From: lpb@STRATUS.SWDC.STRATUS.COM (Len Bucuvalas)
Newsgroups: ca.politics
Subject: The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush: Part 2
Date: 10 Apr 92 21:24:46 GMT


CHAPTER 2 THE HITLER PROJECT 


1. Bush Property Seized--Trading
with the Enemy 

In October 1942, ten months after
entering World War II, America was
preparing its first assault against
Nazi military forces. Prescott Bush was
managing partner of Brown Brothers
Harriman. His 18-year-old son George,
the future U.S. President, had just
begun training to become a naval pilot. 
   On October 20, 1942, the U.S.
government ordered the seizure of Nazi
German banking operations in New York
City which were being conducted by
Prescott Bush. 
   Under the {Trading with the
Enemy Act}, the government took
over the {Union Banking
Corporation,} in which Bush was a
director. The U.S. Alien Property
Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s
stock shares, all of which were owned
by Prescott Bush, E. Roland ``Bunny''
Harriman, three Nazi executives, and
two other associates of Bush.@s1 
   The order seizing the bank
``vest[ed] [seized] all of the capital
stock of Union Banking Corporation, a
New York corporation,'' and named the
holders of its shares as: 
   @sb|``E. Roland Harriman--3991
shares.'' Harriman was chairman and
director of Union Banking Corp. (UBC);
this is ``Bunny'' Harriman, described
by Prescott Bush as a place holder who
didn't get much into banking affairs;
Prescott managed his personal
investments. 
   @sb|``Cornelis Lievense--4
shares.'' Lievense was president and
director of UBC, and a New York
resident banking functionary for the
Nazis. 
   @sb|``Harold D. Pennington--1
share.'' Pennington was treasurer and
director of UBC, and an office manager
employed by Bush at Brown Brothers
Harriman. 
   @sb|``Ray Morris--1 share.''
Morris was director of UBC, and a
partner of Bush and the Harrimans.
   @sb|``Prescott S. Bush--1 share.''
Bush was director of UBC, which was
co-founded and sponsored by his
father-in-law George Walker; he was
senior managing partner for E. Roland
Harriman and Averell Harriman.
   @sb|``H.J. Kouwenhoven--1 share'' 
Kouwenhoven was director of UBC;
he organized UBC as the emissary of
Fritz Thyssen in negotiations with
George Walker and Averell Harriman; he
was also managing director of UBC's
Netherlands affiliate under Nazi
occupation; industrial executive in
Nazi Germany, and also director and
chief foreign financial executive of
the German Steel Trust.
   @sb|``Johann G. Groeninger--1
share.'' Groeninger was director of UBC
and of its Netherlands affiliate; he
was an industrial executive in Nazi
Germany. 
   The order also specified: ``all of
which shares are held for the benefit
of ... members of the Thyssen family,
[and] is property of nationals ... of a
designated enemy country....'' 
    By October 26, 1942, U.S. troops
were underway for North Africa. On October
28, the government issued orders
seizing two Nazi front organizations
run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the
{Holland-American Trading
Corporation} and the {Seamless
Steel Equipment Corporation.}@s2 
   U.S. forces landed under fire near
Algiers on November 8, 1942; heavy combat
raged throughout November. Nazi
interests in the {Silesian-American
Corporation,} long managed by
Prescott Bush and his father-in-law
George Herbert Walker, were seized
under the Trading with the Enemy Act on
November 17, 1942. In this action, the
government announced that it was
seizing only the Nazi interests,
leaving the Nazis' U.S. partners to
carry on the business.@s3 
   These and other actions taken by
the U.S. government in wartime were,
tragically, too little and too late.
President Bush's family had already
played a central role in financing and
arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of
Germany; in financing and managing the
buildup of Nazi war industries for the
conquest of Europe and war against the
U.S.A.; and in the development of Nazi
genocide theories and racial
propaganda, with their well-known
results. 
   The facts presented here must be
known, and their implications reflected
upon, for a proper understanding of
President George Herbert Walker Bush
and of the danger to mankind that he
represents. The President's family
fortune was largely a result of the
Hitler project. The powerful
Anglo-American family associations,
which later boosted him into the
Central Intelligence Agency and up to
the White House, were his father's
partners in the Hitler project. 
   President Franklin Roosevelt's
Alien Property Custodian, Leo T.
Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number
248 seizing the property of Prescott
Bush under the Trading with Enemy Act.
The order, published in obscure
government record books and kept out of
the news,@s4 explained nothing about
the Nazis involved; only that the Union
Banking Corporation was run for the
``Thyssen family'' of ``Germany and/or
Hungary''--``nationals ... of a
designated enemy country.'' 
   By deciding that Prescott Bush and
the other directors of the Union
Banking Corp. were legally {front men
for the Nazis}, the government avoided
the more important historical issue: In
what way {were Hitler's Nazis
themselves hired, armed, and instructed
by} the New York and London clique of
which Prescott Bush was an executive
manager? Let us examine the
Harriman-Bush Hitler project from the
1920s until it was partially broken up,
to seek an answer for that question. 
                     

2. Origin and Extent of the
Project 
 
   Fritz Thyssen and his business
partners are universally recognized as
the most important German financiers of
Adolf Hitler's takeover of Germany. At
the time of the order seizing the
Thyssen family's Union Banking Corp.,
Mr. Fritz Thyssen had already published
his famous book, {I Paid
Hitler},@s5 admitting that he had
financed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
movement since October 1923. Thyssen's
role as the leading early backer of
Hitler's grab for power in Germany had
been noted by U.S. diplomats in Berlin
in 1932.@s6 The order seizing the
Bush-Thyssen bank was curiously quiet
and modest about the identity of the
perpetrators who had been nailed. 
   But two weeks before the official
order, government investigators had
reported secretly that ``W. Averell
Harriman was in Europe sometime prior
to 1924 and at that time became
acquainted with Fritz Thyssen, the
German industrialist.'' Harriman and
Thyssen agreed to set up a bank for
Thyssen in New York. ``[C]ertain of
[Harriman's] associates would serve as
directors....'' Thyssen agent ``H.J.
Kouwenhoven ... came to the United
States ... prior to 1924 for
conferences with the Harriman Company
in this connection....''@s7 
   When exactly was ``Harriman in
Europe sometime prior to 1924''? In
fact, he was in Berlin in 1922 to set
up the Berlin branch of W.A. Harriman &
Co. under George Walker's presidency. 
   The Union Banking Corporation was
established formally in 1924, as a unit
in the Manhattan offices of W.A.
Harriman & Co., interlocking with the
Thyssen-owned {Bank voor Handel en
Scheepvaart} (BHS) in the Netherlands.
The investigators concluded that ``the
Union Banking Corporation has since its
inception handled funds chiefly
supplied to it through the Dutch bank
by the Thyssen interests for American
investment.'' 
   Thus by personal agreement between
Averell Harriman and Fritz Thyssen in
1922, W.A. Harriman & Co. (alias Union
Banking Corporation) would be
transferring funds back and forth
between New York and the ``Thyssen
interests'' in Germany. By putting up
about $400,000, the Harriman
organization would be joint owner and
manager of Thyssen's banking operations
outside of Germany. 
   {How important was the Nazi
enterprise for which President Bush's
father was the New York banker?} 
   The 1942 U.S. government
investigative report said that Bush's
Nazi-front bank was an interlocking
concern with the Vereinigte Stahlwerke
(United Steel Works Corporation or
{German Steel Trust}) led by
Fritz Thyssen and his two brothers.
After the war, congressional
investigators probed the Thyssen
interests, Union Banking Corp. and
related Nazi units. The investigation
showed that the Vereinigte Stahlwerke
had produced the following approximate
proportions of total German national
output: ``50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig
iron; 41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal
plate; 36.0% of Nazi Germany's heavy
plate; 38.5% of Nazi Germany's
galvanized sheet; 45.5% of Nazi
Germany's pipes and tubes; 22.1% of
Nazi Germany's wire; 35.0% of Nazi
Germany's explosives.''@s8
 
   This accounts for many, many Nazi
submarines, bombs, rifles, gas
chambers, etc. 
   Prescott Bush became vice
president of W.A. Harriman & Co. in
1926. That same year, a friend of
Harriman and Bush set up a giant new
organization for their client Fritz
Thyssen, prime sponsor of politician
Adolf Hitler. The new {German Steel
Trust,} Germany's largest
industrial corporation, was organized
in 1926 by Wall Street banker Clarence
Dillon. Dillon was the old comrade of
Prescott Bush's father Sam Bush from
the ``Merchants of Death'' bureau in
World War I. 
   In return for putting up $70
million to create his organization,
majority owner Thyssen gave the Dillon
Read company two or more
representatives on the board of the new
Steel Trust.@s9 
   Thus there is a division of labor:
Thyssen's own confidential accounts,
for political and related purposes,
were run through the Walker-Bush
organization; the Steel Trust did its
corporate banking through Dillon Read. 
              - * * * -
   The Walker-Bush firm's banking
activities were not just politically
neutral money-making ventures which
happened to coincide with the aims of
German Nazis. All of the firm's
European business in those days was
organized around anti-democratic
political forces. 
   In 1927, criticism of their
support for totalitarianism drew this
retort from Bert Walker, written from
Kennebunkport to Averell Harriman: ``It
seems to me that the suggestion in
connection with Lord Bearsted's views
that we withdraw from Russia smacks
somewhat of the impertinent.... I think
that we have drawn our line and should
hew to it.''@s1@s0 
   Averell Harriman met with Italy's
fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. A
representative of the firm subsequently
telegraphed good news back to his chief
executive Bert Walker: ``... During
these last days ... Mussolini ... has
examined and approved our c[o]ntract 15
June.''@s1@s1 
   The great financial collapse of
1929-31 shook America, Germany, and
Britain, weakening all governments. It
also made the hard-pressed Prescott
Bush even more willing to do whatever
was necessary to retain his new place
in the world. It was in this crisis
that certain Anglo-Americans determined
on the installation of a Hitler regime
in Germany. 
   W.A. Harriman & Co.,
well-positioned for this enterprise and
rich in assets from their German and
Russian business, merged with the
British-American investment house,
Brown Brothers, on January 1, 1931.
Bert Walker retired to his own G.H.
Walker & Co. This left the Harriman
brothers, Prescott Bush, and Thatcher M.
Brown as the senior partners of the new
Brown Brothers Harriman firm. (The
London, England branch of the Brown
family firm continued operating under
its historic name--Brown, Shipley.) 
   Robert A. Lovett also came over as
a partner from Brown Brothers. His
father, E.H. Harriman's lawyer and
railroad chief, had been on the War
Industries Board with Prescott's
father. Though he remained a partner in
Brown Brothers Harriman, the junior
Lovett soon replaced his father as
chief exexcutive of Union Pacific
Railroad. 
   Brown Brothers had a racial
tradition that fitted it well for the
Hitler project. American patriots had
cursed its name back in Civil War days.
Brown Brothers, with offices in the
U.S.A. and in England, had carried on
their ships fully 75 percent of the
slave cotton from the American South
over to British mill owners; through
their usurious credit they controlled
and manipulated the slave-owners. 
   Now, in 1931, the virtual dictator
of world finance, Bank of England
Governor Montagu Collet Norman, was a
former Brown Brothers partner, whose
grandfather had been boss of Brown
Brothers during the U.S. Civil War.
Montagu Norman was known as the most
avid of Hitler's supporters within
British ruling circles, and Norman's
intimacy with this firm was essential
to his management of the Hitler
project. 
   In 1931, while Prescott Bush ran
the New York office of Brown Brothers
Harriman, Prescott's partner was
Montagu Norman's intimate friend
Thatcher Brown. The Bank of England
chief always stayed at the home of
Prescott's partner on his hush-hush
trips to New York. Prescott Bush
concentrated on the firm's German
actitivites, and Thatcher Brown saw to
their business in old England, under
the guidance of his mentor Montagu
Norman.@s1@s2 

   
3. Hitler's Ladder to Power 
 
   Adolf Hitler became Chancellor
of Germany January 30, 1933, and
absolute dictator in March 1933, after
two years of expensive and violent
lobbying and electioneering. Two
affiliates of the Bush-Harriman
organization played great parts in this
criminal undertaking: Thyssen's German
Steel Trust; and the Hamburg-Amerika
Line and several of its
executives.@s1@s3 
   Let us look more closely at the
Bush family's German partners. 
   {Fritz Thyssen} told
Allied interrogators after the war
about some of his financial support for
the Nazi Party: ``In 1930 or 1931 ... I
told [Hitler's deputy Rudolph] Hess ...
I would arrange a credit for him with a
Dutch bank in Rotterdam, the Bank
fu@aur Handel und Schiff [i.e. Bank
voor Handel en Scheepvaart (BHS), the
Harriman-Bush affiliate]. I arranged
the credit ... he would pay it back in
three years.... 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.... 
   ``The credit was about 250-300,000
[gold] marks--about the sum I had given
before. The loan has been repaid in
part to the Dutch bank, but I think
some money is still owing on
it....''@s1@s4 
   The overall total of Thyssen's
political donations and loans to the
Nazis was well over a million dollars,
including funds he raised from
others--in a period of terrible
money-shortage in Germany. 
   {Friedrich Flick} was the
major co-owner of the German Steel
Trust with Fritz Thyssen, Thyssen's
longtime collaborator and sometime
competitor. In preparation for the war
crimes tribunal at Nuremberg, the U.S.
government said that Flick was ``one of
leading financiers and industrialists
who from 1932 contributed large sums to
the Nazi Party ... member of `Circle of
Friends' of Himmler who contributed
large sums to the SS.''@s1@s5 
      Flick, like Thyssen, financed the
Nazis to maintain their private armies
called Schutzstaffel (S.S. or Black
Shirts) and Sturmabteilung (S.A., storm
troops or Brown Shirts). 
   The Flick-Harriman partnership was
directly supervised by Prescott Bush,
President Bush's father, and by George
Walker, President Bush's grandfather. 
   The Harriman-Walker Union Banking
Corp. arrangements for the German Steel
Trust had made them bankers for Flick
and his vast operations in Germany by
no later than 1926. 
   The {Harriman Fifteen
Corporation} (George Walker,
president, Prescott Bush and Averell
Harriman, sole directors) held a
substantial stake in the Silesian
Holding Co. at the time of the merger
with Brown Brothers, January 1, 1931.
This holding correlated to Averell
Harriman's chairmanship of the
{Consolidated Silesian Steel
Corporation,} the American group
owning one-third of a complex of
steelmaking, coal-mining and
zinc-mining activities in Germany and
Poland, in which Friedrich Flick owned
two-thirds.@s1@s6 
        The Nuremberg prosecutor
characterized Flick as follows: 
   ``Proprietor and head of a large
group of industrial enterprises (coal
and iron mines, steel producing and
fabricating plants) ...
`Wehrwirtschaftsfuehrer,' 1938 [title
awarded to prominent industrialists for
merit in armaments drive--`Military
Economy Leader']....''@s1@s7 
   For this buildup of the Hitler war
machine with coal, steel, and arms
production, using slave laborers, the
Nazi Flick was condemned to seven years
in prison at the Nuremberg trials; he
served three years. With friends in New
York and London, however, Flick lived
into the 1970s and died a billionaire. 
   On March 19, 1934, Prescott
Bush--then director of the German Steel
Trust's Union Banking
Corporation--initiated an alert to the
absent Averell Harriman about a problem
which had developed in the Flick
partnership.@s1@s8 Bush sent Harriman a
clipping from the {New York Times} of
that day, which reported that the
Polish government was fighting back
against American and German
stockholders who controlled ``Poland's
largest industrial unit, the Upper
Silesian Coal and Steel Company....'' 
   The {Times} article continued:
``The company has long been accused of
mismanagement, excessive borrowing,
fictitious bookkeeping and gambling in
securities. Warrants were issued in
December for several directors accused
of tax evasions. They were German
citizens and they fled. They were
replaced by Poles. Herr Flick,
regarding this as an attempt to make
the company's board entirely Polish,
retaliated by restricting credits until
the new Polish directors were unable to
pay the workmen regularly.'' 
   The {Times} noted that the
company's mines and mills ``employ
25,000 men and account for 45 percent
of Poland's total steel output and 12
percent of her coal production.
Two-thirds of the company's stock is
owned by Friedrich Flick, a leading
German steel industrialist, and the
remainder is owned by interests in the
United States.'' 
   In view of the fact that a great
deal of Polish output was being
exported to Hitler's Germany under
depression conditions, the Polish
government thought that Bush, Harriman,
and their Nazi partners should at least
pay full taxes on their Polish
holdings. The U.S. and Nazi owners
responded with a lockout. The letter to
Harriman in Washington reported a cable
from their European representative:
``Have undertaken new steps London
Berlin ... please establish friendly
relations with Polish Ambassador [in
Washington].'' 
   A 1935 Harriman Fifteen
Corporation memo from George Walker
announced an agreement had been made
``in Berlin'' to sell an 8,000 block of
their shares in Consolidated Silesian
Steel.@s1@s9 But the dispute with
Poland did not deter the Bush family
from continuing its partnership with
Flick. 
   Nazi tanks and bombs ``settled''
this dispute in September, 1939 with
the invasion of Poland, beginning World
War II. The Nazi army had been equipped
by Flick, Harriman, Walker, and Bush,
with materials essentially stolen from
Poland. 
   There were probably few people at
the time who could appreciate the
irony, that when the Soviets also
attacked and invaded Poland from the
East, their vehicles were fueled by oil
pumped from Baku wells revived by the
Harriman/Walker/Bush enterprise. 
   Three years later, nearly a year
after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, the U.S. government ordered the
seizure of the Nazis' share in the
Silesian-American Corporation under the
Trading with the Enemy Act. Enemy
nationals were said to own 49 percent
of the common stock and 41.67 percent
of the preferred stock of the company. 
   The order characterized the
company as a ``business enterprise
within the United States, owned by [a
front company in] Zurich, Switzerland,
and held for the benefit of
Bergwerksgesellschaft George von
Giesche's Erben, a German
corporation....''@s2@s0 
   Bert Walker was still the senior
director of the company, which he had
founded back in 1926 simultaneously
with the creation of the German Steel
Trust. Ray Morris, Prescott's partner
from Union Banking Corp. and Brown
Brothers Harriman, was also a director. 
   The investigative report prior to
the government crackdown explained the
``NATURE OF BUSINESS: The subject
corporation is an American holding
company for German and Polish
subsidiaries, which own large and
valuable coal and zinc mines in
Silesia, Poland and Germany. Since
September 1939, these properties have
been in the possession of and have been
operated by the German government and
have undoubtedly been of considerable
assistance to that country in its war
effort.''@s2@s1 
   The report noted that the American
stockholders hoped to regain control of
the European properties after the war. 


4. Control of Nazi Commerce 
 
   Bert Walker had arranged the
credits Harriman needed to take control
of the Hamburg-Amerika Line back in
1920. Walker had organized the
{American Ship and Commerce
Corp.} as a unit of the W.A.
Harriman & Co., with contractual power
over Hamburg-Amerika's affairs. 
   As the Hitler project went into
high gear, Harriman-Bush shares in
American Ship and Commerce Corp. were
held by the Harriman Fifteen Corp., run
by Prescott Bush and Bert Walker.@s2@s2 
   It was a convenient stroll for the
well-tanned, athletic, handsome
Prescott Bush. From the Brown Brothers
Harriman skyscraper at 59 Wall
Street--where he was senior managing
partner, confidential investments
manager and advisor to Averell and his
brother ``Bunny''--he walked across to
the Harriman Fifteen Corporation at One
Wall Street, otherwise known as G.H.
Walker & Co.--and around the corner to
his subsidiary offices at 39 Broadway,
former home of the old W.A. Harriman &
Co., and still the offices for American
Ship and Commerce, and of the Union
Banking Corporation. 
   In many ways, Bush's
Hamburg-Amerika Line was the pivot for
the entire Hitler project. 
   Averell Harriman and Bert Walker
had gained control over the steamship
company in 1920 in negotiations with
its post-World War I chief executive,
{Wilhelm Cuno}, and with the
line's bankers, M.M. Warburg. Cuno was
thereafter completely dependent on the
Anglo-Americans, and became a member of
the Anglo-German Friendship Society. In
the 1930-32 drive for a Hitler
dictatorship, Wilhelm Cuno contributed
important sums to the Nazi Party.@s2@s3 
   {Albert Voegler} was chief
executive of the Thyssen-Flick German
Steel Trust for which Bush's Union
Banking Corp. was the New York office.
He was a director of the Bush-affiliate
BHS Bank in Rotterdam, and a director
of the Harriman-Bush Hamburg-Amerika
Line. Voegler joined Thyssen and Flick
in their heavy 1930-33 Nazi
contributions, and helped organize the
final Nazi leap into national
power.@s2@s4 
   The {Schroeder} family of
bankers was a linchpin for the Nazi
activities of Harriman and Prescott
Bush, closely tied to their lawyers
Allen and John Foster Dulles. 
   Baron Kurt von Schroeder was
co-director of the massive
Thyssen-Huette foundry along with
Johann Groeninger, Prescott Bush's New
York bank partner. Kurt von Schroeder
was treasurer of the support
organization for the Nazi Party's
private armies, to which Friedrich
Flick contributed. Kurt von Schroeder
and Montagu Norman's prote@aage@aa
Hjalmar Schacht together made the final
arrangments for Hitler to enter the
government.@s2@s5 
   Baron Rudolph von Schroeder was
vice president and director of the
Hamburg-Amerika Line. Long an intimate
contact of Averell Harriman's in
Germany, Baron Rudolph sent his
grandson Baron Johann Rudolph for a
tour of Prescott Bush's Brown Brothers
Harriman offices in New York City in
December 1932--on the eve of their
Hitler-triumph.@s2@s6 
   Certain actions taken directly by
the Harriman-Bush shipping line in 1932
must be ranked among the gravest acts
of treason in this century. 
   The U.S. Embassy in Berlin
reported back to Washington that the
``costly election campaigns'' and ``the
cost of maintaining a private army of
300,000 to 400,000 men'' had raised
questions as to the Nazis' financial
backers. The constitutional government
of the German republic moved to defend
national freedom by ordering the Nazi
Party private armies disbanded. The
U.S. Embassy reported that the
{Hamburg-Amerika Line was
purchasing and distributing propaganda
attacks against the German government,
for attempting this last-minute
crackdown on Hitler's
forces.}@s2@s7 
   Thousands of German opponents of
Hitlerism were shot or intimidated by
privately armed Nazi Brown Shirts. In
this connection, we note that the
original ``Merchant of Death,'' Samuel
Pryor, was a founding director of both
the Union Banking Corp. and the
American Ship and Commerce Corp. Since
Mr. Pryor was executive committee
chairman of Remington Arms and a
central figure in the world's private
arms traffic, his use to the Hitler
project was enhanced as the Bush
family's partner in Nazi Party banking
and trans-Atlantic shipping. 
   The U.S. Senate arms-traffic
investigators probed Remington after it
was joined in a cartel agreement on
explosives to the Nazi firm I.G.
Farben. Looking at the period leading
up to Hitler's seizure of power, the
senators found that ``German political
associations, like the Nazi and others,
are nearly all armed with American ...
guns.... Arms of all kinds coming from
America are transshipped in the Scheldt
to river barges before the vessels
arrive in Antwerp. They then can be
carried through Holland without police
inspection or interference. The
Hitlerists and Communists are presumed
to get arms in this manner. The
principal arms coming from America are
Thompson submachine guns and revolvers.
The number is great.''@s2@s8 
   The beginning of the Hitler regime
brought some bizarre changes to the
Hamburg-Amerika Line--and more
betrayals. 
   Prescott Bush's American Ship and
Commerce Corp. notified Max Warburg of
Hamburg, Germany, on March 7, 1933,
that Warburg was to be the
corporation's official, designated
representative on the board of
Hamburg-Amerika.@s2@s9 
   Max Warburg replied on March 27,
1933, assuring his American sponsors
that the Hitler government was good for
Germany: ``For the last few years
business was considerably better than
we had anticipated, but a reaction is
making itself felt for some months. We
are actually suffering also under the
very active propaganda against Germany,
caused by some unpleasant
circumstances. These occurrences were
the natural consequence of the very
excited election campaign, but were
extraordinarily exaggerated in the
foreign press. The Government is firmly
resolved to maintain public peace and
order in Germany, and I feel perfectly
convinced in this respect that there is
no cause for any alarm
whatsoever.''@s3@s0 
   This seal of approval for Hitler,
coming from a famous Jew, was just what
Harriman and Bush required, for they
anticipated rather serious ``alarm''
inside the U.S.A. against their Nazi
operations. 
   On March 29, 1933, two days after
Max's letter to Harriman, Max's son
Erich sent a cable to his cousin
Frederick M. Warburg, a director of the
Harriman railroad system. He asked
Frederick to ``use all your influence''
to stop all anti-Nazi activity in
America, including ``atrocity news and
unfriendly propaganda in foreign press,
mass meetings, etc.'' Frederick cabled
back to Erich: ``No responsible groups
here [are] urging [a] boycott [of]
German goods[,] merely excited
individuals.'' Two days after that, On
March 31, 1933, the
{American-Jewish Committee,}
controlled by the Warburgs, and the
{B'nai B'rith,} heavily
influenced by the Sulzbergers'
({New York Times}), issued a
formal, official joint statement of the
two organizations, counselling ``that
no American boycott against Germany be
encouraged, [and advising] ... that no
further mass meetings be held or
similar forms of agitation be
employed.''@s3@s1 
   The American Jewish Committee and
the B'nai B'rith (mother of the
``Anti-Defamation League'') continued
with this hardline, no-attack-on-Hitler
stance all through the 1930s, blunting
the fight mounted by many Jews and
other anti-fascists. 
   Thus the decisive interchange
reproduced above, taking place entirely
within the orbit of the Harriman/Bush
firm, may explain something of the
relationship of George Bush to American
Jewish and Zionist leaders. Some of
them, in close cooperation with his
family, played an ugly part in the
drama of Naziism. Is this why
``professional Nazi-hunters'' have
never discovered how the Bush family
made its money? 
              -* * *-
   The executive board of the
{Hamburg Amerika Line}
{(Hapag)} met jointly with the
North German Lloyd company board in
Hamburg on September 5, 1933. Under
official Nazi supervision, the two
firms were merged. Prescott Bush's
American Ship and Commerce Corp.
installed Christian J. Beck, a longtime
Harriman executive, as manager of
freight and operations in North America
for the new joint Nazi shipping lines
{(Hapag-Lloyd)}) on November 4,
1933. 
   According to testimony of
officials of the companies before
Congress in 1934, a supervisor from the
{Nazi Labor Front} rode with
every ship of the Harriman-Bush line;
employees of the New York offices were
directly organized into the Nazi Labor
Front organization; Hamburg-Amerika
provided free passage to individuals
going abroad for Nazi propaganda
purposes; and the line subsidized
pro-Nazi newspapers in the U.S.A., as
it had done in Germany against the
constitutional German government.@s3@s2 
   In mid-1936, Prescott Bush's
American Ship and Commerce Corp. cabled
M.M. Warburg, asking Warburg to
represent the company's heavy share
interest at the forthcoming
Hamburg-Amerika stockholders meeting.
The Warburg office replied with the
information that ``we represented you''
at the stockholders meeting and
``exercised on your behalf your voting
power for Rm [gold marks] 3,509,600
Hapag stock deposited with us.'' 
   The Warburgs transmitted a letter
received from Emil Helfferich, German
chief executive of both Hapag-Lloyd and
of the Standard Oil subsidiary in Nazi
Germany: ``It is the intention to
continue the relations with Mr.
Harriman on the same basis as
heretofore....'' In a colorful gesture,
Hapag's Nazi chairman Helfferich sent
the line's president across the
Atlantic on a Zeppelin to confer with
their New York string-pullers. 
   After the meeting with the
Zeppelin passenger, the Harriman-Bush
office replied: ``I am glad to learn
that Mr. Hellferich [sic] has stated
that relations between the Hamburg
American Line and ourselves will be
continued on the same basis as
heretofore.''@s3@s3 
   Two months before moving against
Bush's Union Banking Corp., the U.S.
government ordered the seizure of all
property of the Hamburg-Amerika Line
and North German Lloyd, under the
Trading with the Enemy Act. The
investigators noted in the pre-seizure
report that Christian J. Beck was still
acting as an attorney representing the
Nazi firm.@s3@s4 
   In May 1933, just after the Hitler
regime was consolidated, an agreement
was reached in Berlin for the
coordination of all Nazi commerce with
the U.S.A. The {Harriman
International Co.,} led by Averell
Harriman's first cousin Oliver, was to
head a syndicate of 150 firms and
individuals, to conduct {all
exports from Hitler's Germany to the
United States}.@s3@s5 
   This pact had been negotiated in
Berlin between Hitler's economics
minister, Hjalmar Schacht, and John
Foster Dulles, international attorney
for dozens of Nazi enterprises, with
the counsel of Max Warburg and Kurt von
Schroeder. 
   John Foster Dulles would later be
U.S. Secretary of State, and the great
power in the Republican Party of the
1950s. Foster's friendship and that of
his brother Allen (head of the Central
Intelligence Agency), greatly aided
Prescott Bush to become the Republican
U.S. senator from Connecticut. And it
was to be of inestimable value to
George Bush, in his ascent to the
heights of ``covert action
government,'' that both of these Dulles
brothers were the lawyers for the Bush
family's far-flung enterprise. 
   Throughout the 1930s, John Foster
Dulles arranged debt restructuring for
German firms under a series of decrees
issued by Adolf Hitler. In these deals,
Dulles struck a balance between the
interest owed to selected, larger
investors, and the needs of the growing
Nazi warmaking apparatus for producing
tanks, poison gas, etc. 
   Dulles wrote to Prescott Bush in
1937 concerning one such arrangement.
The German-Atlantic Cable Company,
owning Nazi Germany's only telegraph
channel to the United States, had made
debt and management agreements with the
Walker-Harriman bank during the 1920s.
A new decree would now void those
agreements, which had originally been
reached with non-Nazi corporate
officials. Dulles asked Bush, who
managed these affairs for Averell
Harriman, to get Averell's signature on
a letter to Nazi officials, agreeing to
the changes. Dulles wrote: 
``Sept. 22, 1937
``Mr. Prescott S. Bush
``59 Wall Street, New York,
N.Y. 
   ``Dear Press, 
   ``I have looked over the letter of
the German-American [sic] Cable Company
to Averell Harriman.... It would appear
that the only rights in the matter are
those which inure in the bankers and
that no legal embarrassment would
result, so far as the bondholders are
concerned, by your acquiescence in the
modification of the bankers' agreement. 
   ``Sincerely yours, 
   ``John Foster Dulles''
   Dulles enclosed a proposed draft
reply, Bush got Harriman's signature,
and the changes went through.@s3@s6 
   In conjunction with these
arrangements, the German Atlantic Cable
Company attempted to stop payment on
its debts to smaller American
bondholders. The money was to be used
instead for arming the Nazi state,
under a decree of the Hitler
government. 
   Despite the busy efforts of Bush
and Dulles, a New York court decided
that this particular Hitler ``law'' was
invalid in the United States; small
bondholders, not parties to deals
between the bankers and the Nazis, were
entitled to get paid.@s3@s7 
   In this and a few other of the
attempted swindles, the intended
victims came out with their money. But
the Nazi financial and political
reorganization went ahead to its tragic
climax. 
   For his part in the Hitler
revolution, Prescott Bush was paid a
fortune. 
   This is the legacy he left to his
son, President George Bush. 
                                            
              
Notes


1. 
Office of Alien Property Custodian,
Vesting Order Number 248. Signed by Leo
T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian,
executed October 20, 1942; F.R. Doc.
42-11568; Filed, November 6, 1942. 7
Fed. Reg. 9097 (November 7, 1942). 
   The {New York City Directory of
Directors}, 1930s-40s, list Prescott
Bush as a director of Union Banking
Corp. from 1934 through 1943.
 

2.
 Alien Property Custodian Vesting
Order No. 259: Seamless Steel Equipment
Corporation; Vesting Order Number 261:
Holland-American Trading Corp. 


3. 
Alien Property Custodian Vesting
Order No. 370: Silesian-American Corp. 


4. 
{New York Times,} December
16, 1944, ran a five-paragraph page 25
article on actions of the New York
State Banking Department. Only the last
sentence refers to the Nazi bank, as
follows: ``The Union Banking
Corporation, 39 Broadway, New York, has
received authority to change its
principal place of business to 120
Broadway.'' 
   The {Times} omitted the fact that
the Union Banking Corporation had been
seized by the government for trading
with the enemy, and the fact that 120
Broadway was the address of the
government's Alien Property Custodian. 


5.
 Fritz Thyssen, {I Paid Hitler},
1941, reprinted in (Port Washington,
N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1972), p. 133.
Thyssen says his contributions began
with 100,000 marks given in October
1923, for Hitler's attempted ``putsch''
against the constitutional government. 


6. 
Confidential memorandum from U.S.
Embassy, Berlin, to the U.S. Secretary
of State, April 20, 1932, on microfilm
in {Confidential Reports of U.S. State
Dept., 1930s, Germany,} at major U.S.
libraries.
 

7. 
October 5, 1942, Memorandum to the
Executive Committee of the Office of
Alien Property Custodian, stamped
CONFIDENTIAL, from the Division of
Investigation and Research, Homer
Jones, Chief. Now declassified in
United States National Archives,
Suitland, Maryland annex. See Record
Group 131, Alien Property Custodian,
investigative reports, in file box
relating to Vesting Order Number 248. 


8. 
{Elimination of German Resources for
War}: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of
the Committee on Military Affairs,
United States Senate, Seventy-Ninth
Congress;  Part 5, Testimony of [the
United States] Treasury Department,
July 2, 1945. Page 507: Table of
Vereinigte Stahlwerke output, figures
are percent of German total as of 1938;
Thyssen organization including Union
Banking Corporation pp. 727-731. 

             
9. 
Robert Sobel, {The Life and Times of
Dillon Read} (New York: Dutton-Penguin,
1991), pp. 92-111. The Dillon Read firm
cooperated in the development of
Sobel's book. 


10. 
George Walker to Averell Harriman,
August 11, 1927, in W. Averell Harriman
papers, Library of Congress (hereafter
``WAH papers'').
 

11. 
``Iaccarino'' to G. H. Walker, RCA
Radiogram Sept. 12, 1927. 

 
12. 
Andrew Boyle, {Montagu Norman}
(London: Cassell, 1967). 
   Sir Henry Clay, {Lord Norman}
(London, MacMillan & Co., 1957), pp.
18, 57, 70-71. 
   John A. Kouwenhouven, {Partners in
Banking ... Brown Brothers Harriman}
(Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1969). 


13.
 Coordination of much of the Hitler
project took place at a single New York
address. The Union Banking Corporation
had been set up by George Walker at 39
Broadway. Management of the
Hamburg-Amerika Line, carried out
through Harriman's American Ship and
Commerce Corp., was also set up by
George Walker at 39 Broadway. 


14. 
Interrogation of Fritz Thyssen,
EF/Me/1 of Sept. 4, 1945 in U.S.
Control Council records, photostat on
page 167 in Anthony Sutton, {An
Introduction to The Order} (Billings,
Mt.: Liberty House Press, 1986). 


15. 
{Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,
Supplement B}, by the Office of United
States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution
of Axis Criminality, U. S. Government
Printing Office, (Washington, D.C.,
1948), pp. 1597, 1686. 


16. 
``Consolidated Silesian Steel
Corporation - [minutes of the] Meeting
of Board of Directors,'' October 31, 1930
(WAH papers), shows Averell Harriman as
Chairman of the Board. 
   Prescott Bush to W.A. Harriman,
Memorandum December 19, 1930 on their
Harriman Fifteen Corp. 
   Annual Report of United Konigs and
Laura Steel and Iron Works for the year
1930 (WAH papers) lists ``Dr. Friedrich
Flick ... Berlin'' and ``William
Averell Harriman ... New York'' on the
Board of Directors. 
    ``Harriman Fifteen Coporation
Securities Position February 28,
1931,'' WAH papers. This report shows
Harriman Fifteen Corporation holding
32,576 shares in Silesian Holding Co.
V.T.C. worth (in scarce depression
dollars) $1,628,800, just over half the
value of the Harriman Fifteen
Corporation's total holdings. 
   The {New York City Directory of
Directors} volumes for the 1930s
(available at the Library of Congress)
show Prescott Sheldon Bush and W.
Averell Harriman as the directors of
Harriman Fifteen Corp. 
   ``Appointments,'' (three typed
pages) marked ``Noted May 18 1931
W.A.H.,'' (among the papers from
Prescott Bush's New York Office of
Brown Brothers Harriman, WAH papers),
lists a meeting between Averell
Harriman and Friedrich Flick in Berlin
at 4:00 P.M., Wednesday April 22, 1931.
This was followed immediately by a
meeting with Wilhelm Cuno, chief
executive of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. 
   The ``Report To the Stockholders
of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation,''
October 19, 1933 (WAH papers) names G.H.
Walker as president of the corporation.
It shows the Harriman Fifteen Corp.'s
address as 1 Wall Street--the location
of G.H. Walker and Co. 


17. 
{Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,
Supplement B}, {op. cit.,} p. 1686. 

                                                                            
18. 
Jim Flaherty (a BBH manager,
Prescott Bush's employee), March 19,
1934 to W.A. Harriman.
   ``Dear Averell: 
   ``In Roland's absence Pres[cott]
thought it adviseable for me to let you
know that we received the following
cable from [our European
representative] Rossi dated March 17th
[relating to conflict with the Polish
government]....'' 


19. 
Harriman Fifteen Corporation notice
to stockholders January 7, 1935, under
the name of George Walker, President. 

 
20. 
Order No. 370: Silesian-American
Corp. Executed November 17, 1942. Signed by
Leo T. Crowley, Alien Prop. Custodian.
F.R. Doc. 42-14183; Filed, December 31,
1942; 8 Fed. Reg. 33 (Jan. 1, 1943). 
   The order confiscated the Nazis'
holdings of 98,000 shares of common and
50,000 shares of preferred stock in
Silesian-American. 
   The Nazi parent company in
Breslau, Germany wrote to Averell
Harriman at 59 Wall St. on Aug. 5,
1940, with ``an invitation to take part
in the regular meeting of the members
of the Bergwerksgesellsc[h]aft Georg
von Giesche's Erben....'' WAH papers. 


21. 
Sept. 25, 1942, Memorandum To the
Executive Committee of the Office of
Alien Property Custodian, stamped
CONFIDENTIAL, from the Division of
Investigation and Research, Homer
Jones, Chief. Now declassified in
United States National Archives,
Suitland, Maryland annex. See Record
Group 131, Alien Property Custodian,
investigative reports, in file box
relating to Vesting Order Number 370. 


22. 
George Walker was a director of
American Ship and Commerce from its
organization through 1928. Consult {New
York City Directory of Directors}. 
   ``Harriman Fifteen Corporation
Securities Position February 28,
1931,'' {op. cit.} The report lists
46,861 shares in the American Ship &
Commerce Corp. 
   See ``Message from Mr. Bullfin,''
August 30, 1934 (Harriman Fifteen
section, WAH papers) for the joint
supervision of Bush and Walker,
respectively director and president of
the corporation. 


23. 
Cuno was later exposed by Walter
Funk, Third Reich Press Chief and Under
Secretary of Propaganda, in Funk's
postwar jail cell at Nuremberg; but
Cuno had died just as Hitler was taking
power. William L. Shirer, L., {The Rise
and Fall of the Third Reich} (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 144.
{Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,
Supplement B}, {op. cit.,} p. 1688. 


24. 
See ``Elimination of German
Resources for War,'' {op. cit.,} pages
881-882 on Voegler. 
   See Annual Report of the
(Hamburg-Amerikanische-Packetfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft
(Hapag or Hamburg-Amerika Line), March
1931, for the board of directors. A
copy is in the New York Public Library
Annex at 11th Avenue, Manhattan. 


25. 
{Nazi Conspiracy and
Aggression--Supplement B,} {op. cit.,}
pp. 1178, 1453-1454, 1597, 1599. 
    See ``Elimination of German
Resources for War,'' {op. cit.,} pp.
870-72 on Schroeder; p. 730 on
Groeninger.
 

26. 
Annual Report of Hamburg-Amerika,
{op. cit.} 
   Baron Rudolph Schroeder, Sr. to
Averell Harriman, November 14, 1932.
K[night] W[ooley] handwritten note and
draft reply letter, December 9, 1932. 
   In his letter, Baron Rudolph
refers to the family's American
affiliate, J. Henry Schroder [name
anglicized], of which Allen Dulles was
a director, and his brother John Foster
Dulles was the principal attorney. 
   Baron Bruno Schroder of the
British branch was adviser to Bank of
England Governor Montagu Norman, and
Baron Bruno's partner Frank Cyril
Tiarks was Norman's co-director of the
Bank of England throughout Norman's
career. Kurt von Schroeder was Hjalmar
Schacht's delegate to the Bank for
International Settlements in Geneva,
where many of the financial
arrangements for the Nazi regime were
made by Montagu Norman, Schacht and the
Schroeders for several years of the
Hitler regime right up to the outbreak
of World War II.
 

27.
 Confidential memorandum from U.S.
Embassy, Berlin, {op. cit.} 


28. 
U.S. Senate ``Nye Committee''
hearings, Sept. 14, 1934, pp.
1197-1198, extracts from letters of
Col. William N. Taylor, dated June 27,
1932 and January 9, 1933.
 

29. 
American Ship and Commerce
Corporation to Dr. Max Warburg, March
7, 1933. 
   Max Warburg had brokered the sale
of Hamburg-Amerika to Harriman and
Walker in 1920. Max's brothers
controlled the Kuhn Loeb investment
banking house in New York, the firm
which had staked old E.H. Harriman to
his 1890s buyout of the giant Union
Pacific Railroad. 
   Max Warburg had long worked with
Lord Milner and others of the racialist
British Round Table concerning joint
projects in Africa and Eastern Europe.
He was an advisor to Hjalmar Schacht
for several decades and was a top
executive of Hitler's Reichsbank. The
reader may consult David Farrer, {The
Warburgs: The Story of A Family} (New
York: Stein and Day, 1975). 


30. 
Max Warburg, at M.M. Warburg and
Co., Hamburg, to Averill [sic]
Harriman, c/o Messrs. Brown Brothers
Harriman & Co., 59 Wall Street, New
York, N.Y., March 27, 1933. 

    
31. 
This correspondence, and the joint
statement of the Jewish organizations,
are reproduced in Moshe R. Gottlieb,
{American Anti-Nazi Resistance,
1933-41: An Historical Analysis} (New
York: Ktav Publishing House, 1982). 


32. 
{Investigation of Nazi Propaganda
Activities and Investigation of Certain
Other Propaganda Activities}: Public
Hearings before A Subcommittee of the
Special Committee on Un-American
Activities, United States House of
Representatives, Seventy Third
Congress, New York City, July 9-12,
1934--Hearings No. 73-NY-7 (Washington,
D.C., U.S. Govt. Printing Office,
1934). See testimony of Capt. Frederick
C. Mensing, John Schroeder, Paul von
Lilienfeld-Toal, and summaries by
Committee members. 
   See {New York Times,} July 16,
1933, p. 12, for organizing of Nazi
Labor Front at North German Lloyd,
leading to Hamburg-Amerika after
merger.
 

33. 
American Ship and Commerce
Corporation telegram to Rudolph
Brinckmann at M.M. Warburg, June 12,
1936. 
   Rudolph Brinckmann to Averell
Harriman at 59 Wall St., June 20, 1936,
with enclosed note transmitting
Helferrich's letter. 
   Reply to Dr. Rudolph Brinkmann c/o
M.M. Warburg and Co, July 6, 1936, WAH
papers. The file copy of this letter
carries no signature, but is presumably
from Averell Harriman.
 

34. 
Office of Alien Property Custodian,
Vesting Order Number 126. Signed by Leo
T. Crowley, Alien Property Custodian,
executed August 28, 1942. F.R. Doc.
42-8774; Filed September 4, 1942, 10:55
A.M.; 7 F.R. 7061 (Number 176, Sept. 5,
1942.) 
   July 18, 1942, Memorandum To the
Executive Committee of the Office of
Alien Property Custodian, stamped
CONFIDENTIAL, from the Division of
Investigation and Research, Homer
Jones, Chief. Now declassified in
United States National Archives,
Suitland, Maryland annex. See Record
Group 131, Alien Property Custodian,
investigative reports, in file box
relating to Vesting Order Number 126.
 

35. 
{New York Times,} May 20, 1933.
Leading up to this agreement is a
telegram which somehow escaped the
shredder. It is addressed to Nazi
official Hjalmar Schacht at the
Mayflower Hotel, Washington, dated May
11, 1933: ``Much disappointed to have
missed seeing you Tueday afternoon....
I hope to see you either in Washington
or New York before you sail. 
   with my regards W.A. Harriman'' 
(WAH papers).


36. 
Dulles to Bush, letter and draft
reply in WAH papers. 


37. 
{New York Times,} Jan. 19, 1938.