, Keppler joined the national socialists and was close to Hitler before 1933. The Circle of Friends grew out of a meeting between Adolf Hitler and Wilhelm Keppler in December 1931. During the course of their conversation — this was several years before Hitler became dictator — the future Fuehrer expressed a wish to have reliable German businessmen available for economic advice when the Nazis took power. "Try to get a few economic leaders — they need not be Party members — who will be at our disposal when we come into power.1 This Keppler undertook to do.

In March 1933 Keppler was elected to the Reichstag and became Hitler's financial expert. This lasted only briefly. Keppler was replaced by the infinitely more capable Hjalmar Schacht, and sent to Austria where in 1938 he became Reichs Commissioner, but still able to use his position to acquire considerable power in the Nazi State. Within a few years he captured a string of lucrative directorships in German firms, including chairman of the board of two I.G. Farben subsidiaries: Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. and Kontinental Oil A.G. Braunkohle-Benzin was the German exploiter of the Standard Oil of New Jersey technology for production of gasoline from coal. (See Chapter Four.)

In brief, Keppler war the chairman of the very firm that utilized American technology for the indispensible synthetic gasoline which enabled the Wehrmacht to go to war in 1939. This is significant because, when linked with other evidence presented in this chapter, it suggests that the profits and control of these fundamentally important technologies for German military ends were retained by a small group of international firms and businessmen operating across national borders.

Keppler's nephew, Fritz Kranefuss, under his uncle's protection, also gained prominence both as Adjutant to S.S. Chief Heinrich Himmler and as a businessman and political operator. It was Kranefuss' link with Himmler which led to the Keppler circle gradually drawing away from Hitler in the 1930s to come within Himmler's orbit, where in exchange for annual donations to Himmler's pet S.S. projects Circle members received political favors and not inconsiderable protection from the S.S.

Baron Kurt von Schroder was, as we have noted, the I.T.T. representative in Nazi Germany and an early member of the Keppler Circle. The original Keppler Circle consisted of:

THE ORIGINAL (PRE-1932) MEMBERS OF THE KEPPLER CIRCLE

Circle Member / Main Associations


Wilhelm KEPPLER / Chairman of I.G. Farben subsidiary Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. (exploited Standard Oil of N.J. oil from coal technology)

Fritz KRANEFUSS / Keppler's nephew and Adjutant to Heinrich Himmler. On Vorstand of BRABAG

Kurt von SCHRODER / On board of all International Telephone & Telegraph subsidiaries in Germany

Karl Vincenz KROGMANN / Lord Mayor of Hamburg

August ROSTERG / General Director of WINTERSHALL

Emil MEYER / On the board of I.T.T. subsidiaries and German General Electric.

Otto STEINBRINCK / Vice president of VEREINIGTE STAHLWERKE (steel cartel founded with Wall Street loans in 1926)

Hjalmar SCHACHT / President of the REICHSBANK

Emil HELFFRICH / Board chairman of GERMAN-AMERICAN PETROLEUM CO. (94-percent owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey) (See above under Wilhelm Keppler)

Friedrich REINHARDT / Board chairman COMMERZBANK

Ewald HECKER / Board chairman of ILSEDER HUTTE

Graf von BISMARCK / Government president of STETTIN


The S.S. Circle of Friends

The original Circle of Friends met with Hitler in May 1932 and heard a statement of Nazi objectives. Heinrich Himmler then became a frequent participant in the meetings, and through Himmler, various S.S. officers as well as other businessmen joined the group. This expanded group in time became Himmler's Circle of Friends, with Himmler acting as protector and expeditor for its members.

Consequently, banking and Industrial interest — were heavily represented in the inner circle of Naziism, and their pre-1933 financial contributions to Hitlerism which we have earlier enumerated were amply repaid. Of the "Big Five" German banks, the Dresdner Bank had the closest connections with the Nazi Party: at least a dozen members of Dresdner Bank's board of directors had high Nazi rank and no fewer than seven Dresdner Bank directors were among Keppler's expanded Circle of Friends, which never exceeded 40.

When we examine the names comprising both the original pre-1933 Keppler Circle and the post-1933 expanded Keppler and Himmler's Circle, we find the Wall Street multi-nationals heavily represented — more so than any other institutional group. Let us take each Wall Street multinational or its German associate in turn — those identified in Chapter Seven as linked to financing Hitler — and examine their links to Keppler and Heinrich Himmler.

I.G. Farben and the Keppler Circle

I.G. Farben was heavily represented within the Keppler Circle: no fewer than eight out of the peak circle membership of 40 were directors of I.G. Farben or a Farben subsidiary. These eight members included the previously described Wilhelm Keppler and his nephew Kranefuss, in addition to Baron Kurt von Schroder. The Farben presence was emphasized by member Hermann Schmitz, chairman of I.G. Farben and a director of Vereinigte Stahlwerke, both cartels built and consolidated by the Wall Street loans of the 1920s. A U.S. Congressional report described Hermann Schmitz as follows:

Hermann Schmitz, one of the most important persons in Germany, has achieved outstanding success simultaneously in the three separate fields, industry, finance, and government, and has served with zeal and devotion every government in power. He symbolizes the German citizen who out of the devastation of the First World War made possible the Second.

Ironically, his may be said to be the greater guilt in that in 1919 he was a member of the Reich's peace delegation, and in the 1930's was in a position to teach the Nazis much that theft had to know concerning economic penetration, cartel uses, synthetic materials for war.2


Another Keppler Circle member on the I.G. Farben board was Friedrich Flick, creator of the steel cartel Vereinigte Stahlwerke and a director of Allianz Versicherungs A.G. and German General Electric (A.E.G.).

Heinrich Schmidt, a director of Dresdner Bank and chairman of the board of I.G. Farben subsidiary Braunkohle-Benzin A.G., was in the circle; so was Karl Rasehe, another director of the Dresdner Bank and a director of Metallgesellschaft (parent of the Delbruck Schickler Bank) and Accumulatoren-Fabriken A.G. Heinrich Buetefisch was also a director of I.G. Farben and a member of the Keppler Circle. In brief, the I.G. Farben contribution to Rudolf Hess' Nationale Treuhand — the political slush fund — was confirmed after the 1933 takeover by heavy representation in the Nazi inner circle.

How many of these Keppler Circle members in the I.G. Farben complex were affiliated with Wall Street?

MEMBERS OF THE ORIGINAL KEPPLER CIRCLE ASSOCIATED WITH U.S. MULTI-NATIONALS

Member of Keppler Circle / I.G. Farben / I.T.T. / Standard Oil of New Jersey / General Electric

Wilhelm KEPPLER / Chairman of Farben subsidiary BRABAG / -- / -- / --

Fritz KRANEFUSS / On Aufsichrat of BRABAG / -- / -- / --

Emil Heinrich MEYER / -- / On board of all I.T.T. German subsidiaries: Standard/Mix & Genest/Lorenz / -- / Board of A.E.G.

Emil HELFFRICH / -- / -- / Chairman of DAPAG (94-percent owned by Standard of New Jersey / --

Friedrich FLICK / I.G. Farben / -- / -- / Board of A.E.G.

Kurt von SCHRODER / On board of all I.T.T. subsidiaries in Germany / -- / -- / --


Similarly, we can identify other Wall Street institutions represented in the early Keppler's Circle of Friends, confirming their monetary contributions to the National Trusteeship Fund operated by Rudolf Hess on behalf of Adolf Hitler. These representatives were Emil Heinrich Meyer and banker Kurt von Schroder on the boards of all the I.T.T. subsidiaries in Germany, and Emil Helffrich, the board chairman of DAPAG, 94-percent owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey.

Wall Street in the S.S. Circle

Major U.S. multi-nationals were also very well represented in the later Heinrich Himmler Circle and made cash contributions to the S.S. (the Sonder Konto S) up to 1944 — while World War II was in progress.

Almost a quarter of the 1944 Sonder Konto S contributions came from subsidiaries of International Telephone and Telegraph, represented by Kurt von Schröder. The 1943 payments from I.T.T. subsidiaries to the Special Account were as follows:

Mix & Genest A.G. / 5,000 RM

C. Lorenz AG / 20,000 RM

Felten & Guilleaume / 25,000 RM

Kurt von Schroder / 16,000 RM


And the 1944 payments were:

Mix & Genest A.G. / 5,000 RM

C. Lorenz AG / 20,000 RM

Felten & Guilleaume / 20,000 RM

Kurt von Schroder / 16,000 RM


Sosthenes Behn of International Telephone and Telegraph transferred wartime control of Mix & Genest, C. Lorenz, and the other Standard Telephone interests in Germany to Kurt von Schroder — who was a founding member of the Keppler Circle and organizer and treasurer of Himmler's Circle of Friends. Emil H. Meyer, S.S. Untersturmfuehrer, member of the Vorstand of the Dresdner Bank, A.E.G., and a director of all the I.T.T. subsidiaries in Germany, was also a member of the Himmler Circle of Friends — giving I.T.T. two powerful representatives at the heart of the S.S.

A letter to fellow member Emil Meyer from Baron von Schroder dated February 25, 1936 describes the purposes and requirements of the Himmler Circle and the long-standing nature of the Special Account 'S' with funds at Schroder's own bank — the J,H. Stein Bank of Cologne:

Berlin, 25 February 1936
(Illegible handwriting)

To Prof. Dr. Emil H. Meyer
S.S. (Untersturmfuchrer) (second lieutenant) Member of the Managing Board (Vorstand) of the Dresdner Bank
Berlin W. 56,
Behrenstr. 38

Personal!

To the Circle of Friends of the Reich Leader SS

At the end of the 2 day's inspection tour of Munich to which the Reich Leader SS had invited us last January, the Circle of Friends agreed to put — each one according to his means — at the Reich Leader's disposal into "Special Account S" (Sonder Konto S), to be established at the banking firm J.H. Stein in Cologne, funds which are to be used for certain tasks outside of the budget. This should enable the Reich Leader to rely on all his friends. In Munich it was decided that the undersigned would make themselves available for setting up and handling this account. In the meantime the account was set up and we want every participant to know that in case he wants to make contributions to the Reich Leader for the aforementioned tasks — either on behalf of his firm or the Circle of Friends — payments may be made to the banking firm J.H. Stein, Cologne (Clearing Account of the Reich Bank, Postal Checking Acount No. 1392) to the Special Account S.

Heil Hitler!

(Signed) Kurt Baron von Sehroder (Signed) Steinbrinck3


This letter also explains why U.S. Army Colonel Bogdan, formerly of the Schroder Banking Corporation in New York, was anxious to divert the attention of post-war U.S. Army investigators away from the J. H. Stein Bank in Cologne to the "bigger banks" of Nazi Germany. It was the Stein Bank that held the secrets of the associations of American subsidiaries with Nazi authorities while World War II was in progress. The New York financial interests could not know the precise nature of these transactions (and particularly the nature of any records that may have been kept by their German associates), but they knew that some record could well exist of their war-time dealings — enough to embarrass them with the American public. It was this possibility that Colonel Bogdan tried unsuccessfully to head off.

German General Electric profited greatly from its association with Himmler and other leading Nazis. Several members of the Schroder clique were directors of A.E.G., the most prominent being Robert Pferdmenges, who was not only a member of the Keppler or Himmler Circles but was a partner in the aryanized banking house Pferdmenges & Company, the successor to the former Jewish banking house Sal Oppenheim of Cologne. Waldemar von Oppenheim achieved the dubious distinction (for a German Jew) of "honorary Aryan" and was able to continue his old established banking house under Hitler in partnership with Pferdmenges.

MEMBERS OF THE HIMMLER CIRCLE OF FRIENDS WHO WERE ALSO DIRECTORS OF AMERICAN-AFFILIATED FIRMS:

-- / I.G. Farben / I.T.T. / A.E.G. / Standard Oil of New Jersey

KRANEFUSS, Fritz / X / -- / -- / --

KEPPLER, Wilhelm / X / -- / -- / --

SCHRODER, Kurt Von / X / X / -- / --

BUETEFISCH, Heinrich / X / -- / -- / --

RASCHE, Dr. Karl / X / -- / -- / --

FLICK, Friedrich / X / -- / X / --

LINDEMANN, Karl / -- / -- / -- / X

SCHMIDT, Heinrich / -- / -- / X / --

ROEHNERT, Kellmuth / -- / -- / X / --

SCHMIDT, Kurt / -- / -- / X / --

MEYER, Dr. Emil / -- / X / -- / --

SCHMITZ, Hermann / X / -- / -- / --


Pferdmenges was also a director of A.E.G. and used his Nazi influence to good advantage.4

Two other directors of German General Electric were members of Himmler's Circle of Friends and made 1943 and 1944 monetary contributions to the Sonder Konto S. These were:

Friedrich Flick / 100,000 RM

Otto Steinbrinck (a Flick associate) / 100,000 RM


Kurt Schmitt was chairman of the board of directors of A.E.G. and a member of the Himmler Circle of Friends, but Schmitt's name is not recorded in the list of payments for 1943 or 1944.

Image
Chart 9-1: Wall Street Representation in the Keppler and Himmler Circles, 1933 and 1944: (1) WALL STREET REPRESENTATION IN KEPPLER'S CIRCLE OF FRIENDS (based on Keppler's statement of membership in 1933); and (2) WALL STREET REPRESENTATION IN HIMMLER'S CIRCLE OF FRIENDS 1944 (based on 1944 contributions to the Himmler Fund)

Standard Oil of New Jersey also made a significant contribution to Himmler's Special Account through its wholly owned (94 percent) German subsidiary, Deutsche-Amerikanische Gesellschaft (DAG). In 1943 and 1944 DAG contributed as follows:

Staatsrat Helfferich of Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G. / 10,000 RM

Staatsrat Lindemann of Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G. and personally / 10,000 RM, 4,000 RM


It is important to note that Staatsrat Lindemann contributed 4,000 RM personally, thus making a clear distinction between the corporate contribution of 10,000 RM from Standard Oil of New Jersey's wholly owned subsidiary and the personal contribution from director Linde-mann. In the case of Staatsrat Hellfrich, the only contribution was the Standard Oil contribution of 10,000 RM; there is no recorded personal donation.

I.G. Farben, parent company of American I.G. (see Chapter Two), was another significant contributor to Heinrich Himmler's Sonder Konto S. There were four I.G. Farben directors within the inner circle: Karl Rasehe, Fritz Kranefuss, Heinrich Schmidt, and Heinrich Buetefisch. Karl Rasche was a member of the management committee of the Dresdner Bank and a specialist in international law and banking. Under Hitler Karl Rasche became a prominent director of many German corporations, including Accumulatoren-Fabrik A.G. in Berlin, which financed Hitler; the Metallgesellschaft; and Felten & Guilleame, an I.T.T. company. Fritz Kranefuss was a member of the board of directors of Dresdner Bank and a director of several corporations besides I.G. Farben. Kranefuss, nephew of Wilhelm Keppler, was a lawyer and prominent in many Nazi public organizations. Heinrich Schmidt, a director of I.G. Farben and several other German companies, was also a director of the Dresdner Bank.

It is important to note that all three of the above — Rasche, Kranefuss, and Schmidt — were directors of an I.G. Farben subsidiary, Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. — the manufacturer of German synthetic gasoline using Standard Oil technology, a result of the I.G. Farben-Standard Oil agreements of the early 1930s.

In brief, the Wall Street financial elite was well represented in both the early Keppler Circle and the later Himmler Circle.5

_______________

Notes:

1. From the affidavit of Wilhem Keppler, NMT, Volume VI, p. 285.

2. Elimination of German Resources, p. 869.

3. NMT, Volume VII, p. 238. "Translation of Document N1-10103, Prosecution Exhibit 788." Letter from von Schroder and Defendant Steinbrinck to Dr. Meyer, Dresdner Bank official, 25 February 1936, noting that the Circle of Friends would put funds at Himmler's disposal "For Certain Tasks outside of the Budget" and had established a "Special Account for this purpose."

4. Elimination of German Resources, p. 857.

5. The significant nature of this representation is reflected in Chart 8-1, "Wall Street representation in the Keppler and Himmler Circles, 1933 and 1944."
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:25 am

CHAPTER TEN: The Myth of "Sidney Warburg"



A vital question, only partly resolved, is the extent to which Hitler's accession to power in 1933 was aided directly by Wall Street financiers. We have shown with original documentary evidence that there was indirect American participation and support through German affiliated firms, and (as for example in the case of I.T.T.) there was a knowledgeable and deliberate effort to benefit from the support of the Nazi regime. Was this indirect financing extended to direct financing?

After Hitler gained power, U.S. firms and individuals worked on behalf of Naziism and certainly profited from the Nazi state. We know from the diaries of William Dodd, the American Ambassador to Germany, that in 1933 a stream of Wall Street bankers and industrialists filed through the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, expressing their admiration for Adolf Hitler — and anxious to find ways to do business with the new totalitarian regime. For example, on September 1, 1933 Dodd recorded that Henry Mann of the National City Bank and Winthrop W. Aldrich of the Chase Bank both met with Hitler and "these bankers feel they can work with him."1 Ivy Lee, the Rockefeller public relations agent, according to Dodd "showed himself at once a capitalist and an advocate of Fascism."2

So at least we can identify a sympathetic response to the new Nazi dictatorship, reminiscent of the manner in which Wall Street international bankers greeted the new Russia of Lenin and Trotsky in 1917.

Who Was "Sidney Warburg"?

The question posed in this chapter is the accusation that some Wall Street financiers (the Rockefellers and Warburgs specifically have been accused) directly planned and financed Hitler's takeover in 1933, and that they did this from Wall Street. On this question the so-called myth of "Sidney Warburg" is relevant. Prominent Nazi Franz von Papen has stated in his Memoirs:3

... the most documented account of the National Socialists' sudden acquisition of funds was contained in a book published in Holland in 1933, by the old established Amsterdam publishing house of Van Holkema & Warendorf, called De Geldbronnen van Het Nationaal-Socialisme (Drie Gesprekken Met Hitler) under the name "Sidney Warburg."


A book with this title in Dutch by "Sidney Warburg" was indeed published in 1933, but remained on the book stalls in Holland only for a matter of days. The book was purged.4 One of three surviving original copies was translated into English. The translation was at one time deposited in the British Museum, but is now withdrawn from public circulation and is unavailable for research. Nothing is now known of the original Dutch copy upon which this English translation was based.

The second Dutch copy was owned by Chancellor Schussnigg in Austria, and nothing is known of its present whereabouts. The third Dutch copy found its way to Switzerland and was translated into German. The German translation has survived down to the present day in the Schweizerischen Sozialarchiv in Zurich, Switzerland. A certified copy of the authenticated German translation of this Swiss survivor was purchased by the author in 1971 and translated into English. It is upon this English translation of the German translation that the text in this chapter is based.

Publication of the "Sidney Warburg" book was duly reported in the New York Times (November 24, 1933) under the title "Hoax on Nazis Feared." A brief article noted that a "Sidney Warburg" pamphlet has appeared in Holland, and the author is not the son of Felix Warburg. The translator is J. G. Shoup, a Belgian newspaperman living in Holland. The publishers and Shoup "are wondering if they have not been the victims of a hoax." The Times account adds:

The pamphlet repeats an old story to the effect that leading Americans, including John D. Rockefeller, financed Hitler from 1929 to 1932 to the extent of $32,000,000, their motive being"to liberate Germany from the financial grip of France by bringing about a revolution·" Many readers of the pamphlet have pointed out that it contains many inaccuracies.


Why was the Dutch original withdrawn from circulation in 1933? Because "Sidney Warburg" did not exist and a "Sidney Warburg" was claimed as the author. Since 1933 the "Sidney Warburg" book has been promoted by various parties both as a forgery and as a genuine document. The Warburg family itself has gone to some pains to substantiate its falsity.

What does the book report? What does the book claim happened in Germany in the early 1930s? And do these events have any resemblance to facts we know to be true from other evidence?

From the viewpoint of research methodology it is much more preferable to assume that the "Sidney Warburg" book is a forgery, unless we can prove the contrary. This is the procedure we shall adopt. The reader may well ask — then why bother to look closely at a possible forgery? There are at least two good reasons, apart from academic curiosity.

First, the Warburg claim that the book is a forgery has a curious and vital flaw. The Warburgs deny as false a book they admit not to have read t nor even seen. The Warburg denial is limited specifically to non-authorship by a Warburg. This denial is acceptable; but it does not deny or reject the validity of the contents. The denial merely repudiates authorship.

Second, we have already identified I.G. Farben as a key financier and backer of Hitler. We have provided photographic evidence (page 64) of the bank transfer slip for 400,000 marks from I.G. Farben to Hitler's "Nationale Treuhand" political slush fund account administered by Rudolf Hess. Now it is probable, almost certain, that "Sidney Warburg" did not exist. On the other hand, it is a matter of public record that the Warburgs were closely connected with I.G. Farben in Germany and the United States. In Germany Max Warburg was a director of I.G. Farben and in the United States brother Paul Warburg (father of James Paul Warburg) was a director of American I.G. Farben. In brief, we have incontrovertible evidence that some Warburgs, including the father of James Paul, the denouncer of the "Sidney Warburg" book, were directors of I.G. Farben. And I.G. Farben is known to have financed Hitler. "Sidney Warburg" was a myth, but I.G. Farben directors Max Warburg and Paul Warburg were not myths. This is reason enough to push further.

Let us first summarize the book which James Paul Warburg claims is a forgery.

A Synopsis of the Suppressed "Sidney Warburg" Book

The Financial Sources of National Socialism opens with an alleged conversation between "Sidney Warburg" and joint author/translator J. G. Shoup. "Warburg" relates why he was handing Shoup an English language manuscript for translation into Dutch and publication in Holland In the words of the mythical "Sidney Warburg":

There are moments when I want to turn away from a world of such intrigue, trickery, swindling and tampering with the stock exchange .... Do you know what I can never under stand? How it is possible that people of good and honest character — for which I have ample proof — participate in swindling and fraud, knowing full well that it will affect thousands.


Shoup then describes "Sidney Warburg" as "son of one of the largest bankers in the United States, member of the banking firm Kuhn, Loeb & Co., New York." "Sidney Warburg" then tells Shoup that he ("Warburg") wants to record for history how national socialism was financed by New York financiers.

The first section of the book is entitled simply "1929." It relates that in 1929 Wall Street had enormous credits outstanding in Germany and Austria, and that these claims had, for the most part, been frozen. While France was economically weak and feared Germany, France was also getting the "lion's share" of reparations funds which were actually financed from the United States. In June 1929, a meeting took place between the members of the Federal Reserve Bank and leading American bankers to decide what to do about France, and particularly to check her call on German reparations. This meeting was attended (according to the "Warburg" book) by the directors of Guaranty Trust Company, the "Presidents" of the Federal Reserve Banks, in addition to five independent bankers, "young Rockefeller," and Glean from Royal Dutch Shell. Carter and Rockefeller according to the text "dominated the proceedings. The others listened and nodded their heads."

The general consensus at the bankers' meeting was that the only way to free Germany from French financial clutches was by revolution, either Communist or German Nationalist. At an earlier meeting it had previously been agreed to contact Hitler to "try to find out if he were amenable to American financial support." Now Rockefeller reportedly had more recently seen a German-American leaflet about the Hitler national socialist movement and the purpose of this second meeting was to determine if "Sidney Warburg" was prepared to go to Germany as a courier to make personal contact with Hitler.

In return for proferred financial support, Hitler would be expected to conduct an "aggressive foreign policy and stir up the idea of revenge against France." This policy, it was anticipated, would result in a French appeal to the United States and England for assistance in "international questions involving the eventual German aggression." Hitler was not to know about the purpose of Wall Street's assistance. It would be left "to his reason and resourcefulness to discover the motives behind the proposal." "Warburg" accepted the proposed mission and left New York for Cherbourg on the Ile de France, "with a diplomatic passport and letters of recommendation from Carter, Tommy Walker, Rockefeller, Glean and Herbert Hoover."

Apparently, "Sidney Warburg" had some difficulty in meeting Hitler. The American Consul in Munich did not succeed in making contact with the Nazis, and finally Warburg went directly to Mayor Deutzberg of Munich, "with a recommendation from the American Consul," and a plea to guide Warburg to Hitler. Shoup then presents extracts from Hitler's statements at this initial meeting. These extracts include the usual Hitlerian anti-Semitic rantings, and it should be noted that all the anti, Semitic parts in the "Sidney Warburg" book are spoken by Hitler. (This is important because James Paul Warburg claims the Shoup book is totally anti-Semitic.) Funding of the Nazis was discussed at this meeting and Hitler is reported to insist that funds could not be deposited in a German bank but only in a foreign bank at his disposal. Hitler asked for 100 million marks and suggested that "Sidney Warburg" report on the Wall Street reaction through von Heydt at Lutzowufer, 18 Berlin.5

After reporting back to Wall Street, Warburg learned that $24 million was too much for the American bankers; they offered $10 million. Warburg contacted von Heydt and a further meeting was arranged, this time with an "undistinguished looking man, introduced to me under the name Frey." Instructions were given to make $10 million available at the Mendelsohn & Co. Bank in Amsterdam, Holland. Warburg was to ask the Mendelsohn Bank to make out checks in marks payable to named Nazis in ten German cities. Subsequently, Warburg travelled to Amsterdam, completed his mission with Mendelsohn & Co., then went to Southampton, England and took the Olympia back to New York where he reported to Carter at Guaranty Trust Company. Two days later Warburg gave his report to the entire Wall Street group, but "this time an English representative was there sitting next to Glean from Royal Dutch, a man named Angell, one of the heads of the Asiatic Petroleum Co." Warburg was questioned about Hitler, and "Rockefeller showed unusual interest in Hitler's statements about the Communists."

A few weeks after Warburg's return from Europe the Hearst newspapers showed "unusual interest" in the new German Nazi Party and even the New York Times carried regular short reports of Hitler's speeches. Previously these newspapers had not shown too much interest, but that now changed.6 Also, in December 1929 a long study of the German National Socialist movement appeared "in a monthly publication at Harvard University."

Part II of the suppressed "Financial Sources of National Socialism" is entitled "1931" and opens with a discussion of French influence on international politics. It avers that Herbert Hoover promised Pierre Laval of France not to resolve the debt question without first consulting the French government and [writes Shoup]:

When Wall Street found out about this Hoover lost the respect of this circle at one blow. Even the subsequent elections were affected — many believed that Hoover's failure to get reelected can be traced back to the issue.7


In October 1931, Warburg received a letter from Hitler which he passed on to Carter at Guaranty Trust Company, and subsequently another bankers' meeting was called at the Guaranty Trust Company offices. Opinions at this meeting were divided. "Sidney Warburg" reported that Rockefeller, Carter, and McBean were for Hitler, while the other financiers were uncertain. Montague Norman of the Bank of England and Glean of Royal Dutch Shell argued that the $10 million already spent on Hitler was too much, that Hitler would never act. The meeting finally agreed in principle to assist Hitler further, and Warburg again undertook a courier assignment and went back to Germany.

On this trip Warburg reportedly discussed German affairs with "a Jewish banker" in Hamburg, with an industrial magnate, and other Hitler supporters. One meeting was with banker von Heydt and a "Luetgebrunn." The latter stated that the Nazi storm troopers were incompletely equipped and the S.S. badly needed machine guns, revolvers, and carbines.

In the next Warburg-Hitler meeting, Hitler argued that "the Soviets cannot miss our industrial products yet. We will give credit, and if I am not able to deflate France myself, then the Soviets will help me." Hitler said he had two plans for takeover in Germany: (a) the revolution plan, and (b), the legal takeover plan. The first plan would be a matter of three months, the second plan a matter of three years. Hitler was quoted as saying, "revolution costs five hundred million marks, legal takeover costs two hundred million marks — what will your bankers decide?" After five days a cable from Guaranty Trust arrived for Warburg and is cited in the book as follows:

Suggested amounts are out of the question. We don't want to and cannot. Explain to man that such a transfer to Europe will shatter financial market. Absolutely unknown on international territory. Expect long report, before decision is made. Stay there. Continue investigation. Persuade man of impossible demands. Don't forget to include in report own opinion of possibilities for future of man.


Warburg cabled his report back to New York and three days later received a second cablegram reading:

Report received. Prepare to deliver ten, maximum fifteen million dollars. Advise man necessity of aggression against foreign danger.


The $15 million was accepted for the legal takeover road, not for the revolutionary plan. The money was transferred from Wall Street to Hitler via Warburg as follows — $5 million to be paid at Mendelsohn & Company, Amsterdam; $5 million at the Rotterdamsehe Bankvereinigung in Rotterdam; and $5 million at "Banca Italiana."

Warburg travelled to each of these banks, where he reportedly met Heydt, Strasser and Hermann Goering. The groups arranged for checks to be made out to different names in various towns in Germany. In other words, the funds were "laundered" in the modern tradition to disguise their Wall Street origins. In Italy the payment group was reportedly received at the main building of the bank by its president and while waiting in his office two Italian fascists, Rossi and Balbo, were introduced to Warburg, Heydt, Strasser, and Goering. Three days after payment, Warburg returned to New York from Genoa on the Savoya. Again, he reported to Carter, Rockefeller, and the other bankers.

The third section of "Financial Sources of National Soeialism" is entitled simply "1933." The section records "Sidney Warburg's" third and last meeting with Hitler — on the night the Reichstag was burned. (We noted in Chapter Eight the presence of Roosevelt's friend Putzi Hanfstaengl in the Reichstag.) At this meeting Hitler informed Warburg of Nazi progress towards legal takeover. Since 1931 the Nationalist Socialist party had tripled in size. Massive deposits of weapons had been made near the German border in Belgium, Holland, and Austria — but these weapons required cash payments before delivery. Hitler asked for a minimum of 100 million marks to take care of the final step in the takeover program. Guaranty Trust wired Warburg offering $7 million at most, to be paid as follows — $2 million to the Renania Joint Stock Company in Dusseldorf (the German branch of Royal Dutch), and $5 million to other banks. Warburg reported this offer to Hitler, who requested the $5 million should be sent to the Banca Italiana in Rome and (although the report does not say so) presumably the other $2 million was paid to Dusseldorf. The book concludes with the following statement from Warburg:

I carried out my assignment strictly down to the last detail. Hitler is dictator of the largest European country. The world has now observed him at work for several months. My opinion of him means nothing now. His actions will prove if he is bad, which I believe he is. For the sake of the German people I hope in my heart that I am wrong. The world continues to suffer under a system that has to bow to a Hitler to keep itself on its feet. Poor world, poor humanity.


This is a synopsis of "Sidney Warburg's" suppressed book on the financial origins of national socialism in Germany. Some of the information in the book is now common knowledge — although only part was generally known in the early 1930s. It is extraordinary to note that the unknown author had access to information that only surfaced many years later — for example, the identity of the von Heydt bank as a Hitler financial conduit. Why was the book taken off the bookstands and suppressed? The stated reason for withdrawal was that "Sidney Warburg" did not exist, that the book was a forgery, and that the Warburg family claimed it contained anti-Semitic and libelous statements.

The information in the book was resurrected after World War II and published in other books in an anti-Semitic context which does not exist in the original 1933 book. Two of these post-war books were Rene Sonderegger's Spanischer Sommer and Werner Zimmerman's Liebet Eure Feinde.

Most importantly James P. Warburg of New York signed an affidavit in 1949, which was published as an appendix in von Papen's Memoirs. This Warburg affidavit emphatically denied the authenticity of the "Sidney Warburg" book and claimed it was a hoax, Unfortunately, James P. Warburg focuses on the 1947 Sonderegger anti-Semitic book Spanischer Sommer, not the original suppressed "Sidney Warburg" book published in 1933 — where the only anti-Semitism stems from Hitler's alleged statements.

In other words, the Warburg affidavit raised far more questions than it resolved. We should therefore look at Warburg's 1949 affidavit denying the authenticity of Financial Sources of National Socialism.

James Paul Warburg's Affidavit

In 1953 Nazi Franz von Papen published his Memoirs.8 This was the same Franz von Papen who had been active in the United States on behalf of German espionage in World War I. In his Memoirs, Franz von Papen discusses the question of financing Hitler and places the blame squarely on industrialist Fritz Thyssen and banker Kurt von Sehroder. Papen denies that he (Papen) financed Hitler, and indeed no credible evidence has been forthcoming to link von Papen with Hitler's funds (although Zimmerman in Liebert Eure Feinde accuses Papen of donating 14 million marks). In this context von Papen mentions "Sidney Warburg's" The Financial Sources of National Socialism, together with the two more recent post-World War II books by Werner Zimmerman and Rene Sonderegger (alias Severin Reinhardt).9 Papen adds that:

James P. Warburg is able to refute the whole falsification in his affidavit .... For my own part I am most grateful to Mr. Warburg for disposing once and for all of this malicious libel. It is almost impossible to refute accusations of this sort by simple negation, and his authoritative denial has enabled me to give body to my own protestations.10


There are two sections to Appendix II of Papen's book. First is a statement by James P. Warburg; second is the affidavit, dated July 15, 1949.

The opening paragraph of the statement records that in 1933 the Dutch publishing house of Holkema and Warendorf published De Geldbronnen van Het Nationaal-Socialisme. Drie Gesprekken Met Hitler, and adds that,

This book was allegedly written by "Sidney Warburg." A partner in the Amsterdam firm of Warburg & Co. informed James P. Warburg of the book and Holkema and Warendorf were informed that no such person as "Sidney Warburg" existed. They thereupon withdrew the book from circulation.


James Warburg then makes two sequential and seemingly contradictory statements:

... the book contained a mass of libelous material against various members of my family and against a number of prominent banking houses and individuals in New York· I have never to this day seen a copy of the book. Apparently only a handful of copies escaped the publisher's withdrawal.


Now on the one hand Warburg claims he has never seen a copy of the "Sidney Warburg" book, and on the other hand says it is "libelous" and proceeds to construct a detailed affidavit on a sentence by sentence basis to refute the information supposedly in a book he claims not to have seen! It is very difficult to accept the validity of Warburg's claim he has "never to this day seen a copy of the book." Or if indeed he had not, then the affidavit is worthless.

James Warburg adds that the "Sidney Warburg" book is "obvious anti-Semitism," and the thrust of Warburg's statement is that the "Sidney Warburg" story is pure anti-Semitic propaganda. In fact (and Warburg would have discovered this fact if he had read the book), the only anti-Semitic statements in the 1933 book are those attributed to Adolf Hitler, whose anti-Semitic feelings are hardly any great discovery. Apart from Hitler's ravings there is nothing in the original "Sidney Warburg" book remotely connected with anti-Semitism, unless we classify Rockefeller, Glean, Carter, McBean, etc. as Jewish. In fact, it is notable that not a single Jewish banker is named in the book — except for the mythical "Sidney Warburg" who is a courier, not one of the alleged money givers. Yet we know from an authentic source (Ambassador Dodd) that the Jewish banker Eberhard von Oppenheim did indeed give 200,000 marks to Hitler,11 and it is unlikely "Sidney Warburg" would have missed this observation if he was deliberately purveying false anti-Semitic propaganda.

The first page of James Warburg's statement concerns the 1933 book. After the first page James Warburg introduces Rene Sonderegger and another book written in 1947. Careful analysis of Warburg's statement and affidavit point up that his denials and assertions essentially refer to Sonderegger and not to Sidney Warburg. Now Sonderegger was anti-Semitic and probably was part of a neo-Nazi movement after World War II, but this claim of anti-Semitism cannot be laid to the 1933 book — and that is the crux of the question at issue. In brief, James Paul Warburg starts out by claiming to discuss a book he has never seen but knows to be libelous and anti-Semitic, then without warning shifts the accusation to another book which was certainly anti-Semitic but was published a decade later. Thus, the Warburg affidavit so thoroughly confuses the two books that the reader is lead to condemn the mythical "Sidney Warburg" along with Sonderegger.12 Let us look at some of J.P. Warburg's statements:

James P. Warburg's Sworn Affidavit New York City, July 15, 1949 / Author's Comments on James P. Warburg Affidavit

Concerning the wholly false and malicious allegations made by Rene Sonderegger of Zurich, Switzerland, et al., as set forth in the foregoing part of this statement, I, James Paul Warburg, of Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.A., depose as follows: / Note that the affidavit concerns Rene Sonderegger, not the book published by J.G. Shoup in 1933.

No such person as "Sidney Warburg" existed in New York City in 1933, nor elsewhere, as far as I know, then or at any other time. / We can assume that the name "Sidney Warburg" is a pseudonym, or used falsely.

I never gave any manuscript, diary, notes, cables, or any other documents to any person for translation and publication in Holland, and, specifically, I never gave any such documents to the alleged J.G. Shoup of Antwerp. To the best of my knowledge and recollection I never at any time met any such person. / The affidavit confines itself to grant of materials "for translation and publication in Holland."

The telephone conversation between Roger Baldwin and myself, reported by Sonderegger, never took place at all and is pure invention. / Reported by Sonderegger, not "Sidney Warburg."

I did not go to Germany at the request of the President of the Guaranty Trust Company in 1929, or at any other time. / But Warburg did go to Germany in 1929 and 1930 for the International Acceptance Bank, Inc.

I did go to Germany on business for my own bank, The International Acceptance Bank Inc., of New York, in both 1929 and 1930. On neither of these occasions did I have anything to do with investigating the possible prevention of a Communist revolution in Germany by the promotion of a Nazi counter-revolution. As a matter of recorded fact, my opinion at the time was that there was relatively little danger of a Communist revolution in Germany and a considerable danger of a Nazi seizure of power. I am in a position to prove that, on my return from Germany after the Reichstag elections of 1930, I warned my associates that Hitler would very likely come to power in Germany and that the result would be either a Nazi-dominated Europe or a second world war — perhaps both. This can be corroborated as well as the fact that, as a consequence of my warning, my bank proceeded to reduce its German commitments as rapidly as possible. / Note that Warburg, by his own statement, told his banking associates that Hitler would come to power. This claim was made in 1930 — and the Warburgs continued as directors with I.G. Farben and other pro-Nazi firms.

I had no discussions anywhere, at any time, with Hitler, with any Nazi officials, or with anyone else about providing funds for the Nazi Party. Specifically, I had no dealing of this sort with Mendelssohn & Co., or the Rotterdamsche Bankvereiniging or the Banca Italiana. (The latter is probably meant to read Banca d'Italia, with which I likewise had no such dealings.) / There is no evidence to contradict this statement. So far as can be traced Warburgs were not connected with these banking firms except that the Italian correspondent of Warburg's Bank of Manhattan was "Banca Commerciale Italiana" — which is close to "Banca Italiana."

In February 1933 (see pages 191 and 192 of Spanischer Sommer) when I am alleged to have brought Hitler the last installment of American funds and to have been received by Goering and Goebbels as well as by Hitler himself, I can prove that I was not in Germany at all. I never set foot in Germany after the Nazis had come to power in January 1933. In January and February I was in New York and Washington, working both with my bank and with President-elect Roosevelt on the then-acute banking crisis. After Mr. Roosevelt's inauguration, on March 3, 1933, I was working with him continuously helping to prepare the agenda for the World Economic Conference, to which I was sent as Financial Adviser in early June. This is a matter of public record. / There is no evidence to contradict these statements. "Sidney Warburg" provides no supporting evidence for his claims. / See Wall Street and FDR, (New York: Arlington House Publishers, 1975), for details of FDR's German associations.

The foregoing statements should suffice to demonstrate that the whole "Sidney Warburg" myth and the subsequent spurious identification of myself with the non-existent" Sidney" are fabrications of malicious falsehood without the slightest foundation in truth. / No. James P. Warburg states he has never seen the original "Sidney Warburg" book published in Holland in 1933. Therefore his affidavit only applies to the Sonderegger book which is inaccurate. Sidney Warburg may well be a myth, but the association of Max Warburg and Paul Warburg with I.G. Farben and Hitler is not a myth.


Does James Warburg intend to mislead?

It is true that" Sidney Warburg" may well have been an invention, in the sense that "Sidney Warburg" never existed. We assume the name is a fake; but someone wrote the book. Zimmerman and Sonderegger may or may not have committed libel to the Warburg name, but unfortunately when we examine James P. Warburg's affidavit as published in von Papen's Memoirs we are left as much in the dark as ever. There are three important and unanswered questions: (1) why would James P. Warburg claim as a forgery a book he has not read; (2) why does Warburg's affidavit avoid the key question and divert discussion away from "Sidney Warburg" to the anti-Semitic Sonderegger book published in 1947; and (3) why would James P. Warburg be so insensitive to Jewish suffering in World War II to publish his affidavit in the Memoirs of Franz von Papen, who was a prominent Nazi at the heart of the Hitler movement since the early days of 1933?

Not only were the German Warburgs persecuted by Hitler in 1938, but millions of Jews lost their lives to Nazi barbarism. It seems elementary that anyone who has suffered and was sensitive to the past sufferings of German Jews would avoid Nazis, Naziism, and neo-Nazi books like the plague. Yet here we have Nazi von Papen acting as a genial literary host to self-described anti-Nazi James P. Warburg, who apparently welcomes the opportunity. Moreover, the Warburgs had ample opportunity to release such an affidavit with wide publicity without utilizing neo-Nazi channels.

The reader will profit from pondering this situation. The only logical explanation is that some of the facts in the "Sidney Warburg" book are either true, come close to the truth, or are embarrassing to James P. Warburg. One cannot say that Warburg intends to mislead (although this might seem an obvious conclusion), because businessmen are notoriously illogical writers and reasoners, and there is certainly nothing to exempt Warburg from this categorization.

Some Conclusions from the "Sidney Warburg" Story

"Sidney Warburg" never existed; in this sense the original 1933 book is a work of fiction. However, many of the then-little-known facts recorded in the book are accurate; and the James Warburg affidavit is not aimed at the original book but rather at an anti-Semitic book circulated over a decade later.

Paul Warburg was a director of American I.G. Farben and thus connected with the financing of Hitler. Max Warburg, a director of German I.G. Farben, signed — along with Hitler himself — the document which appointed Hjalmar Schacht to the Reichsbank. These verifiable connections between the Warburgs and Hitler suggest the "Sidney Warburg" story cannot be abandoned as a total forgery without close examination.

Who wrote the 1933 book, and why? J.G. Shoup says the notes were written by a Warburg in England and given to him to translate. The Warburg motive was alleged to be genuine remorse at the amoral behavior of Warburgs and their Wall Street associates. Does this sound like a plausible motive? It has not gone unnoticed that those same Wall Streeters who plot war and revolution are often in their private lives genuinely decent citizens; it is not beyond the realm of reason that one of them had a change of heart or a heavy conscience. But this is not proven.

If the book was a forgery, then by whom was it written? James Warburg admits he does not know the answer, and he writes: "The original purpose of the forgery remains somewhat obscure even today.13

Would any government forge the document? Certainly not the British or U.S. governments, which are both indirectly implicated by the book. Certainly not the Nazi government in Germany, although James Warburg appears to suggest this unlikely possibility. Could it be France, or the Soviet Union, or perhaps Austria? France, possibly because France feared the rise of Nazi Germany. Austria is a similar possibility. The Soviet Union is a possibility because the Soviets also had much to fear from Hitler. So it is plausible that France, Austria, or the Soviet Union had some hand in the preparation of the book.

Any private citizen who forged such a book without inside government materials would have to be remarkably well informed. Guaranty Trust is not a particularly well-known bank outside New York, yet there is an extraordinary degree of plausibility about the involvement of Guaranty Trust, because it was the Morgan vehicle used for financing and infiltrating the Bolshevik revolution.14 Whoever named Guaranty Trust as the vehicle for funding Hitler either knew a great deal more than the man in the street, or had authentic government information. What would be the motive behind such a book?

The only motive that seems acceptable is that the unknown author had knowledge a war was in preparation and hoped for a public reaction against the Wall Street fanatics and their industrialist friends in Germany — before it was too late. Clearly, whoever wrote the book, his motive almost certainly was to warn against Hitlerian aggression and to point to its Wall Street source, because the technical assistance of American companies controlled by Wall Street was still needed to build Hitler's war machine. The Standard Oil hydrogenation patents and financing for the oil from coal plants, the bomb sights, and the other necessary technology had not been fully transferred when the "Sidney Warburg" book was written. Consequently, this could have been a book designed to break the back of Hitler's supporters abroad, to inhibit the planned transfer of U.S. war-making potential, and to eliminate financial and diplomatic support of the Nazi state. If this was the goal, it is regrettable that the book failed to achieve any of these purposes.

_______________

Notes:

1. William E. Dodd, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, op. cit., p. 31.

2. Ibid., p. 74.

3. Franz von Papen, Memoirs, (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1953), p. 229.

4. The English text for this chapter is translated from an authenticated surviving German translation of a copy of the Dutch edition of De Geldbronnen van Het Nationaal-Socialisme (Drie Gesprekken Met Hitler), or The Financial Sources of National Socialism (Three conversations with Hitler. The original Dutch author is given as "Door Sidney Warburg, vertaald door J.G. Shoup" (By Sidney Warburg, as told by J.G. Shoup).

The copy used here was translated from the Dutch by Dr. Walter Nelz, Wilhelm Peter, and Rene Sonderegger in Zurich, February 11, 1947, and the German translation bears an affidavit to the effect that: "The undersigned three witnesses do verify that the accompanying document is none other than a true and literal translation from Dutch into German of the book by Sidney Warburg, a copy of which was constantly at their disposal during the complete process of translation. They testify that they held this original in their hands, and that to the best of their ability they read it sentence by sentence, translating it into German, comparing then the content of the accompanying translation to the original conscientiously until complete agreement was reached."

5. Note that "von Heydt" was the original name for the Dutch Bank voor Handel en Seheepvaart N.V., a subsidiary of the Thyssen interests and now known to have been used as a funnel for Nazi funds. See Elimination of German Resources.

6. Examination of the Index for the New York Times confirms the accuracy of the latter part of this statement. See for example the sudden rush of interest by the New York Times, September 15, 1930 and the feature article on "Hitler, Driving Force in Germany's Fascism" in the September 21, 1930 issue of the New York Times. In 1929 the New York Times listed only one brief item on Adolf Hitler. In 1931 it ran a score of substantial entries, in-eluding no fewer than three "Portraits."

7. Hoover said he lost the support of Wall Street in 1931 because he would not go along with its plan for a New Deal: see Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and FDR, op. cit.

8. Franz von Papen, Memoirs, (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1958). Translated by Brian Connell.

9. Werner Zimmerman, Liebet Eure Feinde, (Frankhauser Verlag: Thielle-Neuchatel, 1948), which contains a chapter, "Hitler's geheime Geldgeber" (Hitler's secret financial supporters) and Rene Sonderegger, Spanischer Sommer, (Afroltern, Switzerland: Aehren Verlag, 1948).

10. Franz von Papen, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 23.

11. William E. Dodd, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, op. cit. pp, 593-602.

12. The reader should examine the complete Warburg statement and affidavit; see Franz von Papen, Memoirs, op. cit. pp. 593-602,

13. Franz von Papen, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 594.

14. See Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, op. cit.
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:31 am

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Wall Street-Nazi Collaboration in World War II

Behind the battle fronts in World War II, through intermediaries in Switzerland and North Africa, the New York financial elite collaborated with the Nazi regime, Captured files after the war yielded a mass of evidence demonstrating that for some elements of Big Business, the period 1941-5 was "business as usual." For instance, correspondence between U.S. firms and their French subsidiaries reveals the aid given to the Axis military machine — while the United States was at war with Germany and Italy. Letters between Ford of France and Ford of the U.S. between 1940 and July 1942 were analyzed by the Foreign Funds Control section of the Treasury Department. Their initial report concluded that until mid-1942:

(1) the business of the Ford subsidiaries in France substantially increased; (2) their production was solely for the benefit of the Germans and the countries under its occupation; (3) the Germans have "shown clearly their wish to protect the Ford interests" because of the attitude of strict neutrality maintained by Henry Ford and the late Edsel Ford; and (4) the increased activity of the French Ford subsidiaries on behalf of the Germans received the commendation of the Ford family in America.1


Similarly, the Rockefeller Chase Bank was accused of collaborating with the Nazis in World War II France, while Nelson Rockefeller had a soft job in Washington D.C.:

Substantially the same pattern of behavior was pursued by the Paris office of the Chase Bank during German occupation, An examination of the correspondence between Chase, New York, and Chase, France, from the date of the fall of France to May, 1942 discloses that: (1) the manager of the Paris office appeased and collaborated with the Germans to place the Chase banks in a "privileged position;" (2) the Germans held the Chase Bank in a very special esteem — owing to the international activities of our (Chase) head office and the pleasant relations which the Paris branch has been maintaining with many of their (German) banks and their (German) local organizations and higher officers; (3)the Paris manager was "very vigorous in enforcing restrictions against Jewish property, even going so far as to refuse to release funds belonging to Jews in anticipation that a decree with retroactive provisions prohibiting such release might be published in the near future by the occupying authorities;" (4)the New York office despite the above information took no direct steps to remove the undesirable manager from the Paris office since it "might react against our (Chase) interests as we are dealing, not with a theory but with a situation."2


An official report to then-Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau concluded that:

These two situations [i.e., Ford and Chase Bank] convince us that it is imperative to investigate immediately on the spot the activities of subsidiaries of at least some of the larger American firms which were operating in France during German occupation ....3


Treasury officials urged that an investigation be started with the French subsidiaries of several American banks — that is, Chase, Morgan, National City, Guaranty, Bankers Trust, and American Express. Although Chase and Morgan were the only two banks to maintain French offices throughout the Nazi occupation, in September 1944 all the major New York banks were pressing the U.S. Government for permission to re-open pre-war branches. Subsequent Treasury investigation produced documentary evidence of collaboration between both Chase Bank and J.P. Morgan with the Nazis in World War II. The recommendation for a full investigation is cited in full as follows:

TREASURY DEPARTMENT INTER-OFFICE COMMUNICATION

Date: December 20, 1944
To: Secretary Morgenthau From: Mr. Saxon
Examination of the records of the Chase Bank, Paris, and of Morgan and Company, France, have progressed only far enough to permit tentative conclusions and the revelation of a few interesting facts:

CHASE BANK, PARIS

a. Niederman, of Swiss nationality, manager of Chase, Paris, was unquestionably a collaborator;

b. The Chase Head Office in New York was informed of Niederman's collaborationist policy but took no steps to remove him. Indeed there is ample evidence to show that the Head Office in New York viewed Niederman's good relations with the Germans as an excellent means of preserving, unimpaired, the position of the Chase Bank in France;

c. The German authorities were anxious to keep the Chase open and indeed took exceptional measures to provide sources of revenue;

d. The German authorities desired "to be friends" with the important American banks because they expected that these banks would be useful after the war as an instrument of German policy in the United States;

e. The Chase, Paris showed itself most anxious to please the German authorities in every possible way. For example, the Chase zealously maintained the account of the German Embassy in Paris, "as every little thing helps" (to maintain the excellent relations between Chase and the German authorities);

f. The whole objective of the Chase policy and operation was to maintain the position of the bank at any cost.

MORGAN AND COMPANY, FRANCE

a. Morgan and Company regarded itself as a French bank, and therefore obligated to observe French banking laws and regulations, whether Nazi-inspired or not; and did actually do so;

b. Morgan and Company was most anxious to preserve the continuity of its house in France, and, in order to achieve this security, worked out a modus vivendi with the German authorities;

c. Morgan and Company had tremendous prestige with the German authorities, and the Germans boasted of the splendid cooperation of Morgan and Company;

d. Morgan continued its prewar relations with the great French industrial and commercial concerns which were working for Germany, including the Renault Works, since confiscated by the French Government, Puegeqt [sic], Citroen, and many others.

e. The power of Morgan and Company in France bears no relation to the small financial resources of the firm, and the enquiry now in progress will be of real value in allowing us for the first time to study the Morgan pattern in Europe and the manner in which Morgan has used its great power;

f. Morgan and Company constantly sought its ends by playing one government against another in the coldest and most unscrupulous manner.

Mr. Jefferson Caffery, U.S. Ambassador to France, has been kept informed of the progress of this investigation and at all times gave me full support and encouragement, in principle and in fact. Indeed, it was Mr. Caffery himself who asked me how the Ford and General Motors subsidiaries in France had acted during the occupation, and expressed the desire that we should look into these companies after the bank investigation was completed.

RECOMMENDATION

I recommend that this investigation, which, for unavoidable reasons, has progressed slowly up to this time, should now be pressed urgently and that additional needed personnel be sent to Paris as soon as possible.4


The full investigation was never undertaken, and no investigation has been made of this presumably treasonable activity down to the present day.

American I.G. in World War II

Collaboration between American businessmen and Nazis in Axis Europe was paralleled by protection of Nazi interests in the United States. In 1939 American I.G. was renamed General Aniline & Film, with General Dyestuffs acting as its exclusive sales agent in the U.S. These names effectively disguised the fact that American I.G. (or General Aniline & Film) was an important producer of major war materials, including atabrine, magnesium, and synthetic rubber. Restrictive agreements with its German parent I.G. Farben reduced American supplies of these military products during World War II.

An American citizen, Halbach, became president of General Dyestuffs in 1930 and acquired majority control in 1939 from Dietrich A. Schmitz, a director of American I.G. and brother of Hermann Schmitz, director of I.G. Farben in Germany and chairman of the board of American I.G. until the outbreak of war in 1939. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Treasury blocked Halbach's bank accounts. In June 1942 the Alien Property Custodian seized Halbach's stock in General Dyestuffs and took over the firm as an enemy corporation under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Subsequently, the Alien Property Custodian appointed a new board of directors to act as trustee for the duration of the war. These actions were reasonable and usual practice, but when we probe under the surface another and quite abnormal story emerges.

Between 1942 and 1945 Halbach was nominally a consultant to General Dyestuffs. In fact Halbach ran the company, at $82,000 per year, Louis Johnson, former Assistant Secretary of War, was appointed president of General Dyestuffs by the 'U.S. Government, for which he received $75,000 a year. Louis Johnson attempted to bring pressure to bear on the U.S. Treasury to unblock Halbach's blocked funds and allow Halbach to develop policies contrary to the interests of the U.S., then at war with Germany. The argument used to get Halbach's bank accounts unblocked was that Halbach was running the company and that the Government-appointed board of directors "would have been lost without Mr. Halbach's knowledge."

During the war Halbach filed suit against the Alien Property Custodian, through the Establishment law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, to oust the U.S. Government from its control of I.G. Farben companies. These suits were unsuccessful, but Halbach was successful in keeping the Farben cartel agreements intact throughout World War II; the Alien Property Custodian never did go into court during World War II on the pending anti-trust suits. Why not? Leo T. Crowley, head of the Alien Property Custodian's office, had John Foster Dulles as his advisor, and John Foster Dulles was a partner in the above-mentioned Sullivan and Cromwell firm, which was acting on behalf of Halbach in its suit against the Alien Property Custodian.

There were other conflict of interest situations we should note. Leo T. Crowley, the Alien Property Custodian, appointed Victor Emanuel to the boards of both General Aniline & Film and General Dyestuffs. Before the war Victor Emanuel was director of the J. Schroder Banking Corporation. Schroder, as we have already seen, was a prominent financier of Hitler and the Nazi party — and at that very time was a member of Himmler's Circle of Friends, making substantial contributions to S.S. organizations in Germany.

In turn Victor Emanuel appointed Leo Crowley head of Standard Gas & Electric (controlled by Emanuel) at $75,000 per annum. This sum was in addition to Crowley's salary from the Alien Property Custodian and $10,000 a year as head of the U.S. Government Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. By 1945 James E. Markham had replaced Crowley as A.P.C. and was also appointed by Emanuel as a director of Standard Gas at $4,850 per year, in addition to the $10,000 he drew as Alien Property Custodian.

The wartime influence of General Dyestuffs and this cozy government-business coterie on behalf of I.G. Farben is exemplified in the ease of American Cyanamid. Before the war I.G. Farben controlled the drug, chemical, and dyestuffs industries in Mexico. During World War II it was proposed to Washington that American Cyanamid take over this Mexican industry and develop an "independent" chemical industry with the old I.G. Farben firms seized by the Mexican Alien Property Custodian.

As hired hands of Schroder banker Victor Emanuel, Crowley and Markham, who were also employees of the U.S. Government, attempted to deal with the question of these I.G. Farben interests in the United States and Mexico. On April 13, 1943 James Markham sent a letter to Secretary of State Cordell Hull objecting to the proposed Cyanamid deal on the grounds it was contrary to the Atlantic Charter and would interfere with the aim of establishing independent firms in Latin America. The Markham position was supported by Henry A. Wallace and Attorney General Francis Biddle.

The forces aligned against the Cyanamid deal were Sterling Drug, Inc. and Winthrop. Both Sterling and Winthrop stood to lose their drug market in Mexico if the Cyanamid deal went through. Also hostile to the Cyanamid deal of course was I.G. Farben's General Aniline and General Dyestuffs, dominated by Victor Emanuel, banker Sehroder's former associate.

On the other hand, the State Department and the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American affairs — which happened to be Nelson Rockefeller's wartime baby — supported the proposed Cyanamid deal. The Rockefellers are, of course, also interested in the drug and chemical industries in Latin America. In brief, an American monopoly under influence of Rockefeller would have replaced a Nazi I.G. Farben monopoly.

I.G. Farben won this round in Washington, but more ominous questions are raised when we look at the bombing of Germany in wartime by the U.S.A.F. It has long been rumored, but never proven, that Farben received favored treatment — i.e., that it was not bombed. James Stewart Martin comments as follows on favored treatment received by I.G. Farben in the bombing of Germany:

Shortly after the armies reached the Rhine at Cologne, we were driving along the west bank within sight of the undamaged I.G. Farben plant at Leverkusen across the river. Without knowing anything about me or my business he (the jeep driver) began to give me a lecture about I.G. Farben and to point at the con. trast between the bombed-out city of Cologne and the trio of untouched plants on the fringe: the Ford works and the United Rayon works on the west bank, and the Farben works on the east bank..5


While this accusation is very much of an open question, requiring a great deal of skilled research into the U.S.A.A.F. bombing records, other aspects of favoritism for the Nazis are well recorded.

At the end of World War II, Wall Street moved into Germany through the Control Council to protect their old cartel friends and limit the extent to which the denazification fervor would damage old business relationships. General Lucius Clay, the deputy military governor for Germany, appointed businessmen who opposed denazification to positions of control over the denazification proceeds. William H. Draper of Dill. on, Read, the firm which financed the German cartels back in the 1920s, became General Clay's deputy.

Banker William Draper, as Brigadier General William Draper, put his control team together from businessmen who had represented American business in pre-war Germany. The General Motors representation included Louis Douglas, a former director of G.M., and Edward S. Zdunke, a pre-war head of General Motors in Antwerp, appointed to supervise the Engineering Section of the Control Council. Peter Hoglund, an expert on German auto industry, was given leave from General Motors. The personnel selection for the Council was undertaken by Colonel Graeme K. Howard — former G,M. representative in Germany and author of a book which "praises totalitarian practices [and] justifies German aggression .... "6

Image
CONTROL COUNCIL FOR GERMANY

Treasury Secretary Morgenthau was deeply disturbed at the implications of this Wall Street monopoly of the fate of Nazi Germany and prepared a memorandum to present to President Roosevelt. The complete Morgenthau memorandum, dated May 29, 1945, reads as follows:

MEMORANDUM

May 29, 1945

Lieutenant-General Lucius D. Clay, as Deputy to General Eisenhower, actively runs the American element of the Control Council for Germany. General Clay's three principal advisers on the Control Council staff are.

1. Ambassador Robert D. Murphy, who is in charge of the Political Division.

2. Louis Douglas, whom General Clay describes as my personal adviser on economical, financial and governmental matters." Douglas resigned as Director of the Budget in 1934; and for the following eight years he attacked the government's fiscal policies. Since 1940, Douglas has been president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, and since December 1944, he has been a director of the General Motors Corporation.

3. Brigadier-General William Draper, who is the director of the Economics Division of the Control Council. General Draper is a partner of the banking firm of Dillon, Read and Company,

Sunday's New York Times contained the announcement of key personnel who have been appointed by General Clay and General Draper to the Economic Division of the Control Council. The appointments include the following:

1. R.J. Wysor is to be in charge of the metallurgical matters. Wysor was president of the Republic Steel Corporation from 1937 until a recent date, and prior thereto, he was associated with the Bethlehem Steel, Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation and the Republic Steel Corporation.

2. Edward X. Zdunke is to supervise the engineering section. Prior to the war, Mr. Zdunke was head of General Motors at Antwerp.

3. Philip Gaethke is to be in charge of mining operations. Gaethke was formerly connected with Anaconda Copper and was manager of its smelters and mines in Upper Silesia before the war.

4. Philip P. Clover is to be in charge of handling oil matters. He was formerly a representative of the Socony Vacuum Oil Company in Germany.

5. Peter Hoglund is to deal with industrial production problems. Hoglund is on leave from General Motors and is said to be an expert on German production.

6. Calvin B. Hoover is to be in charge of the Intelligence Group on the Control Council and is also to be a special advisor to General Draper. In a letter to the Editor of the New York Times on October 9, 1944, Hoover wrote as follows:

The publication of Secretary Morgenthau's plan for dealing with Germany has disturbed me deeply ... such a Carthaginian peace would leave a legacy of hate to poison international relations for generations to come... the void in the economy of Europe which would exist through the destruction of all German industry is something which is difficult to contemplate.


7. Laird Bell is to be Chief Counsel of the Economic Division. He is a well-known Chicago lawyer and in May 1944, was elected the president of the Chicago Daily News, after the death of Frank Knox.

One of the men who helped General Draper in the selection of personnel for the Economics Division was Colonel Graeme Howard, a vice-president of General Motors, who was in charge of their overseas business and who was a leading representative of General Motors in Germany prior to the war. Howard is the author of a book in which he praises totalitarian practices, justifies German aggression and the Munich policy of appeasement, and blames Roosevelt for precipitating the war.


So when we examine the Control Council for Germany under General Lucius D. Clay we find that the head of the finance division was Louis Douglas, director of the Morgan-controlled General Motors and president of Mutual Life Insurance. (Opel, the General Motors German subsidiary, had been Hitler's biggest tank producer.) The head of the Control Council's Economics Division was William Draper, a partner in the Dillon, Read firm that had so much to do with building Nazi Germany in the first place. All three men were, not surprisingly in the light of more recent findings, members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Were American Industrialists and Financiers Guilty of War Crimes?

The Nuremburg War Crimes Trials proposed to select those responsible for World War II preparations and atrocities and place them on trial. Whether. such a procedure is morally justifiable is a debatable matter; there is some justification for holding that Nuremburg was a political farce far removed from legal principle.7 However, if we assume that there is such legal and moral justification, then surely any such trial should apply to all, irrespective of nationality. What for example should exempt Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, but not exempt Adolf Hitler and Goering? If the offense is preparation for war, and not blind vengeance, then justice should be impartial.

The directives prepared by the U.S. Control Council in Germany for the arrest and detention of war criminals refers to "Nazis" and "Nazi sympathizers," not "Germans." The relevant extracts are as follows:

a. You will search out, arrest, and hold, pending receipt by you of further instructions as to their disposition, Adolph Hitler, his chief Nazi associates, other war criminals and all persons who have participated in planning or carrying out Nazi enterprises involving or resulting in atrocities or war crimes.


Then follows a list of the categories of persons to be arrested, including:

(8) Nazis and Nazi sympathizers holding important and key positions in (a) National and Gau Civic and economic organizations; (b ) corporations and other organizations in which the government has a major financial interest; (c) industry, commerce, agriculture, and finance; (d) education; (e) the judicial; and (f) the press, publishing houses and other agencies disseminating news and propaganda.


Top American industrialists and financiers named in this book are covered by the categories listed above. Henry Ford and Edsel Ford respectively contributed money to Hitler and profited from German wartime production. Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Electric, General Motors, and I.T.T. certainly made financial or technical contributions which comprise prima facie evidence of "participating in planning or carrying out Nazi enterprises."

There is, in brief, evidence which suggests:

(a) cooperation with the Wehrmacht (Ford Motor Company, Chase Bank, Morgan Bank);

(b) aid to the Nazi Four Year Plan and economic mobilization for war (Standard Oil of New Jersey);

(c) creating and equipping the Nazi war machine (I.T.T.);

(d) stockpiling critical materials for the Nazis (Ethyl Corporation);

(e) weakening the Nazis' potential enemies (American I.G. Farben);

and,

(f) carrying on of propaganda, intelligence, and espionage (American I.G. Farben and Rockefeller public-relations man Ivy Lee).

At the very least there is sufficient evidence to demand a thorough and impartial investigation. However, as we have noted previously, these same firms and financiers were prominent in the 1933 election of Roosevelt and consequently had sufficient political pull to squelch threats of investigation. Extracts from the Morgenthau diary demonstrate that Wall Street political power was sufficient even to control the appointment of officers responsible for the denazification and eventual government of post-war Germany.

Did these American firms know of their assistance to Hitler's military machine? According to the firms themselves, emphatically not. They claim innocence of any intent to aid Hitler's Germany. Witness a telegram sent by the chairman of the board of Standard Oil of New Jersey to Secretary of War Patterson after World War II, when preliminary investigation of Wall Street assistance was under way:

During the entire period of our business contacts, we had no inkling of Farben's conniving part in Hitler's brutal politics, We offer any help we can give to see that complete truth is brought to light, and that rigid justice is done.

F.W. Abrams,
Chairman of Board


Unfortunately, the evidence presented is contrary to Abrams' telegraphed assertions. Standard Oil of New Jersey not only aided Hitler's war machine, but had knowledge of this assistance. Emil Helfferich, the board chairman of a Standard of New Jersey subsidiary, was a member of the Keppler Circle before Hitler came to power; he continued to give financial contributions to Himmler's Circle as late as 1944.

Accordingly, it is not at all difficult to visualize why Nazi industrialists were puzzled by "investigation" and assumed at the end of the war that their Wall Street friends would bail them out and protect them from the wrath of those who had suffered. These attitudes were presented to the Kilgore Committee in 1946:

You might also be interested in knowing, Mr. Chairman, that the top I.G. Farben people and others, when we questioned them about these activities, were inclined at times to be very indignant. Their general attitude and expectation was that the war was over and we ought now to be assisting them in helping to get I.G. Farben and German industry back on its feet. Some of them have outwardly said that this questioning and investigation was, in their estimation, only a phenomenon of short duration, because as soon as things got a little settled they would expect their friends in the United States and in England to be coming over. Their friends, so they said, would put a stop to activities such as these investigations and would see that they got the treatment which they regarded as proper and that assistance would be given to them to help reestablish their industry.8


_______________

Notes:

1. Morgenthau Diary (Germany).

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., pp. 800-2.

5. James Stewart Martin, All Honorable Men, op. cit., p. 75.

6. Morgenthau Diary (Germany), p. 1543. Colonel Graeme K. Howard's book was entitled, America and a New World Order, (New York: Scribners, 1940).

7. The reader should examine the essay, "The Return to War Crimes," in James J. Martin, Revisionist Viewpoints, (Colorado: Ralph Mules, 1971).

8. Elimination of German Resources, p. 652.
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:35 am

CHAPTER TWELVE: Conclusions

We have demonstrated with documentary evidence a number of critical associations between Wall Street international bankers and the rise of Hitler and Naziism in Germany.

First: that Wall Street financed the German cartels in the mid-1920s which in turn proceeded to bring Hitler to power.

Second: that the financing for Hitler and his S.S. street thugs came in part from affiliates or subsidiaries of U.S. firms, including Henry Ford in 1922, payments by I.G. Farben and General Electric in 1933, followed by the Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.T.T. subsidiary payments to Heinrich Himmler up to 1944.

Third: that U.S. multi-nationals under the control of Wall Street profited handsomely from Hitler's military construction program in the 1930s and at least until 1942.

Fourth: that these same international bankers used political influence in the U.S. to cover up their wartime collaboration and to do this infiltrated the U.S. Control Commission for Germany.

Our evidence for these four major assertions can be summarized as follows:

In Chapter One we presented evidence that the Dawes and Young Plans for German reparations were formulated by Wall Streeters, temporarily wearing the hats of statesmen, and these loans generated a rain of profits for these international bankers. Owen Young of General Electric, Hjalmar Schacht, A. Voegler, and others intimately connected with Hitler's accession to power had earlier been the negotiators for the U.S. and German sides, respectively. Three Wall Street houses — Dillon, Read; Harris, Forbes; and, National City Company — handled three-quarters of the reparations loans used to create the German cartel system, including the dominant I.G. Farben and Vereinigte Stahlwerke, which together produced 95 percent of the explosives for the Nazi side in World War II.

The central role of I.G. Farben in Hitler's coup d' état was reviewed in Chapter Two. The directors of American I.G. (Farben) were identified as prominent American businessmen: Walter Teagle, a dose Roosevelt associate and backer and an NRA administrator; banker Paul Warburg (his brother Max Warburg was on the board of I.G. Farben in Germany); and Edsel Ford. Farben contributed 400,000 RM directly to Schacht and Hess for use in the crucial 1933 elections and Farben was subsequently in the forefront of military development in Nazi Germany.

A donation of 60,000 RM was made to Hitler by German General Electric (A.E.G.), which had four directors and a 25-30 percent interest held by the U.S. General Electric parent company. This role was described in Chapter Three, and we found that Gerard Swope, an originator of Roosevelt's New Deal (its National Recovery Administration segment), together with Owen Young of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Clark Minor of International General Electric, were the dominant Wall Streeters in A.E.G. and the most significant single influence.

We also found no evidence to indict the German electrical firm Siemens, which was not under Wall Street control. In contrast, there is documentary evidence that both A.E.G. and Osram, the other units of the German electrical industry — both of which had U.S. participation and control — did finance Hitler. In fact, almost all directors of German General Electric were Hitler backers, either directly through A.E.G. or indirectly through other German firms, G.E. rounded out its Hitler support by technical cooperation with Krupp, aimed at restricting U.S. development of tungsten carbide, which worked to the detriment of the U.S. in World War II. We concluded that A.E.G. plants in Germany managed, by a yet unknown maneuver, to avoid bombing by the Allies.

An examination of the role of Standard Oil of New Jersey (which was and is controlled by the Rockefeller interests) was undertaken in Chapter Four. Standard Oil apparently did not finance Hitler's accession to power in 1933 (that part of the "myth of Sidney Warburg" is not proven). On the other hand, payments were made up to 1944 by Standard Oil of New Jersey, to develop synthetic gasoline for war purposes on behalf of the Nazis and, through its wholly owned subsidiary, to Heinrich Himmler's S.S. Circle of Friends for political purposes. Standard Oil's role was technical aid to Nazi development of synthetic rubber and gasoline through a U.S. research company under the management control of Standard Oil. The Ethyl Gasoline Company, jointly owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey and General Motors, was instrumental in supplying vital ethyl lead to Nazi Germany — over the written protests of the U.S. War Department — with the clear knowledge that the ethyl lead was for Nazi military purposes.

In Chapter Five we demonstrated that International Telephone and Telegraph Company, one of the more notorious multi-nationals, worked both sides of World War II through Baron Kurt von Schroder, of the Schroder banking group. I.T.T. also held a 28-percent interest in Focke-Wolfe aircraft, which manufactured excellent German fighter planes. We also found that Texaco (Texas Oil Company) was involved in Nazi endeavors through German attorney Westrick, but dropped its chairman of the board Rieber when these endeavors were publicized.

Henry Ford was an early (1922) Hitler backer and Edsel Ford continued the family tradition in 1942 by encouraging French Ford to profit from arming the German Wehrmacht, Subsequently, these Ford-produced vehicles were used against American soldiers as they landed in France in 1944. For his early recognition of, and timely assistance to, the Nazis, Henry Ford received a Nazi medal in 1938. The records of French Ford suggest Ford Motor received kid glove treatment from the Nazis after 1940.

The provable threads of Hitler financing are drawn together in Chapter Seven and answer with precise names and figures the question, who financed Adolf Hitler? This chapter indicts Wall Street and, incidentally, no one else of consequence in the United States except the Ford family. The Ford family is not normally associated with Wall Street but is certainly a part of the "power elite."

In earlier chapters we cited several Roosevelt associates, including Teagle of Standard Oil, the Warburg family, and Gerard Swope. In Chapter Eight the role of Putzi Hanfstaengl, another Roosevelt friend and a participant in the Reichstag fire, is traced. The composition of the Nazi inner circle during World War II, and the financial contributions of Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.T.T. subsidiaries, are traced in Chapter Nine. Documentary proof of these monetary contributions is presented. Kurt yon Schrader is identified as the key intermediary in this S.S. "slush fund."

Finally, in Chapter Ten we reviewed a book suppressed in 1934 and the "myth of 'Sidney Warburg.'" The suppressed book accused the Rockefellers, the Warburgs, and the major oil companies of financing Hitler. While the name "Sidney Warburg" was no doubt an invention, the extraordinary fact remains that the argument in the suppressed "Sidney Warburg" book is remarkably close to the evidence presented now. It also remains a puzzle why James Paul Warburg, fifteen years later, would want to attempt, in a rather transparently slipshod manner, to refute the contents of the "Warburg" book, a book he claims not to have seen. It is perhaps even more of a puzzle why Warburg would choose Nazi von Papen's Memoirs as the vehicle to present his refutation.

Finally, in Chapter Eleven we examined the roles of the Morgan and Chase Banks in World War II, specifically their collaboration with the Nazis in France while a major war was raging.

In other words, as in our two previous examinations of the links between New York international bankers and major historical events, we find a provable pattern of subsidy and political manipulation.

The Pervasive Influence of International Bankers

Looking at the broad array of facts presented in the three volumes of the Wall Street series, we find persistent recurrence of the same names: Owen Young, Gerard Swope, Hjalmar Schacht, Bernard Baruch, etc.; the same international banks: J.P. Morgan, Guaranty Trust, Chase Bank; and the same location in New York: usually 120 Broadway.

This group of international bankers backed the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequently profited from the establishment of a Soviet Russia. This group backed Roosevelt and profited from New Deal socialism. This group also backed Hitler and certainly profited from German armament in the 1930s. When Big Business should have been running its business operations at Ford Motor, Standard of New Jersey, and so on, we find it actively and deeply involved in political upheavals, war, and revolutions in three major countries.

The version of history presented here is that the financial elite knowingly and with premeditation assisted the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in concert with German bankers. After profiting handsomely from the German hyper-inflationary distress of 1923, and planning to place the German reparations burden onto the backs of American investors, Wall Street found it had brought about the 1929 financial crisis.

Two men were then backed as leaders for major Western countries: Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States and Adolf Hitler in Germany. The Roosevelt New Deal and Hitler's Four Year Plan had great similarities. The Roosevelt and Hitler plans were plans for fascist takeovers of their respective countries. While Roosevelt's NRA failed, due to then-operating constitutional constraints, Hitler's Plan succeeded.

Why did the Wall Street elite, the international bankers, want Roosevelt and Hitler in power? This is an aspect we have not explored. According to the "myth of 'Sidney Warburg,'" Wall Street wanted a policy of revenge; that is, it wanted war in Europe between France and Germany. We know even from Establishment history that both Hitler and Roosevelt acted out policies leading to war.

The link-ups between persons and events in this three-book series would require another book. But a single example will perhaps indicate the remarkable concentration of power within a relatively few organizations, and the use of this power.

On May 1st, 1918, when the Bolsheviks controlled only a small fraction of Russia (and were to come near to losing even that fraction in the summer of 1918), the American League to Aid and Cooperate with Russia was organized in Washington, D.C. to support the Bolsheviks. This was not a "Hands off Russia" type of committee formed by the Communist Party U.S.A. or its allies. It was a committee created by Wall Street with George P. Whalen of Vacuum Oil Company as Treasurer and Coffin and Oudin of General Electric, along with Thompson of the Federal Reserve System, Willard of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and assorted socialists.

When we look at the rise of Hitler and Naziism we find Vacuum Oil and General Electric well represented. Ambassador Dodd in Germany was struck by the monetary and technical contribution by the Rockefeller-controlled Vacuum Oil Company in building up military gasoline facilities for the Nazis. The Ambassador tried to warn Roosevelt. Dodd believed, in his apparent naiveté of world affairs, that Roosevelt would intervene, but Roosevelt himself was backed by these same oil interests and Walter Teagle of Standard Oil of New Jersey and the NRA was on the board of Roosevelt's Warm Springs Foundation. So, in but one of many examples, we find the Rockefeller-controlled Vacuum Oil Company prominently assisting in the creation of Bolshevik Russia, the military build-up of Nazi Germany, and backing Roosevelt's New Deal.

Is the United States Ruled by a Dictatorial Elite?

Within the last decade or so, certainly since the 1960s, a steady flow of literature has presented a thesis that the United States is ruled by a self-perpetuating and unelected power elite. Even further, most of these books aver that this elite controls, or at the least heavily influences, all foreign and domestic policy decisions, and that no idea becomes respectable or is published in the United States without the tacit approval, or perhaps lack of disapproval, of this elitist circle.

Obviously the very flow of anti-establishment literature by itself testifies that the United States cannot be wholly under the thumb of any single group or elite. On the other hand, anti-establishment literature is not fully recognized or reasonably discussed in academic or media circles. More often than not it consists of a limited edition, privately produced, almost hand-to-hand circulated. There are some exceptions, true; but not enough to dispute the observation that anti-establishment critics do not easily enter normal information/distribution channels.

Whereas in the early and mid-1960s, any concept of rule by a conspiratorial elite, or indeed any kind of elite, was reason enough to dismiss the proponent out of hand as a "nut case," the atmosphere for such concepts has changed radically. The Watergate affair probably added the final touches to a long-developing environment of skepticism and doubt. We are almost at the point where anyone who accepts, for example, the Warren Commission report, or believes that that the decline and fall of Mr. Nixon did not have some conspiratorial aspects, is suspect. In brief, no one any longer really believes the Establishment information process. And there is a wide variety of alternative presentations of events now available for the curious.

Several hundred books, from the full range of the political and philosophical spectrum, add bits and pieces of evidence, more hypotheses, and more accusations. What was not too long ago a kooky idea, talked about at midnight behind closed doors, in hushed and almost conspiratorial whispers, is now openly debated — not, to be sure, in Establishment newspapers but certainly on non-network radio talk shows, the underground press, and even from time to time in books from respectable Establishment publishing houses.

So let us ask the question again: Is there an unelected power elite behind the U.S. Government?

A substantive and often-cited source of information is Carroll Quigley, Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University, who in 1966 had published a monumental modern history entitled Tragedy and Hope.1 Quigley's book is apart from others in this revisionist vein, by virtue of the fact that it was based on a two-year study of the internal documents of one of the power centers. Quigley traces the history of the power elite:

... the powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.


Quigley also demonstrates that the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Planning Association, and other groups are "semi-secret" policy-making bodies under the control of this power elite.

In the following tabular presentation we have listed five such revisionist books, including Quigley's. Their essential theses and compatibility with the three volumes of the "Wall Street" series are summarized. It is surprising that in the three major historical events noted, Carroll Quigley is not at all consistent with the "Wall Street" series evidence. Quigley goes a long way to provide evidence for the existence of the power elite, but does not penetrate the operations of the elite.

Possibly, the papers used by Quigley had been vetted, and did not include documentation on elitist manipulation of such events as the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler's accession to power, and the election of Roosevelt in 1933. More likely, these political manipulations may not be recorded at all in the files of the power groups. They may have been unrecorded actions by a small ad hoc segment of the elite. It is noteworthy that the documents used by this author came from government sources, recording the day-to-day actions of Trotsky, Lenin, Roosevelt, Hitler, J.P. Morgan and the various firms and banks involved.

On the other hand, such authors as Jules Archer, Gary Allen, Helen P. Lasell, and William Domhoff, writing from widely different political standpoints2 are consistent with the "Wall Street" evidence. These writers present a hypothesis of a power elite manipulating the U.S. Government. The "Wall Street" series demonstrates how this hypothesized "power elite" has manipulated specific historical events.

Obviously any such exercise of unconstrained and supra-legal power is unconstitutional, even though wrapped in the fabric of law-abiding actions. We can therefore legitimately raise the question of the existence of a subversive force operating to remove constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The New York Elite as a Subversive Force

Twentieth-century history, as recorded in Establishment textbooks and journals, is inaccurate. It is a history which is based solely upon those official documents which various Administrations have seen fit to release for public consumption.

Table: IS THE EVIDENCE IN THE "WALL STREET" SERIES CONSISTENT WITH RELATED REVISIONIST ARGUMENTS PRESENTED ELSEWHERE?

Author and Title: / Essential Thesis: / Is the Thesis Consistent with: (1) Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution / (2) Wall Street and FDR / (3) Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler

Carroll QUIGLEY: Tragedy and Hope (1) / "Semi-secret" Eastern Establishment and interlocks have dominant role in planning and policy in U.S. / Quigley does not include evidence of Wall Street in the Bolshevik Revolution (pp. 385-9) / No: Quigley's argument is totally inconsistent with above (see p. 533) / Quigley's account of the rise of Hitler (pp. 529-33) does not include evidence of Establishment involvement.

Jules ARCHER: Plot to Seize the White House (2) / In 1933-4 there was a Wall Street conspiracy to remove FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. / Not relevant, but Wall Street elements cited by Archer were involved in the Bolshevik Revolution. / Yes: in general Archer's evidence is consistent, except that the role of FDR is interpreted differently. / Those parts in Archer bearing on Hitler and Naziism are consistent with the above.

Gary ALLEN: None Dare Call It Conspiracy (3) / There exists a secret conspiracy (the Council on Foreign Relations) to install a dictatorship in the U.S. and ultimately to control the world. / Yes, except for minor variances on financing. / Not included in Allen but is consistent. / Not included in Allen but is consistent.

Helen P. LASELL: Power Behind the Government Today (4) / The Council on Foreign Relations is a secret subversive organization dedicated to the overthrow of Constitutional government in the U.S. / Lasell's evidence is consistent with above. / Lasell's evidence is consistent with above. / Lasell's evidence is consistent with above

William DOMHOFF: Who Rules America? (5) / There is a "power elite" which controls all major banks, corporations, foundations, the executive branch, and the regulatory agencies of the U.S. government. / Above series extends Dombolls argument to foreign policy. / Above series extends Domhoff's argument to Presidential elections. / Above series extends Domhoffs argument to foreign policy.

1. New York: MacMillan, 1966.

2. New York: Hawthorn, 1973.

3. Seal Beach: Concord Press, 1971.

4. New York: Liberty, 1963.

5. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1967
.


But an accurate history cannot be based on a selective release of documentary archives. Accuracy requires access to all documents. In practice, as previously classified documents in the U.S. State Department files, the British Foreign Office, and the German Foreign Ministry archives and other depositories are acquired, a new version of history has emerged; the prevailing Establishment version is seen to be, not only inaccurate, but designed to hide a pervasive fabric of deceit and immoral conduct.

The center of political power, as authorized by the U.S. Constitution, is with an elected Congress and an elected President, working within the framework and under the constraints of a Constitution, as interpreted by an unbiased Supreme Court. We have in the past assumed that political power is consequently carefully exercised by the Executive and legislative branch, after due deliberation and assessment of the wishes of the electorate. In fact, nothing could be further from this assumption. The electorate has long suspected, but now knows, that political promises are worth nothing. Lies are the order of the day for policy implementors. Wars are started (and stopped) with no shred of coherent explanation. Political words have never matched political deeds. Why not? Apparently because the center of political power has been elsewhere than with elected and presumably responsive representatives in Washington, and this power elite has its own objectives, which are inconsistent with those of the public at large.

In this three-volume series we have identified for three historical events the seat of political power in the United States — the power behind the scenes, the hidden influence on Washington — as that of the financial establishment in New York: the private international bankers, more specifically the financial houses of J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank, and in earlier days (before amalgamation of their Manhattan Bank with the former Chase Bank), the Warburgs.

The United States has, in spite of the Constitution and its supposed constraints, become a quasi-totalitarian state. While we do not (yet) have. the overt trappings of dictatorship, the concentration camps and the knock on the door at midnight, we most certainly do have threats and actions aimed at the survival of non-Establishment critics, use of the Internal Revenue Service to bring dissidents in line, and manipulation of the Constitution by a court system that is politically subservient to the Establishment.

It is in the pecuniary interests of the international bankers to centralize political power — and this centralization can best be achieved within a collectivist society, such as socialist Russia, national socialist Germany, or a Fabian socialist United States.

There can be no full understanding and appreciation of twentieth-century American politics and foreign policy without the realization that this financial elite effectively monopolizes Washington policy.

In case after case, newly released documentation implicates this elite and confirms this hypothesis. The revisionist versions of the entry of the United States into World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam reveal the influence and objectives of this elite.

For most of the twentieth century the Federal Reserve System, particularly the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (which is outside the control of Congress, unaudited and uncontrolled, with the power to print money and create credit at will), has exercised a virtual monopoly over the direction of the American economy. In foreign affairs the Council on Foreign Relations, superficially an innocent forum for academics, businessmen, and politicians, contains within its shell, perhaps unknown to many of its members, a power center that unilaterally determines U.S. foreign policy. The major objective of this submerged — and obviously subversive — foreign. policy is the acquisition of markets and economic power (profits, if you will), for a small group of giant multi-nationals under the virtual control of a few banking investment houses and controlling families.

Through foundations controlled by this elite, research by compliant and spineless academics, "conservatives" as well as "liberals," has been directed into channels useful for the objectives of the elite essentially to maintain this subversive and unconstitutional power apparatus.

Through publishing houses controlled by this same financial elite unwelcome books have been squashed and useful books promoted; fortunately publishing has few barriers to entry and is almost atomistically competitive. Through control of a dozen or so major newspapers, run by editors who think alike, public information can be almost orchestrated at will. Yesterday, the space program; today, an energy crisis or a campaign for ecology; tomorrow, a war in the Middle East or some other manufactured "crisis."

The total result of this manipulation of society by the Establishment elite has been four major wars in sixty years, a crippling national debt, abandonment of the Constitution, suppression of freedom and opportunity, and creation of a vast credibility gulf between the man in the street and Washington, D.C. While the transparent device of two major parties trumpeting artificial differences, circus-like conventions, and the cliche of "bipartisan foreign policy" no longer carries credibility, and the financial elite itself recognizes that its policies lack public acceptance, it is obviously prepared to go it alone without even nominal public support.

In brief, we now have to consider and debate whether this New York-based elitist Establishment is a subversive force operating with deliberation and knowledge to suppress the Constitution and a free society. That will be the task ahead in the next decade.

The Slowly Emerging Revisionist Truth

The arena for this debate and the basis for our charges of subversion is the evidence provided by the revisionist historian. Slowly, over decades, book by book, almost line by line, the truth of recent history has emerged as documents are released, probed, analyzed, and set within a more valid historical framework.

Let us consider a few examples. American entry into World War II was supposedly precipitated, according to the Establishment version, by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Revisionists have established that Franklin D. Roosevelt and General Marshall knew of the impending Japanese attack and did nothing to warn the Pearl Harbor military authorities. The Establishment wanted war with Japan. Subsequently, the Establishment made certain that Congressional investigation of Pearl Harbor would fit the Roosevelt whitewash. In the words of Percy Greaves, chief research expert for the Republican minority on the Joint Congressional Committee investigating Pearl Harbor:

The complete facts will never be known. Most of the so-called investigations have been attempts to suppress, mislead, or confuse those who seek the truth. From the beginning to the end, facts and files have been withheld so as to reveal only those items of information which benefit the administration under investigation. Those seeking the truth are told that other facts or documents cannot be revealed because they are intermingled in personal diaries, pertain to our relations with foreign countries, or are sworn to contain no information of value.3


But this was not the first attempt to bring the United States into war, or the last. The Morgan interests, in concert with Winston Churchill, tried to bring the U.S. into World War I as early as 1915 and succeeded in doing so in 1917. Colin Thompson's Lusitania implicates President Woodrow Wilson in the sinking of the Lusitania — a horror device to generate a public backlash to draw the United States into war with Germany. Thompson demonstrates that Woodrow Wilson knew four darts beforehand that the Lusitania was carrying six-million rounds of ammunition plus explosives, and therefore, "passengers who proposed to sail on that vessel were sailing in violation of statute of this country."4

The British Board of Inquiry under Lord Mersey was instructed by the British Government "that it is considered politically expedient that Captain Turner, the master of the Lusitania, be most prominently blamed for the disaster."

In retrospect, given Colin Thompson's evidence, the blame is more fairly to be attributed to President Wilson, "Colonel" House, J.P. Morgan, and Winston Churchill; this conspiratorial elite should have been brought to trial for willful negligence, if not treason. It is to Lord Mersey's eternal credit that after performing his "duty" under instructions from His Majesty's government, and placing the blame on Captain Turner, he resigned, rejected his fee, and from that date on refused to handle British government commissions. To his friends Lord Mersey would only say about the Lusitania case that it was a "dirty business."

Then in 1933-4 came the attempt by the Morgan firm to install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. In the words of Jules Archer, it was planned to be a Fascist putsch to take over the government and "run it under a dictator on behalf of America's bankers and industrialists."5 Again, a single courageous individual emerged — General Smedley Darlington Butler, who blew the whistle on the Wall Street conspiracy. And once again Congress stands out, particularly Congressmen Dickstein and MacCormack, by its gutless refusal to do no more than conduct a token whitewash investigation.

Since World War II we have seen the Korean War and the Vietnamese War — meaningless, meandering no-win wars costly in dollars and lives, with no other major purpose but to generate multibillion-dollar armaments contracts. Certainly these wars were not fought to restrain communism, because for fifty years the Establishment has been nurturing and subsidizing the Soviet Union which supplied armaments to the other sides in both wars — Korea and Vietnam. So our revisionist history will show that the United States directly or indirectly armed both sides in at least Korea and Vietnam.

In the assassination of President Kennedy, to take a domestic example, it is difficult to find anyone who today accepts the findings of the Warren Commission — except perhaps the members of that Commission. Yet key evidence is still hidden from public eyes for 50 to 75 years. The Watergate affair demonstrated even to the man in the street that the White House can be a vicious nest of intrigue and deception.

Of all recent history the story of Operation Keelhaul6 is perhaps the most disgusting. Operation Keelhaul was the forced repatriation of millions of Russians at the orders of President (then General) Dwight D. Eisenhower, in direct violation of the Geneva Convention of 1929 and the long-standing American tradition of political refuge. Operation Keelhaul, which contravenes all our ideas of elementary decency and individual freedom, was undertaken at the direct orders of General Eisenhower and, we may now presume, was a part of a long-range program of nurturing collectivism, whether it be Soviet communism' Hitler's Naziism, or FDR's New Deal. Yet until recent publication of documentary evidence by Julius Epstein, anyone who dared to suggest Eisenhower would betray millions of innocent individuals for political purposes was viciously and mercilessly attacked.7

What this revisionist history really teaches us is that our willingness as individual citizens to surrender political power to an elite has cost the world approximately two-hundred-million persons killed from 1820 to 1975. Add to that untold misery the concentration camps, the political prisoners, the suppression and oppression of those who try to bring the truth to light.

When will it all stop? It will not stop until we act upon one simple axiom: that the power system continues only so long as individuals want it to continue, and it will continue only so long as individuals try to get something for nothing. The day when a majority of individuals declares or acts as if it wants nothing from government, declares it will look after its own welfare and interests, then on that day power elites are doomed. The attraction to "go along" with power elites is the attraction of something for nothing. That is the bait. The Establishment always offers something for nothing; but the something is taken from someone else, as taxes or plunder, and awarded elsewhere in exchange for political support.

Periodic crises and wars are used to whip up support for other plunder-reward cycles which in effect tighten the noose around our individual liberties. And of course we have hordes of academic sponges, amoral businessmen, and just plain hangers-on, to act as non-productive recipients for the plunder.

Stop the circle of plunder and immoral reward and elitist structures collapse. But not until a majority finds the moral courage and the internal fortitude to reject the something-for-nothing con game and replace it by voluntary associations, voluntary communes, or local rule and decentralized societies, will the killing and the plunder cease.

_______________

Notes:

1. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, op. cit.

2. There are many others; the author selected more or less at random two conservatives (Allen and Lasell) and two liberals (Archer and Domhoff),

3. Percy L. Greaves, Jr., "The Pearl Harbor Investigation," in Harry Elmer Harnes, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, (Caldwell: Caxton Printers, 1953), p, 13-20.

4. Colin Simpson, Lusitania, (London: Longman, 1972), p, 252.

5. Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House, (New York: Hawthorn Book, 1973), p. 202.

6. See Julius Epstein, Operation Keelhaul, (Old Greenwich: Devin Adair, 1973).

7. See for example Robert Welch, The Politician, (Belmont, Mass.: Belmont Publishing Co., 1963).
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:36 am

APPENDIX A: Program of the National Socialist German Workers Party

Note: This program is important because it demonstrates that the nature of Naziism was known publicly as early as 1920.

THE PROGRAM

The program of the German Workers' Party is limited as to period. The leaders have no intention, once the aims announced in it have been achieved, of setting up fresh ones, merely in order to increase the discontent of the masses artificially, and so ensure the continued existence of the Party.

1. We demand the union of all Germans to form a Great Germany on the basis of the right of the self-determination enjoyed by nations.

2. We demand equality of rights for the German People in its dealings with other nations, and abolition of the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.

3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the nourishment of our people and for settling our superfluous population.

4. None but members of the nation may be citizens of the State. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation.

5. Any one who is not a citizen of the State may live in Germany only as a guest and must be regarded as being subject to foreign laws.

6. The right of voting on the State's government and legislation is to be enjoyed by the citizen of the State alone. We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the country, or in the smaller localities, shall be granted to citizens of the State alone.

We oppose the corrupting custom of Parliament of filling posts merely with a view to party considerations, and without reference to character or capability.

7. We demand that the State shall make it its first duty to promote the industry and livelihood of citizens of the State. If it is not possible to nourish the entire population of the State, foreign nationals (non-citizens of the State) must be excluded from the Reich.

8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who entered Germany subsequent to August 2nd, 1914, shall be required forthwith to depart from the Reich.

9. All citizens of the State shall be equal as regards rights and duties.

10. It must be the first duty of each citizen of the State to work with his mind or with his body. The activities of the individual may not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the frame of the community and be for the general good.

We demand therefore:

11, Abolition of incomes unearned by work.

ABOLITION OF THE THRALDOM OF INTEREST


12. In view of the enormous sacrifice of life and property demanded of a nation by every war, personal enrichment due to a war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand therefore ruthless confiscation of all war gains,

13. We demand nationalisation of all businesses which have been up to the present formed into companies (Trusts).

14. We demand that the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.

15. We demand extensive development of provision for old age.

16. We demand creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class, immediate communalisation of wholesale business premises, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders, and that extreme consideration shall be shown to all small purveyors to the State, district authorities and smaller localities.

17. We demand land-reform suitable to our national requirements, passing of a law for confiscation without compensation of land for communal purposes; abolition of interest on land loans, and prevention of all speculation in land.

18. We demand ruthless prosecution of those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Sordid criminals against the nation, usurers, profiteers, etc. must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race.

19. We demand that the Roman Law, which serves the materialistic world order, shall be replaced by a legal system for all Germany.

20. With the aim of opening to every capable and industrious German the possibility of higher education and of thus obtaining advancement, the State must consider a thorough re-construction of our national system of education. The curriculum of all educational establishments must be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. Comprehension of the State idea (State sociology) must be the school objective, beginning with the first dawn of intelligence in the pupil. We demand development of the gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State.

21. The State must see to raising the standard of health in the nation by protecting mothers and infants, prohibiting child labour, increasing bodily efficiency by obligatory gymnastics and sports laid down by law, and by extensive support of clubs engaged in the bodily development of the young.

22. We demand abolition of a paid army and formation of a national army.

23. We demand legal warfare against conscious political lying and its dissemination in the Press. In order to facilitate creation of a German national Press we demand:

(a) that all editors of newspapers and their assistants, employing the German language, must be members of the nation;

(b) that special permission from the State shall be necessary before non-German newspapers may appear. These are not necessarily printed in the German language;

(c) that non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers, and that the penalty for contravention of the law shall be suppression of any such newspaper, and immediate deportation of the non-German concerned in it.

It must be forbidden to publish papers which do not conduce to the national welfare. We demand legal prosecution of all tendencies in art and literature of a kind likely to disintegrate our life as a nation, and the suppression of institutions which militate against the requirements above-mentioned.

24. We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the moral feelings of the German race.

The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within us and without us, and is convinced that our nation can only achieve permanent health from within on the principle:

THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF

25. That all the foregoing may be realised we demand the creation of a strong central power of the State. Unquestioned authority of the politically centralised Parliament over the entire Reich and its organisation; and formation of Chambers for classes and occupations for the purpose of carrying out the general laws promulgated by the Reich in the various States of the confederation.

The leaders of the Party swear to go straight forward — if necessary to sacrifice their lives — in securing fulfillment of the foregoing Points.

Munich, February 24th, 1920.

Source: Official English translation by E. Dugdale, reprinted from Kurt G, W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937).
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:37 am

APPENDIX B: Affidavit of Hjalmar Schacht

I, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, after having been warned that I will be liable to punishment for making false statements, state herewith under oath, of my own free will and without coercion, the following:

The amounts contributed by the participants in the meeting of 20 February 1933 at Goering's house were paid by them to the bankers. Delbruck, Schickler & Co., Berlin, to the credit of an account "Nationale Treuhand" (which may be translated as National Trusteeship). It was arranged that I was entitled to dispose of this account, which I administered as a trustee, and that in case of my death, or that in case the trusteeship should be terminated in any other way, Rudolf Hess should be entitled to dispose of the account.

I disposed of the amounts of this account by writing out checks to Mr. Hess. I do not know what Mr. Hess actually did with the money.

On 4 April 1933, I closed the account with Delbruck, Schickler & Co. and had the balance transferred to the "Account Ic" with the Reichsbank which read in my name. Later on I was ordered directly by Hitler, who was authorized by the assembly of 20 February 1933 to dispose of the amounts collected, or through Hess, his deputy, to pay the balance of about 600,000 marks to Ribbentrop.

I have carefully read this affidavit (one page) and have signed it. I have made the necessary corrections in my own handwriting and initialed each correction in the margin of the page. I declare herewith under oath that I have stated the full truth to the best of my knowledge and belief.

(Signed) Dr. Hjalmar Schacht

12 August 1947


In a subsequent affidavit of 18 August 1947 (N1-9764, Pros. Ex 54), Schacht declared the following with regard to the above interrogation: "I made all of the statements appearing in this interrogation to Clifford Hyanning, a financial investigator of the American Forces of my own free will and without coercion. I have reread this interrogation today and can state that all of the facts contained therein are true to my best knowledge and belief. I declare herewith under oath and I have stated the full truth to the best of my knowledge and belief."

Source: Copy of Document Prosecution Exhibit 55. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremburg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuremburg, October 1946-April 1949, Volume VII, I.G. Farben, (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952).
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:37 am

APPENDIX C: Entries in the "National Trusteeship" Account Found in the Files of the Delbruck, Schickler Co. Bank

NATIONAL TRUSTEESHIP

REICHSBANK PRESIDENT DR. HJALMAR SCHACHT, BERLIN-ZEHLENDORF


Feb. 23 / Debibk (Deutsche Bank Diskonto-Gesellschaft) Verein fuer die bergbaulichen Interessen, Essen / -- / Feb. 23 / 200,000.00

Feb. 24 / Transfer to account Rudolf Hess, at present in Berlin / 100,000.00 / 24 / --

Feb. 24 Karl Herrmann / -- / 25 / 150,00.00

Feb. 24 / Automobile Exhibition, Berlin / -- / 25 / 100,000.00

Feb. 25 / Director A. Steinke / -- / 27 / 200,000.00

Feb. 25 / Demag A.G., Duisberg / 27 / 50,000.00

Feb. 27 / Telefunken Gesellschaft ruer draht lose / -- / 28 / 85,000.00

Feb. 27 / Telegraphie Berlin / -- / -- / --

Feb. 27 / Osram G.m.b.H., Berlin / -- / 28 / 40,000.00

Feb. 27 / Bayerische Hypotheken-und Wech selbank, branch office Munich, Kauflingerstr. In favor of Verlag Franz Eher Nachf, Munich / 100,000.00 / 28 / --

Feb. 27 Transfer to account Rudolf Hess, Berlin / 100,000.00 / 27 / --

Feb. 28 I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. Frankfurt/M / -- / Mar. 1 / 400,000.00

Feb. 28 / Telegraph expenses for transfer to Munich / 8.00 / Feb. 28 / --

Mar. 1 / Your Payment / -- / Mar. 2 / 125,000.00

Mar. 2 / Telegr. transfer to Bayerische Hypotheken-und Wechselbank, Munich branch office, Bayerstr. / -- / -- / --

Mar. 2 / for account Josef Jung / 400,000.00 / 2 / --

Affidavits of Hermann Friedrich Graebe, 10 November 1945, at the Nuremberg Trials (2992-PS)

I, the undersigned, Hermann Friedrich Graebe, make the following declaration under oath:

From September 1941 to January 1944 I was director and chief engineer of the Zdolbunow branch of the Josef Jung Construction Company of Solingen. In this capacity I had, among my other duties, to visit the firm's projects. Under the terms of a contract with the army construction services, the company was to build grain warehouses on the old Dubno airfield in the Ukraine.

On October 5, 1942, at the time of my visit to the construction offices in Dubno, my foreman, Hubert Moennikes, living at 21 Aussenmühlenweg, Hamburg­-Haarburg, told me that some Dubno Jews had been shot near the building in three huge ditches about 30 meters long and 3 meters deep. The number of people killed daily was about 1,500. The 5,000 Jews who had lived in Dubno before the Pogrom were all marked for liquidation. Since the executions took place in the presence of my employee, he was painfully impressed by them.

Accompanied by Moennikes, I then went to the work area. I saw great mounds of earth about 30 meters long and 2 high. Several trucks were parked nearby. Armed Ukrainian militia were making people get out, under the surveillance of SS soldiers. The same militiamen were responsible for guard duty and driving the trucks. The people in the trucks wore the regulation yellow pieces of cloth that identified them as Jews on the front and back of their clothing.

Moennikes and I went straight toward the ditches without being stopped. When we neared the mound, I heard a series of rifle shots close by. The people from the trucks – men, women and children – were forced to undress under the supervision of an SS soldier with a whip in his hand. They were obliged to put their effects in certain spots: shoes, clothing, and under wear separately. I saw a pile of shoes, about 800-­1,000 pairs, great heaps of underwear and clothing. Without weeping or crying out, these people undressed and stood together in family groups, embracing each other and saying goodbye while waiting for a sign from the SS soldier, who stood on the edge of the ditch, a whip in his hand, too. During the fifteen minutes I stayed there, I did not hear a single complaint, or plea for mercy. I watched a family of about eight: a man and woman about fifty years old, surrounded by their children of about one, eight, and ten, and two big girls about twenty and twenty­-four. An old lady, her hair completely white, held the baby in her arms, rocking it, and singing it a song. The infant was crying aloud with delight. The parents watched the groups with tears in their eyes. The father held the ten-­year­-old boy by the hand, speaking softly to him: the child struggled to hold back his tears. Then the father pointed a finger to the sky, and, stroking the child's head, seemed to be explaining something. At this moment, the SS near the ditch called something to his comrade. The latter counted off some twenty people and ordered them behind the mound. The family of which I have just spoken was in the group.

I still remember the young girl, slender and dark, who, passing near me, pointed at herself, saying, "twenty-­three." I walked around the mound and faced a frightful common grave. Tightly packed corpses were heaped so close together that only the heads showed. Most were wounded in the head and the blood flowed over their shoulders. Some still moved. Others raised their hands and turned their heads to show that they were still alive. The ditch was two-­thirds full. I estimate that it held a thousand bodies. I turned my eyes toward the man who had carried out the execution. He was an SS man; he was seated, legs swinging, on the narrow edge of the ditch; an automatic rifle rested on his knees and he was smoking a cigarette. The people, completely naked, climbed down a few steps cut in the clay wall and stopped at the spot indicated by the SS man. Facing the dead and wounded, they spoke softly to them. Then I heard a series of rifle shots. I looked in the ditch and saw their bodies contorting, their heads, already inert, sinking on the corpses beneath. The blood flowed from the nape of their necks. I was astonished not to be ordered away, but I noticed two or three uniformed postmen nearby. A new batch of victims approached the place. They climbed down into the ditch, lined up in front of the previous victims, and were shot.

On the way back, while rounding the mound, I saw another full truck, which had just arrived. This truck contained only the sick and crippled. Women already naked were undressing an old woman with an emaciated body; her legs frightfully thin. She was held up by two people and seemed paralyzed. The naked people led her behind the mound. I left the place with Moennikes and went back to Dubno in a car.

The next morning, returning to the construction, I saw some thirty naked bodies lying thirty to fifty yards from the ditch. Some were still alive; they stared into space with a set look, seeming not to feel the coolness of the morning air; nor to see the workers standing around. A young girl of about twenty spoke to me, asking me to bring her clothes and to help her escape. At that moment we heard the sound of a car approaching at top speed; I saw that it was an SS detachment. I went back to my work. Ten minutes later rifle shots sounded from the ditch The Jews who were still alive had been ordered to throw the bodies in the ditch; then they had to lie down themselves to receive a bullet in the back of the neck.




Mar. 2 / Telegr. transfer expenses / 23.00 / 2 / --

Mar. 2 / Account transfer Rudolf Hess / 300,000.00 / -- / --

Mar. 2 / Reimbursement from Director Karl Lange, Berlin / -- / 3 / 30,000.00

Mar. 3 / Reimbursement from Dir. Karl Lange, 'Maschinen-industrie' Account / -- / 4 / 20,000.00

Mar. 3 / Reimbursement from Verein ruer die bergbaulichen Interessen, Essen / -- / 4 / 100,000.00

Mar. 3 / Reimbursement from Karl Herrmann, Berlin, Dessauerstr. 28/9 / -- / 4 / 150,000.00

Mar. 3 / Reimbursement from Allgemeine Elektrizitaetsgesellschaft, Berlin / -- / 4 / 60,000.00

Mar. 7 / Reimbursement from General-direktor Dr. F. Springorum, Dortmund / -- / 8 / 36,000.00

Mar. 8 / Reichsbank transfer: Bayerische Hypotheken-und Wechselbank, branch office Kauffingerstr. / 100,000.00 / 8 / --

Mar. 8 / -- / 1,100,031.00 / -- / 1,696,000.00

Mar. 8 / -- / 1,100,031.00 / Mar. / 1,696,000.00

Mar. 8 / Bayerische Hypotheken-und Wechselbank, Munich, branch office Bayerstr. / 100,000.00 / 8 / --

Mar. 8 / Transfer to account Rudolf Hess / 250,000.00 / 7 / --

Mar. 10 / Accumulatoren-Fabrik A.G. Berlin / -- / 11 / 25,000.00

Mar. 13 / Verein f.d. bergbaulichen Interessen, Essen / -- / 14 / 300,000.00

Mar. 14 / Reimbursement Rudolf Hess / 200,000.00 / 14 / --

Mar. 29 / Reimbursement Rudolf Hess 200,000.00 / 29 / --

April 4 / Commerz-und Privatbank Dep. Kasse N. Berlin W.9 Potsdamerstr. 1 f. Special Account S 29 / 99,000.00 / Apr. 4 / --

April 5 / Interests according to list 1 / -- / -- / --

April 5 / percent / -- / 5 / 404.50

April 5 / Phone bills / 1.00 / 5 / --

April 5 / Postage / 2.50 / 5 / --

April 5 / Balance / 72,370.00 / 5 / --

April 5 / Balance carried over / 2,021,404.50 / -- / 2,021,404.50

April 5/ -- / -- / Apr. 5 / 72,370.00
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Re: WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton

Postby admin » Sat Dec 19, 2015 5:37 am

APPENDIX D: Letter from U.S. War Department to Ethyl Corporation

December 15, 1934

Exhibit No, 144

(Handwritten) Mr, Webb sent copies for other Directors

Copy to: Mr. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., General Motors Corp,, New York City, Mr. Donaldson Brown, General Motors Corp., New York City.

December 15, 1934.

Mr. E. W. Webb,

President Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, 185 E, 42nd Street, New York City. Dear Mr. Webb: I learned through our Organic Chemicals Division today that the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation has in mind forming a German company with the I.G. to manufacture Ethyl lead in that country.

I have just had two weeks in Washington, no inconsiderable part of which was devoted to criticising the interchanging with foreign companies of chemical knowledge which might have a military value. Such giving of information by an industrial company might have the gravest repercussions on it. The Ethyl Gasoline Corporation would be no exception, in fact, would probably be singled out for special attack because of the ownership of its stock.

It should seem. on the face of it, that the quantity of Ethyl lead used for commercial purposes in Germany would be too small to go after. It has been claimed that Germany is secretly arming. Ethyl lead would doubtless be a valuable aid to military aeroplanes.

I am writing you this to say that in my opinion under no conditions should you or the Board of Directors of the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation disclose any secrets or 'know how' in connection with the manufacture of tetraethyl lead to Germany.

I am informed that you will be advised through the Dyestuffs Division of the necessity of disclosing the information which you have received from Germany to appropriate War Department officials.

Yours very truly,

Source: United States Senate, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Military Affairs, Scientific and Technical Mobilization, 78th Congress, Second Session, Part 16, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944), p. 939.
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