- Have you ever wondered how Adolph Hitler - a mediocre
painter of Austrian origin - transformed himself into Germany's Fuhrer
during the 1930s and 1940s?
-
- The Nazi phenomenon was no historical coincidence, and
far less a philosophical whim made real by just one man. Nazism had its
followers, many of them exceptionally wealthy, veritable alchemists of
the financial world back then.
-
- According to research carried out over the last few years,
Wall Street bankers (amongst others) financed Hitler's rise to power whilst
making large profits at the same time. What is yet still more deplorable
is the fact that relatives of the current U.S. president were amongst this
group of individuals.
-
- U.S. authors Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Cheitkin reveal
in the recently published George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography that
Prescott Bush (George W. Bush's grandfather) and other directors of the
Union Banking Company (UBC) were Nazi collaborators.
-
- The book relates how in 1922 - when national socialism
was emerging - railroad impresario W. Averell Harriman traveled to Berlin
and interviewed the Thyssen family with a view to founding a German-U.S.
bank. The Thyssens were already behind-the-scenes owners of several financial
institutions that allowed them to transfer their money from Germany to
the Netherlands and from there onto the United States.
-
- The banks in question were the August Thyssen Bank whose
headquarters were located in Berlin; the Bank voor Handel (Netherlands)
and the Union Banking Corporation (New York). At the beginning of the 1920s,
one of the members of this family, Fritz Thyssen - author of I Paid Hitler
- contributed some $25,000 USD to the recently formed German National Socialist
Workers' Party, becoming the prime and most important financier of the
Fuhrer in his ascent to power.
-
- According to the book's authors, Thyssen was fascinated
by Hitler, citing his talent as a public speaker and his ability to lead
the masses. However, what impressed him most was the order that prevailed
at his rallies and the almost military discipline of his followers.
-
- And so, in 1931 Thyssen joined the Nazi party, becoming
one of the most powerful members of the Nazi war machine.
-
- At that time, the magnate presided over the German Steel
Trust, a steel industry consortium founded by Clarence Dillon, one of Wall
Street's most influential men. One of Dillon's most trustworthy collaborators
was Samuel Bush: Prescott's father, George Senior's grandfather and great-grandfather
of the current U.S. president George W. Bush.
-
- In 1923, Harriman and the Thyssens decided to set up
a bank and appointed George Herbert Walker - Prescott's father-in-law -
as president. Later, in 1926, they established the Union Banking Corporation
(UBC) with Prescott Bush at the helm. That same year, he was also named
vice president and partner at Brown Brothers Harriman. Both firms allowed
the Thyssens to send money to the United States from Germany via the Netherlands.
-
- U.S. economist Victor Thorn has noted that although a
large number of other corporations aided the Nazis (such as Standard Oil
and Rockefeller's Chase Bank, as well as U.S. automobile manufacturers)
Prescott Bush's interests were much more profound and sinister.
-
- Thorn adds that UBC became a secret channel to protect
Nazi capital leaving Germany for the United States via the Netherlands.
When the Nazis needed to retrieve their funds, Brown Brothers Harriman
sent them directly to Germany.
-
- In this way, UBC received money from the Netherlands
and Brown Brothers Harriman sent it back. And who was on the executive
of both of these companies? Prescott Bush himself, the Nazis' first money
launderer.
-
- In their book, Tarpley and Chaitkin explain that in this
way a significant part of the Bush family's financial base is related to
supporting and aiding Adolph Hitler. Therefore, the current U.S. president,
just like his father (former CIA director, vice president and president)
reached the peak of the U.S. political hierarchy thanks to his great-grandfather
and grandfather and generally his entire family, who financially aided
and encouraged the Nazis.
-
- Some time later, in October 1942, the U.S. authorities
confiscated Nazi bank funds from the New York UBC, whose then president
was Prescott. The firm was condemned as a financial and commercial collaborator
with the enemy and all its assets were seized.
-
- Later, the U.S. government also ordered the seizure of
the assets of a further two leading financial agencies directed by Prescott
through the accounts of the Harriman banking institution: the Holland-America
Trading Corporation (a U.S.-Dutch commercial firm) and the Seamless Steel
Equipment Corporation.
-
- Then on November 11, 1942, an embargo was imposed on
the Silesian-American Corporation - another firm headed by Bush and Walker
- under the same Trading with the Enemy Act.
-
- However, in 1951, the embargo was lifted and the enterprising
businessman recovered some $1.5 million USD, earmarked for new investments
largely to swell the Bush family's patrimony.
-
- To this should be added a resumé of files belonging
to Dutch and U.S. information services confirming the direct links between
Prescott Bush, the German Thyssen family and the blood money of a group
of rich U.S. families from the Second World War.
-
- Tarpley and Chaitkin affirm that the great financial
crash of 1929-1931 affected the United States, Germany and Britain, weakening
their respective governments. At the same time, Prescott Bush became even
more diligent, still more desirous of doing everything that was necessary
to safeguard his place in the world. It was during this crisis that some
members of the Anglo-U.S wealthy class supported the installation of Hitler's
regime in Germany.
-
- To sum up, the authors categorically state that the Bush
family's fortune arose as a result of its unconditional support for Adolph
Hitler's political project.
-
- The UBC, under Prescott Bush's direction and with the
long-term cooperation of Fritz Thyssen's German Steel Trust participated
in the emergence, preparation and financing of the Nazi war machine through
the manufacture of armored vehicles, fighter planes, guns and explosives.
-
- The Bush family's habit of dominating territories and
wealth is nothing new. Their fascist genes were generated during the 1930s.
Therefore defining the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the threats
to other countries as a continuance of blitzkreig offensives as fascist
is no blunder. Neither is convening an anti-fascist front is a rhetorical
exercise.
-
- Astrid Barnet/Granma International
|
