- INTRODUCTION
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- To clearly understand the circumstances
which existed during the 1930s and 1940s, and are the subject of this booklet,
it would be helpful to first put the hemp / petrochemical conflict into
historical perspective. The events which took place in the years leading
up to World War II were a continuation of a struggle between agricultural
and industrial interests that began before the American Revolution, a struggle
which has yet to be decided, even today.
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- AGRICULTURE VS. INDUSTRY
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- The historical record, at least as it
has been presented to us in the public school system, is that the Civil
War was fought to end slavery. This is not the whole story. The truth of
the matter is that it was also a clash between Northern industrialists
and Southern agriculturists, over control of the expansion into the newly
opened West.
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- In 1845, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "I
hold it a paramount duty of us in the free states due to the union of the
states, and perhaps to liberty itself, to let the slavery of other states
alone." (1)
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- Concerning the Western territories, he
said "The whole Nation is interested that the best use shall be made
of these territories. We want them for homes and free white people. This
they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery be planted within
them." (2)
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- Lincoln was caught in the middle between
the Northern industrialists and the Southern agriculturists, who both wanted
to dominate Western expansion because of the wealth it offered. The industrialists
knew that the agriculturists depended on slavery because cotton, upon which
Southern wealth was based, was very labor intensive and required the inexpensive
labor that slavery provided. They knew that if the Western lands were declared
"free states" then the Southern agriculturists would be unable
to compete, and would be forced to leave Western expansion, and its potential
profits, to the Northern industrialists.
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- Quoting "The Irony of Democracy,"
by Thomas R. Dye and T. Harmon Zeigler,
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- "The importance of the Civil War
for America's elite structure was the commanding position that the new
industrial capitalists won during the course of the struggle. . . . The
economic transformation of the United States from an agricultural to an
industrial nation reached the crescendo of a revolution in the second half
of the nineteenth century.
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- "Civil War profits compounded the
capital of the industrialists and placed them in a position to dominate
the economic life of the nation. Moreover, when the Southern planters were
removed from the national scene, the government in Washington became the
exclusive domain of the new industrial leaders." (3)
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- The Northern industrialists used this
increased capital to build the system of transcontinental railways, linking
the Northeast with both the South and West. The labor for this undertaking
was from the Northeastern Establishment's own source of cheap labor - recently
freed slaves and poor immigrants from Europe and China - who suffered under
living conditions which were often little better than those which existed
under the Slave System just a few years before.
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- It was during the years between the Civil
War and the beginning of the Twentieth Century that the Northern industrialists
altered the role of the American government. Originally established by
the Revolution to protect and preserve the lives, property and freedoms
of all Americans from repressive government, it was transformed into an
agency to protect the economic future of Northern industrialists.
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- "[T]he industrial elites,"
according to Dye and Zeigler, "saw no objection to legislation if
it furthered their success in business. Unrestricted competition might
prove who was the fittest, but as an added precaution to insure that the
industrial capitalists themselves emerged as the fittest, these new elites
also insisted upon government subsidies, patents, tariffs, loans, and massive
giveaways of land and other natural resources." (4)
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- The struggle between Western farmers
and the railroads owned by the Northern industrialists is a good example.
To protect their interests, citizens created "the Grange," an
organization which helped to enact state laws regulating the "ruthless
aggression" of the railroads. In 1877, these laws were upheld by the
Supreme Court in the Munn v. Illinois decision. But, a few years later,
Justice Stephen A. Field changed the role, and the very definition, of
the corporation. He gave a new interpretation to the Fourteenth Amendment
that actually gave corporations legal status as citizens . . . as artificial
persons. (5)
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- It was not long after this change in
the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that John D. Rockefeller,
the father of the modern-day corporation, created the great Standard Oil
Corporation which, by the late 1880s, gained control over 90% of all the
oil refineries in America. (6)
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- The roots of 20th Century American politics
can best be illustrated by the 1896 Presidential Election, won by Republican
William McKinley by a landslide. The McKinley campaign was directed by
Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Standard Oil and raised a $16,000,000 campaign fund
from wealthy fellow industrialists, (an amount that was unmatched in Presidential
campaigns until the 1960s). The major theme of the campaign, and one that
would echo far into the future, was "what's good for business is good
for the country." (7)
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- This emerging political and judicial
misuse of power in America was feared by Thomas Jefferson who, in 1787,
wrote, "I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries;
as long as they remain chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as
there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled
upon one another in large cities as in Europe they will become corrupt
as in Europe." (8)
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- It is important to remember that the
American Revolution was a clash between the agriculturists in the colonies,
and the British industrialists who controlled the government in England.
Almost 100 years later the Civil War was fought as a continuation of the
same basic struggle, but with the victory going back to the industrialists.
This began the erosion of the American government "of the people,
for the people and by the people." The buying of the 1896 Presidential
Election, by Hanna of Standard Oil and the Northern industrial interests,
was the next important step on the long road to the American government
"of the corporation, for the corporation and by the corporation."
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- A few years later, World War I would
forge an even closer relationship between corporations and government in
the United States, as well as around the world. Anthony Sampson, in his
book "The Arms Bazaar," notes that "the American companies,
led by US Steel and du Pont, were transformed by war orders. US Steel,
which had absorbed Carnegie's old steel company, had made average annual
profits in the four pre-war years of $105 million, while in the four war
years they were $240 million; and du Pont's average profit went up from
$6 million to $58 million. . . .
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- "Certainly the arms companies had
become much richer through the war, and there were widespread suspicions
that they were actually trying to prolong it." (9)
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- The bottom line is, of course, victory
or profit, and in what proportions? To what lengths would this nation's
top industrial leaders go to secure their share of the profits before and
during the next "war to end all war?"
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- NOTES: INTRODUCTION
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- 1. American Political Tradition, Hofstadter,
p. 109. (As reprinted in The Irony of Democracy, Thomas R. Dye and L. Harmon
Zeigler, p. 72) 2. 3. American Political Tradition, p. 113. (As reprinted
in The Irony of Democracy, p. 72) 4. 5. Irony of Democracy, p. 73 6.
7. Ibid., p. 74 8. 9. Ibid., p. 75 10. 11. Ibid., p. 76 12. 13. Ibid.,
p. 82 14. 15. Ibid., p. 62 16. 17. The Arms Bazaar, Anthony Sampson,
p. 6518.
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- Introduction: U.S. Corporations and the
Nazis
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- "A clique of U.S. industrialists
is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government
and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I
have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close
some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. . . .
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- "Certain American industrialists
had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both
Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of
power, and they are helping to keep it there." - William E. Dodd,
U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.(1)
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- A large volume of documentary evidence
exists that reveals that many of the richest, most powerful men in the
United States, and the giant corporations they controlled, were secretly
allied with the Nazis, both before and during World War II, even after
war was declared between Germany and America. This alliance began with
U.S. corporate investment during the reconstruction of post-World War I
Germany in the 1920s and, years later, included financial, industrial and
military aid to the Nazis.
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- On the pages which follow we will review
which prominent Americans and corporations were involved, what aid and
comfort they gave our nation's enemies - treasonable offenses during time
of war, and investigations into these matters which produced evidence of
a US/Nazi corporate conspiracy to bring a fascist state to America, and
eliminate competition in the industrial raw materials market in order to
force world-wide dependance on oil-based petrochemicals.
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- FRIEND OF THE OLIGARCHS: William Randolph
Hearst
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- Hearst, who was so concerned about the
American public's health and safety on the matter of marijuana use, apparently
had no such fears when it came to Hitler and the Nazis. According to journalist
George Seldes: "Hitler had the support of the most widely circulated
magazine in history, 'Readers Digest,' as well as nineteen big-city newspapers
and one of the three great American news agencies, the $220-million Hearst
press empire.
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- ". . . William Randolph Hearst,
Sr., . . . was the lord of all the press lords in the United States. The
millions who read the Hearst newspapers and magazines and saw Hearst newsreels
in the nation's moviehouses had their minds poisoned by Hitler propaganda.
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- "It was disclosed first to President
Roosevelt [by Ambassador Dodd] almost on the day it happened, in September
1934, and it is detailed in the book 'Ambassador Dodd's Diary,' published
in 1941, and again in libel-proof documents on file in the courts of the
state of New York. William E. Dodd, professor of history [at the University
of Chicago], told me about the Hearst sell-out . . .
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- "According to Ambassador Dodd, Hearst
came to take the waters at Bad Nauheim in September 1934, and Dodd somehow
learned immediately that Hitler had sent two of his most trusted Nazi propagandists,
Hanfstangel and Rosenberg, to ask Hearst how Nazism could present a better
image in the United States. When Hearst went to Berlin later in the month,
he was taken to see Hitler."
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- Seldes reports that a $400,000 a year
deal was struck between Hearst and Hitler, and signed by Doctor Joseph
Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. "Hearst," continues Seldes,
"completely changed the editorial policy of his nineteen daily newspapers
the same month he got the money."
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- In the court documents filed on behalf
of Dan Gillmor, publisher of a magazine named "Friday," in response
to a lawsuit by Hearst, under item 61, he states: "Promptly after
this said visit with Adolf Hitler and the making of said arrangements.
. . said plaintiff, William Randolph Hearst, instructed all Hearst press
correspondents in Germany, including those of INS [Hearst's International
News Service] to report happenings in Germany only in a friendly' manner.
All of such correspondents reporting happenings in Germany accurately and
without friendliness, sympathy and bias for the actions of the then German
government, were transferred elsewhere, discharged, or forced to resign.
. . ." In the late 1930s, Seldes recounts, when "several sedition
indictments [were brought by] the Department of Justice . . . against a
score or two of Americans, the defendants included an unusually large minority
of newspaper men and women, most of them Hearst employees." (2)
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- ANDREW MELLON
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- "Thurman Arnold, as assistant district
attorney of the United States, his assistant, Norman Littell, and several
Congressional investigations, have produced incontrovertible evidence that
some of our biggest monopolies entered into secret agreements with the
Nazi cartels and divided the world up among them," states Seldes in
his book, "Facts and Fascism," published in 1943. "Most
notorious of all was Alcoa, the Mellon-Davis-Duke monopoly which is largely
responsible for the fact America did not have the aluminum with which to
build airplanes before and after Pearl Harbor, while Germany had an unlimited
supply." (3)
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- Alcoa sabotage of American war production
had already cost the U.S. "10,000 fighters or 1,665 bombers,"
according to Congressman Pierce of Oregon speaking in May 1941, because
of "the effort to protect Alcoa's monopolistic position. . ."
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- "If America loses this war,"
said Secretary of the Interior [Harold] Ickes, June 26, 1941, "it
can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America."
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- "By its cartel agreement with I.G.
Farben, controlled by Hitler," writes Seldes, "Alcoa sabotaged
the aluminum program of the U.S. air force. The Truman Committee [on National
Defense, chaired by then-Senator Harry S. Truman in 1942] heard testimony
that Alcoa's representative, A.H. Bunker, $1-a-year head of the aluminum
section of O.P.M., prevented work on our $600,000,000 aluminum expansion
program." (4)
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- DuPont and General Motors
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- General Motors is included here because,
by 1929, the Du Pont corporation had acquired controlling interest in,
and had interlocking directorships with, General Motors.
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- Irenee du Pont, "the most imposing
and powerful member of the clan," according to biographer and historian
Charles Higham, "was obsessed with Hitler's principles." "He
keenly followed the career of the future Fuhrer in the 1920s, and on September
7, 1926, in a speech to the American Chemical Society, he advocated a race
of supermen, to be achieved by injecting special drugs into them in boyhood
to make their characters to order." Higham's book on this subject,
"Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot
1933-1949," is highly recommended.
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- Du Pont's anti-Semitism "matched
that of Hitler" and, in 1933, the Du Ponts "began financing native
fascist groups in America . . ." one of which Higham identifies as
the American Liberty League: "a Nazi organization whipping up hatred
of blacks and Jews," and the "love of Hitler.
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- "Financed . . . to the tune of $500,000
the first year, the Liberty League had a lavish thirty-one-room office
in New York, branches in twenty-six colleges, and fifteen subsidiary organizations
nationwide that distributed fifty million copies of its Nazi pamphlets.
. . .
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- "The Du Ponts' fascistic behavior
was seen in 1936, when Irenee du Pont used General Motors money to finance
the notorious Black Legion. This terrorist organization had as its purpose
the prevention of automobile workers from unionizing. The members wore
hoods and black robes, with skulls and crossbones. They fire-bombed union
meetings, murdered union organizers, often by beating them to death, and
dedicated their lives to destroying Jews and communists. They linked to
the Ku Klux Klan. . . . It was brought out that at least fifty people,
many of them blacks, had been butchered by the Legion." (5)
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- Du Pont support of Hitler extended into
the very heart of the Nazi war machine as well, according to Higham, and
several other researchers: "General Motors, under the control of the
Du Pont family of Delaware, played a part in collaboration" with the
Nazis.
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- "Between 1932 and 1939, bosses of
General Motors poured $30 million into I.G. Farben plants . . ." Further,
Higham informs us that by "the mid-1930s, General Motors was committed
to full-scale production of trucks, armored cars, and tanks in Nazi Germany."
(6)
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- Researchers Morton Mintz and Jerry S.
Cohen, in their book, "Power Inc.," describe the Du Pont-GM-Nazi
relationship in these terms:
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- ". . . In 1929, [Du Pont-controlled]
GM acquired the largest automobile company in Germany, Adam Opel, A.G.
This predestined the subsidiary to become important to the Nazi war effort.
In a heavily documented study presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust
and Monopoly in February 1974, Bradford C. Snell, an assistant subcommittee
counsel, wrote:
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- "'GM's participation in Germany's
preparation for war began in 1935. That year its Opel subsidiary cooperated
with the Reich in locating a new heavy truck facility at Brandenburg, which
military officials advised would be less vulnerable to enemy air attacks.
During the succeeding years, GM supplied the Wehrmact with Opel "Blitz"
trucks from the Brandenburg complex. For these and other contributions
to [the Nazis] wartime preparations, GM's chief executive for overseas
operations [James Mooney] was awarded the Order of the German Eagle (first
class) by Adolf Hitler.'"
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- Du Pont-GM Nazi collaboration, according
to Snell, included the participation of Standard Oil of New Jersey [now
Exxon] in one, very important arrangement. GM and Standard Oil of New Jersey
formed a joint subsidiary with the giant Nazi chemical cartel, I.G. Farben,
named Ethyl G.m.b.H. [now Ethyl, Inc.] which, according to Snell: "provided
the mechanized German armies with synthetic tetraethyl fuel [leaded gas].
During 1936-39, at the urgent request of Nazi officials who realized that
Germany's scarce petroleum reserves would not satisfy war demands, GM and
Exxon joined with German chemical interests in the erection of the lead-tetraethyl
plants. According to captured German records, these facilities contributed
substantially to the German war effort: 'The fact that since the beginning
of the war we could produce lead-tetraethyl is entirely due to the circumstances
that, shortly before, the Americans [Du Pont, GM and Standard Oil] had
presented us with the production plants complete with experimental knowledge.
Without lead-tetraethyl the present method of warfare would be unthinkable.'"
(7)
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- At about the same time the Du Ponts were
serving the Nazi cause in Germany, they were involved in a Fascist plot
to overthrow the United States government.
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- "Along with friends of the Morgan
Bank and General Motors," in early 1934, writes Higham, "certain
Du Pont backers financed a coup d'etat that would overthrow the President
with the aid of a $3 million-funded army of terrorists . . ." The
object was to force Roosevelt "to take orders from businessmen as
part of a fascist government or face the alternative of imprisonment and
execution . . ."
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- Higham reports that "Du Pont men
allegedly held an urgent series of meetings with the Morgans," to
choose who would lead this "bizarre conspiracy." "They finally
settled on one of the most popular soldiers in America, General Smedly
Butler of Pennsylvania." Butler was approached by "fascist attorney"
Gerald MacGuire (an official of the American Legion), who attempted to
recruit Butler into the role of an American Hitler.
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- "Butler was horrified," but
played along with MacGuire until, a short time later, he notified the White
House of the plot. Roosevelt considered having "the leaders of the
houses of Morgan and Du Pont" arrested, but feared that "it would
create an unthinkable national crisis in the midst of a depression and
perhaps another Wall Street crash." Roosevelt decided the best way
to defuse the plot was to expose it, and leaked the story to the press.
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- "The newspapers ran the story of
the attempted coup on the front page, but generally ridiculed it as absurd
and preposterous." But an investigation by the Congressional Committee
on Un-American Activities - 74th Congress, first session, House of Representatives,
Investigation of Nazi and other propaganda - was begun later that same
year.
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- "It was four years," continues
Higham, "before the committee dared to publish its report in a white
paper that was marked for 'restricted circulation.' They were forced to
admit that 'certain persons made an attempt to establish a fascist organization
in this country . . . [The] committee was able to verify all the pertinent
statements made by General Butler.' This admission that the entire plan
was deadly in intent was not accompanied by the imprisonment of anybody.
Further investigations disclosed that over a million people had been guaranteed
to join the scheme and that the arms and munitions necessary would have
been supplied by Remington, a Du Pont subsidiary." (8)
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- The names of important individuals and
groups involved in the conspiracy were suppressed by the committee, but
later revealed by Seldes, Philadelphia Record reporter Paul French, and
Jules Archer, author of the book, "The Plot to Seize the White House."
Included were John W. Davis (attorney for the J.P. Morgan banking group),
Robert Sterling Clark (Wall Street broker and heir to the Singer sewing
machine fortune), William Doyle (American Legion official), and the American
Liberty League (backed by executives from J.P. Morgan and Co., Rockefeller
interests, E.F. Hutton, and Du Pont-controlled General Motors). (9)
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