World news
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
The link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine has been talked about for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday 25 September 2004 18.59 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 1 October 2014 04.38 EDT
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
--------------->His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act,<------------- has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
Moderators: Pike Ridge Beagles, Aaron Bartlett
-
Pine Mt Beagles
- Posts: 7803
- Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 6:01 pm
- Location: Pineville Ky
Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
So...
According to YOUR cut and paste Prescott Bush was a SHAREHOLDER to some number of businesses who profited by doing business with financial backers of Nazis.
I'm just gonna ask the obvious questions here...ones that YOU would have asked and thought about before you posted this garbage, if you had any sense anyway...
WHAT ARE THE COMPANY'S NAMES?
HOW DID THEY BENEFIT?
WHAT FORMER NAZI WAR CRIMES PROSECUTOR?
Your latest smear masterpiece has absolutely NO details, no links to PROOF whatsoever. It's nothing more, NOTHING MORE than supposition and guesswork.
You're an idiot Rufus...you swallow whatever you read as gospel as long as it coincides with the crap you believe.
There's no proof in this so called article...
According to YOUR cut and paste Prescott Bush was a SHAREHOLDER to some number of businesses who profited by doing business with financial backers of Nazis.
I'm just gonna ask the obvious questions here...ones that YOU would have asked and thought about before you posted this garbage, if you had any sense anyway...
WHAT ARE THE COMPANY'S NAMES?
HOW DID THEY BENEFIT?
WHAT FORMER NAZI WAR CRIMES PROSECUTOR?
Your latest smear masterpiece has absolutely NO details, no links to PROOF whatsoever. It's nothing more, NOTHING MORE than supposition and guesswork.
You're an idiot Rufus...you swallow whatever you read as gospel as long as it coincides with the crap you believe.
There's no proof in this so called article...
The 1st amendment allows the usual liberal narcissistic "I think.." which is how they start all their sentences.
The second amendment protects us from implementing "I think"
The second amendment protects us from implementing "I think"
-
Pine Mt Beagles
- Posts: 7803
- Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 6:01 pm
- Location: Pineville Ky
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
Do you really want to Know,,,,,,,No you only want something to whine about,,,,,,,
Go ahead ,,,,do you Lieing and Denying,,,,,,Talk about the Source or me ,,,anything BUT THE TRUTH.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it very accurate , --------------->But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. ------------>It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade.
The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Tantalising
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.
By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.
There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.
Go ahead ,,,,do you Lieing and Denying,,,,,,Talk about the Source or me ,,,anything BUT THE TRUTH.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it very accurate , --------------->But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. ------------>It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade.
The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Tantalising
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.
By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.
There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.
If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered
-
Pine Lakes
- Posts: 1311
- Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2011 6:26 pm
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
NAZI(National Socialist German Worker's Party)- Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities, and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.
Looks very much like the democratic party principles of today. As far as the racist comments and comparisons, you being the low life liberal that you are, use a past tragedy that exists in no form today and is a black eye in human history as a crutch to support your means of obtaining property that is not yours. You are the lowest of the low. You are a closet NAZI, but instead of killing those that you don't like, you enslave them to a system, and benefit from their misfortune. Nobody hear is dumb enough to even attempt to defend your stupid antics. Even the democrats on this board want nothing to do with you because you are an idiot. I know you to be a racist and a baby killer. You hate old people because they are eating a piece of "your" pie. You love the KKK, Hitler, and Saul Alinsky because a free, responsible, moral people remove you from the nipple and the free ride you're on is over. You contribute to nothing good, you use God's name in vane, and you are a cancer to America. Please pack your bags and move somewhere else, America would be better for it. I would even buy your plane ticket because that would be a wise investment that would save everyone some hard earned money.
Looks very much like the democratic party principles of today. As far as the racist comments and comparisons, you being the low life liberal that you are, use a past tragedy that exists in no form today and is a black eye in human history as a crutch to support your means of obtaining property that is not yours. You are the lowest of the low. You are a closet NAZI, but instead of killing those that you don't like, you enslave them to a system, and benefit from their misfortune. Nobody hear is dumb enough to even attempt to defend your stupid antics. Even the democrats on this board want nothing to do with you because you are an idiot. I know you to be a racist and a baby killer. You hate old people because they are eating a piece of "your" pie. You love the KKK, Hitler, and Saul Alinsky because a free, responsible, moral people remove you from the nipple and the free ride you're on is over. You contribute to nothing good, you use God's name in vane, and you are a cancer to America. Please pack your bags and move somewhere else, America would be better for it. I would even buy your plane ticket because that would be a wise investment that would save everyone some hard earned money.
-
Rabbithoundjb
- Posts: 4517
- Joined: Wed Jun 28, 2006 4:30 pm
- Location: Rocky Mount, NC
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
I'd help with the ticket because quite frankly anti americans need to be escorted to the border and have a boot put in their azz.
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
I'm just going to point out the obvious here Rufus...
Your article concerns itself with 1942.
There is NO current President named Bush.
God willing there will be no more Presidents named Bush.
Nowhere in your masterpiece does the names of any current frontrunners on the Republican side exist.
You are OBSESSED with hating the Bush family.
YOU are not a German or a Jew...therefore anything Prescott Bush may have done does not affect you.
And finally the biggest, glaring observation. Your mancrush messiah Obama has been in office 7 years. Your efforts of misdirection are futile. The evidence of HIS failure doesn't require one to travel back 73 years to see it.
Your article concerns itself with 1942.
There is NO current President named Bush.
God willing there will be no more Presidents named Bush.
Nowhere in your masterpiece does the names of any current frontrunners on the Republican side exist.
You are OBSESSED with hating the Bush family.
YOU are not a German or a Jew...therefore anything Prescott Bush may have done does not affect you.
And finally the biggest, glaring observation. Your mancrush messiah Obama has been in office 7 years. Your efforts of misdirection are futile. The evidence of HIS failure doesn't require one to travel back 73 years to see it.
The 1st amendment allows the usual liberal narcissistic "I think.." which is how they start all their sentences.
The second amendment protects us from implementing "I think"
The second amendment protects us from implementing "I think"
-
Alabama John
- Posts: 2116
- Joined: Sat Jul 27, 2002 5:56 pm
- Location: Pinson, Alabama
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
Go back in history and you can find some things that are considered bad today that were acceptable business practices back then.
In the beginning many countries supported the eliminating Jews from sticking together and taking over existing non Jew businesses by their relations with one another. Together they had a lot of money to help any Jew that wanted to go in business and their cooperative would take a fee for doing that. They would only do business with one of their own so free enterprise was out.
A lot like our banking here and in most countries today.
That is why the USA was so slow in getting in the war after most European countries did. We were not hurt as didn't have very many Jews here like Europe did.
Side note: Now we have the most percentage except for Israel. Europe as a whole recovered financially very quick after Hitler.
Hard to look back and comment against others doing bad things against other humans without bring up our own sins like the black slaves and far worse, the eliminating of the Native Americans.
Hitler or Thomas Jefferson, to many here there is no difference.
In the beginning many countries supported the eliminating Jews from sticking together and taking over existing non Jew businesses by their relations with one another. Together they had a lot of money to help any Jew that wanted to go in business and their cooperative would take a fee for doing that. They would only do business with one of their own so free enterprise was out.
A lot like our banking here and in most countries today.
That is why the USA was so slow in getting in the war after most European countries did. We were not hurt as didn't have very many Jews here like Europe did.
Side note: Now we have the most percentage except for Israel. Europe as a whole recovered financially very quick after Hitler.
Hard to look back and comment against others doing bad things against other humans without bring up our own sins like the black slaves and far worse, the eliminating of the Native Americans.
Hitler or Thomas Jefferson, to many here there is no difference.
-
littlewoody
- Posts: 2144
- Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2011 12:06 pm
- Location: MICHGAN
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
Pm put a colostomy bag over your mouth your full of crap ! 
TheJohnBirchSociety
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
Pinemooch has been digging them obabbler dolls out of outhouses so long he brain is complete mush from the gas.
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
PM, FDR imprisoned the Japanese Americans during WW2. Not sure why the Bush family is responsible for something that Prescott Bush may or may not have done. Sorry, no one is responsible for sins of an ancestor.
-
Pine Mt Beagles
- Posts: 7803
- Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 6:01 pm
- Location: Pineville Ky
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
The Republican Party is Based on Nazi ,,Beliefs,,,,That Republicans are the Master Race,,You think if you Vote Republican you are Some How Right,,and you are in your own mind,,that is Closed to Any facts,,,
Just your above posts ,,proves that,,
Just your above posts ,,proves that,,
If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
The only thing you ever proved clown is that you are the poster boy for an air abortion. Your daddy should have shot you out the window.
-
Pine Lakes
- Posts: 1311
- Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2011 6:26 pm
Re: Republicans Love Them Nazi 's
Wrong again. Democrats formed the KKK. Democrats wrote the Jim Crow laws. Democrats love the same socialist concepts that the NAZI's did. It was a democrat president that said he would have those "N" words voting democrat for 200 years. I don't know that voting for a Republican is "right", but it's a helluva lot better than voting for a NAZI democrat. You don't even understand the difference in ideology because you're too stupid to comprehend, and too much of a sheep to make an attempt to. All of your posts prove that you are gleefully ignorant. So keep on quoting those liberal sources and spreading the false news. We all enjoy you making yourself look so helplessly dumb.Pine Mt Beagles wrote:The Republican Party is Based on Nazi ,,Beliefs,,,,That Republicans are the Master Race,,You think if you Vote Republican you are Some How Right,,and you are in your own mind,,that is Closed to Any facts,,,
Just your above posts ,,proves that,,