- The viewpoint in the article below shows why the AP suddenly
took up this theme - on behalf of the Bush campaign in order to downplay
it in anticipation of the election in 2004 so it could not come up then.
Thyssen, according to the "logic" of this interpretation, was
not against Jews and later had a falling out with the Nazis, so therefore
Prescott Bush spending ten years helping finance Nazism via Thyssen's Nazi-controlled
front companies on Wall Street was not anti-Semitic, and therefore Prescott
Bush was not a Nazi.
-
- To further the a-historic logic of this view, if being
put in prison by the Nazis like Thyssen was "proof" you weren't
really one, then thousands of top Nazis enthusiasts in the SA who Hitler
had imprisoned and killed for his own political reasons in the early 1930's
were all really good guys too. I guess that makes those who personally
imported all those Nazis to America after WWII, who were the lawyers for
IG Farben such as William Casey, Kissenger, the Dulles brothers etc. were
really good guys as well. It's just those who like me dare to bring up
the Bush-Nazi connection who are despicable bad guys.
-
- Of course, this interpretation completely ignores that
the Bush family were very big supporters of eugenics (including Prescott,
his partner Harriman and Pres. Bush I), were well-known to be anti-Semitic
and that Hitler's hatred for and intention to kill the Jews was well-known
long before he ever came to power. It also ignores that in 1930's America
had a huge and very public Nazi movement, which hardly fits into the picture
of America's wealthiest corporate bosses being ignorant of what they were
supporting. To say you actively supported Hitler for a decade but didn't
know he intended to kill millions of Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsies is
exactly the defense the Nazis used at Nuremberg. Does anybody really think
Prescott Bush, Rockefeller, Ford etc. were clueless as to what Hitler was
up to during the time they were actively funding and ideologically supporting
him and his IG Farben concentration camp-slave labor factories?
-
- As to the issue of the number of shares in Union Bank,
yes, Prescott had only one share according to the 11/7/42 Congressional
Record, but there were only seven shareholders total. It's not like he
was one of thousands of shareholders. See the Federal Register page here:
http://www.mbpolitics.com/bush2000/Vesting.htm
-
- Blaming GW Bush for Prescott's action would indeed be
unfair if that was all there is to it. In reality, the entire three generation
Bush political dynasty has countless connections to Nazis, fascism, eugenics,
corporate crime, the CIA bringing thousands of former SS officials to the
US, the pharmaceutical companies formerly known as IG Farben etc. Their
family fortune - which is the basis for every Bush's political position
today - all came directly from supporting the Nazis.
-
- http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=8054
-
- Bush 'Nazi' smear unworthy of critics Joe Conason - The
New York Observer
-
- 10.22.03 - Liberal invective against George W. Bush has
not yet descended to the depths plumbed by conservatives in their crusade
against the Clintons, but that isn't because nobody's trying. Mr. Bush's
most zealous opponents apparently believe that his faults, and those of
his cronies and his administration, will be insufficient to unseat him
next year.
-
- That may be why some Bush critics have been circulating
a story about the financial connections between his paternal grandfather,
Prescott Bush Sr., and a Nazi industrial magnate named Fritz Thyssen.
-
- The sinister cooperation between prominent American businessmen
and their counterparts in Hitler's Germany is an important episode whose
details are still being revealed by historians. It instructs us about the
terrible crimes that can be committed in the pursuit of profit by men (and
they were all men) who regard themselves as a superior race and class.
It implicates such famous names as Ford, Standard Oil, General Motors and
Dupont. In the case of Prescott Bush Sr., this sorry history shows that
even a man who later displayed decent instincts could have been guilty
of awful judgment and worse.
-
- According to archival and declassified material recently
published, the founder of the Bush political dynasty had much to answer
for during his earlier career on Wall Street. Picking up on an investigative
story in the New Hampshire Gazette, last week the Associated Press reported
on Prescott Sr.'s role in the Union Banking Corp., which served as a front
for Thyssen's conglomerate.
-
- Quite reasonably, the U.S. government suspected Union
Banking of aiding the Nazis through Thyssen, who had helped to finance
Hitler's rise and whose coal and steel holdings were integral to the German
war machine. That suspicion led federal officials to seize Union Banking's
assets in October 1942 under the Trading With the Enemy Act. While Prescott
Sr. held only a single share of Union Banking stock, he also served as
one of seven corporate directors whose apparent purpose was to help Thyssen
conceal the bank's real ownership.
-
- What the A.P. story notes -- unlike many of the Internet
stories circulating about the "Bush-Nazi connection" -- is that,
by 1938, Fritz Thyssen had fallen out with the Nazi regime he had helped
bring to power, evidently "over their persecution of Catholics and
Jews." After fleeing to neutral Switzerland, Thyssen was arrested
by the Nazis. At the moment when his U.S. assets were seized, Thyssen was
in a Nazi prison, where he remained until the end of the war.
-
- Those complicating facts don't absolve Thyssen or his
American associates. The involvement of Prescott Sr. and other members
of the American business aristocracy with Nazi-era industry was shameful,
and in some instances illegal -- and they knew it.
-
- Like so many Americans who made deals with fascist interests
or lent political support to them during the 30's, those businessmen got
off rather easily after the war. Most of them, including Bush, were permitted
to keep the money they had made with the Germans.
-
- They're all dead now, however. Prescott Sr. died more
than 30 years ago.
-
- Before he went to his final reward, the Bush patriarch
was elected from Connecticut to the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1952
until he retired 10 years later. He was a liberal Eisenhower Republican
who distinguished himself as an opponent of McCarthyism and an advocate
of public housing.
-
- Henry Ford was a Nazi collaborator. Joseph P. Kennedy
Sr. was a Nazi sympathizer. Unless additional information emerges to indict
him, Prescott Bush Sr. was neither. To misuse such terms for political
advantage against his grandson is to trivialize very grave offenses.
-
- Whatever the President's grandfather did or may have
done, how does that reflect on George W. Bush? In 1942, he hadn't been
born yet. If he is nevertheless accountable for Prescott Sr.'s actions,
fairness requires that a similar standard be applied to other descendants
of politicians and businessmen whose attitude toward Nazism was, at best,
ambivalent. Should anyone named Kennedy, Harriman, Dupont or Fish be arraigned
for the offenses of their dead ancestors? Should everyone boycott Ford
Motors?
-
- The obvious answer is no. In America, the sins of the
fathers are not held against the children, nor should they be. Although
the Bushes have too often lowered themselves into the gutter for political
gain, that doesn't give license to libels against them.
-
- It is ironic that the President would be arraigned on
a bum rap at a moment when his poll numbers are declining, his advisers
admit he is vulnerable, and several books excoriating him have appeared
on the best-seller lists.
-
- There are many unflattering terms that can and should
be used to describe George W. Bush. He is, among other things, a truly
bad President. But neither his offenses, nor the Republican Party's politics
of personal destruction, can justify using such tactics against him. Imputing
Nazi sympathies to the President or his family ought to be beneath his
adversaries.
-
- COPYRIGHT (c) 2003 THE NEW YORK OBSERVER
-
- For the page from the Federal Register of November 7th
1942 showing the Bush family assets seized by the US Congress for being
Nazi fronts see: http://www.mbpolitics.com/bush2000/Vesting.htm I recently
had the National Archive photocopy and mail me this exact page in order
to conclusively verify it. It's real and they sent it to me for free. Here's
their website: http://www.archives.gov/
-
- For an authoritative and very detailed report on the
Bush-Nazi connection by former US Dept. of Justice Nazi War Crimes prosecutor
and President of the Florida Holocaust Museum, John Loftus, see: http://www.john-loftus.com/
-
- http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/ Jewish Advocate 7/18/2001
(article begins on pg 1)
-
- Robert Lederman: NYC Street Crusader Takes on Giuliani,
Bush's Nazi Past
-
- By Susie Davidson Advocate Correspondent
-
- Don't get on Robert Lederman's bad side. Just ask Rudy
Giuliani.
-
- Artist, First Amendment activist and Greenwich Village
Gazette (and other mags) columnist Lederman has waged an eight-year, one-man
campaign, to the tune of hundreds of essays, 41 arrests, hundreds of paintings,
postcards and well-maintained websites, all aimed at the erstwhile Big
Apple mayor. His art often appears at demonstrations against issues like
the Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo incidents, West Nile pesticide spraying
("Orthodox Jews Gassed Again!" he accuses, as the poison hits
religious areas on Friday evenings) and Guiliani's homeless policies. His
work has appeared in People, New York Magazine, the Times, New York Post
Daily News and Newsday; he's been featured on 20/20 and CNN.
-
- His titles include: "Racist Rudy," "KKK-iani,"
"The Godmother," "Jailiani," "Enemy of Art,"
"Fooliani," "Ghouliani," and "Mussoliniani."
-
- Why Giuliani?
-
- Lederman, 50,'s first beef with the mayor occurred in
1994, when street artists arrested for selling art without licenses formed
A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response to Illegal State Tactics), and in a case
that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, ultimately won a lawsuit against the
mayor (one of many Lederman legal challenges to Hizzoner).
-
- He had personal experience; in the '80's, occasionally
homeless, he sold artwork instead of panhandling.
-
- Following this victory, Lederman's arrest profile widened:
unlawful vendoring, unauthorized posting, disorderly conduct, inciting
to riot, resisting arrest, carrying a tape recorder and obstruction of
governmental administration. Every case was dismissed with no fines.
-
- Lederman welcomes the media exposure for his causes and
his artwork, which are, incidentally, not limited to New York, or to secular
themes.
-
- Lederman contributed "A Jewish Perspective on GW
Bush" to the recently released 100 Days: An Anthology (ed. Andrea
Brady, Barque Press). It's a scathing, fact-filled and documented expose
of the Nazi shadows looming behind the Bush family and their cohorts.
-
- "For a Jewish person," he begins, "learning
that the President's family fortune and political connections began with
financing Hitler (in the Standard Oil/IG Farben concerns) is a serious
matter."
-
- There are no Jewish members of Bush's cabinet, he notes,
while Ari Fleischer's role adds "ethnic credibility in the event questions
arise regarding the President's Hitler connection." Lederman accuses
Bush of appointing, and embracing, a few token Blacks and minorities. "In
Nazi Germany," he analogizes, "there were Jewish leaders, the
Judenrate, who similarly advised their followers not to resist Adolf Hitler.
Elevating a few members of a targeted group is an effective way to disarm
your victims."
-
- Lederman names prominent American Nazi collaborators.
After the war? "The US government," he charges, "brought
thousands of Nazis to America, provided them with false identities and
established them in the newly formed CIA, in universities, in the media,
in medical and psychological research institutions and in the US military."
-
- Allen Dulles, GHW Bush associate and fellow Nazi financier,
became the CIA's first director. His brother, John Foster Dulles, major
shareholder and lawyer for Standard Oil/IG Farben, became U.S. Secretary
of State. William Casey, Reagan's CIA director who "helped the Dulles'
bring Nazis to the U.S.", "created the Manhattan Institute -
the think tank that invented GW Bush's political agenda and advises him
on a daily basis.
-
- "It was the first Bush administration," Lederman
writes, "which gave Saddam Hussein the chemical and biological weapons
we've spent the past decade trying to locate in Iraq. It was the anti-Semitic,
anti-Christian Arab oil partners of the Bush family that our soldiers risked
their lives to protect in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.
The corrupt dynasties that oppressively rule these Arab nations were among
Hitler's closest allies in WWII."
-
- W? The Christian far right, John Ashcroft, Bob Jones
U., the inauguration exclusion of non-Christians, the fact that abortion,
globally opposed by Bush in an initial act, was strictly prohibited in
Nazi Germany but forced upon Jewish women - all are exposed and denounced.
-
- "All I'd ask of President Bush," he closes,
"is something very simple for him to do. Mr. President, please make
a public statement - as many of the corporations associated with you have
already done - acknowledging your family's past relationship with Nazi
Germany, and then, apologize for it - as the Pope recently did.
-
- "Unlike your father, former President Bush, who
said it was time to forgive Nazi Germany's war criminals, you have made
seemingly sincere speeches about the Holocaust while fundraising at synagogues
and Jewish community centers.
-
- "Now it's time for you to complete the 'healing
process' you are always referring to and publicly repent for your family's
part in bringing the Holocaust about."
-
- Will Lederman's message reach Bush?
-
- Ask Mayor Giuliani.
-
-
- Copyright 2001 Susan J. Davidson This article appeared
in the July 18, 2001 issue of the Jewish Advocate
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