Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler E-Book

Antony Cyril Sutton

• Herausgeber: Clairview Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

'The contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities... Not only was an influential sector of American business aware of the nature of Naziism, but for its own purposes aided Naziism wherever possible (and profitable) - with full knowledge that the probable outcome would be war involving Europe and the United States.' Penetrating a cloak of falsehood, deception and duplicity, Professor Antony C. Sutton reveals one of the most remarkable but unreported facts of the Second World War: that key Wall Street banks and American businesses supported Hitler's rise to power by financing and trading with Nazi Germany. Carefully tracing this closely guarded secret through original documents and eyewitness accounts, Sutton comes to the unsavoury conclusion that the catastrophic Second World War was extremely profitable for a select group of financial insiders. He presents a thoroughly documented account of the role played by J.P. Morgan, T.W. Lamont, the Rockefeller interests, General Electric Company, Standard Oil, National City Bank, Chase and Manhattan banks, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, General Motors, the Ford Motor Company, and scores of others in helping to prepare the bloodiest, most destructive war in history. This classic study, first published in 1976 - the third volume of a trilogy - is reproduced here in its original form. (The other volumes in the series study the 1917 Lenin-Trotsky Revolution in Russia and the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States.)

Leseprobe

ANTONY C. SUTTON, born in London in 1925, was educated at the universities of London, Gottingen and California. He was a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford, California, from 1968 to 1973 and later an Economics Professor at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of 25 books, including the major three-volume study Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development. He died in 2002.

WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution was first published in 1974. Sadly, the author was not able to update it in his lifetime. It is reproduced here in its original form, as a classic study of the subject.

WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER

ANTONY C. SUTTON

Clairview Books Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.clairviewbooks.com

Published by Clairview 2012

First published in 1976 by ‘76 Press, California

© Antony C. Sutton 1976

The moral right of the author has been asserted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 905570 62 1

Cover by Andrew Morgan Design

Dedication

Dedicated to the memory of Floyd Paxton — entrepreneur, inventor, writer, and American, who believed in and worked for individual rights in a free society under the Constitution.

CONTENTS

Preface

IntroductionUnexplored Facets of Naziism

PART ONE: Wall Street Builds Nazi Industry

Chapter OneWall Street Paves the Way for Hitler

1924: The Dawes Plan

1928: The Young Plan

B.I.S. — The Apex of Control

Building the German Cartels

Chapter TwoThe Empire of I.G. Farben

The Economic Power of I.G. Farben

Polishing I.G. Farben’s Image

The American I.G. Farben

Chapter ThreeGeneral Electric Funds Hitler

General Electric in Weimar, Germany

General Electric & the Financing of Hitler

Technical Cooperation with Krupp

A.E.G. Avoids the Bombs in World War II

Chapter FourStandard Oil Fuels World War II

Ethyl Lead for the Wehrmacht

Standard Oil and Synthetic Rubber

The Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G

Chapter FiveI.T.T. Works Both Sides of the War

Baron Kurt von Schröder and I.T.T

Westrick, Texaco, and I.T.T

I.T.T. in Wartime Germany

PART TWO: Wall Street and Funds for Hitler

Chapter SixHenry Ford and the Nazis

Henry Ford: Hitler’s First Foreign Banker

Henry Ford Receives a Nazi Medal

Ford Assists the German War Effort

Chapter SevenWho Financed Adolf Hitler?

Some Early Hitler Backers

Fritz Thyssen and W.A. Harriman Company

Financing Hitler in the March 1933 Elections

The 1933 Political Contributions

Chapter EightPutzi: Friend of Hitler and Roosevelt

Putzi’s Role in the Reichstag Fire

Roosevelt’s New Deal and Hitler’s New Order

Chapter NineWall Street and the Nazi Inner Circle

The S.S. Circle of Friends

I.G. Farben and the Keppler Circle

Wall Street and the S.S. Circle

Chapter TenThe Myth of “Sidney Warburg”

Who Was “Sidney Warburg”?

Synopsis of the Suppressed “Warburg” Book

James Paul Warburg’s Affidavit

Some Conclusions from the “Warburg” Story

Chapter ElevenWall Street-Nazi Collaboration in World War II

American I.G. in World War II

Were American Industrialists and Financiers Guilty of War Crimes?

Chapter TwelveConclusions

The Pervasive Influence of International Bankers

Is the United States Ruled by a Dictatorial Elite?

The New York Elite as a Subversive Force

The Slowly Emerging Revisionist Truth

Appendix AProgramme of the National Socialist German Workers Party

Appendix BAffidavit of Hjalmar Schacht

Appendix CEntries in the “National Trusteeship” Account

Appendix DLetter from U.S. War Department to Ethyl Corporation

Appendix EExtract from Morgenthau Diary (Germany)

Footnotes

Bibliography

PREFACE

This is the third and final volume of a trilogy describing the role of the American corporate socialists, otherwise known as the Wall Street financial elite or the Eastern Liberal Establishment, in three significant twentieth-century historical events: the 1917 Lenin-Trotsky Revolution in Russia, the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, and the 1933 seizure of power by Adolf Hitler in Germany.

Each of these events introduced some variant of socialism into a major country — i.e., Bolshevik socialism in Russia, New Deal socialism in the United States, and National socialism in Germany.

Contemporary academic histories, with perhaps the sole exception of Carroll Quigley’s Tragedy And Hope, ignore this evidence. On the other hand, it is understandable that universities and research organizations, dependent on financial aid from foundations that are controlled by this same New York financial elite, would hardly want to support and to publish research on these aspects of international politics. The bravest of trustees is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds his organization.

It is also eminently clear from the evidence in this trilogy that “public-spirited businessmen” do not journey to Washington as lobbyists and administrators in order to serve the United States. They are in Washington to serve their own profit-maximizing interests. Their purpose is not to further a competitive, free-market economy, but to manipulate a politicized regime, call it what you will, to their own advantage,

It is business manipulation of Hitler’s accession to power in March 1933 that is the topic of Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.

ANTONY C. SUTTON

July, 1976

INTRODUCTION

Unexplored Facets of Naziism

Since the early 1920s unsubstantiated reports have circulated to the effect that not only German industrialists, but also Wall Street financiers, had some role — possibly a substantial role — in the rise of Hitler and Naziism. This book presents previously unpublished evidence, a great deal from files of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, to support this hypothesis. However, the full impact and suggestiveness of the evidence cannot be found from reading this volume alone. Two previous books in this series, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution1 and Wall Street and FDR,2 described the roles of the same firms, and often the same individuals and their fellow directors, hard at work manipulating and assisting the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917, backing Franklin D. Roosevelt for President in the United States in 1933, as well as aiding the rise of Hitler in pre-war Germany. In brief, this book is part of a more extensive study of the rise of modern socialism and the corporate socialists.

This politically active Wall Street group is more or less the same elitist circle known generally among Conservatives as the “Liberal Establishment,” by liberals (for instance G. William Domhoff) as “the ruling class,”3 and by conspiratorial theorists Gary Allen4 and Dan Smoot5 as the “Insiders.” But whatever we call this self-perpetuating elitist group, it is apparently fundamentally significant in the determination of world affairs, at a level far behind and above that of the elected politicians.

The influence and work of this same group in the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany is the topic of this book. This is an area of historical research almost totally unexplored by the academic world. It is an historical minefield for the unwary and the careless not aware of the intricacies of research procedures. The Soviets have long accused Wall Street bankers of backing international fascism, but their own record of historical accuracy hardly lends their accusations much credence in the West, and they do not of course criticize support of their own brand of fascism.

This author falls into a different camp. Previously accused of being overly critical of Sovietism and domestic socialism, while ignoring Wall Street and the rise of Hitler, this book hopefully will redress an assumed and quite inaccurate philosophical imbalance and emphasize the real point at issue: Whatever you call the collectivist system — Soviet socialism, New Deal socialism, corporate socialism, or National socialism — it is the average citizen, the guy in the street, that ultimately loses out to the boys running the operation at the top. Each system in its own way is a system of plunder, an organizational device to get everyone living (or attempting to live) at the expense of everyone else, while the elitist leaders, the rulers and the politicians, scalp the cream off the top,

The role of this American power elite in the rise of Hitler should also be viewed in conjunction with a little-known aspect of Hitlerism only now being explored: the mystical origins of Naziism, and its relations with the Thule Society and with other conspiratorial groups. This author is no expert on occultism or conspiracy, but it is obvious that the mystical origins, the neo-pagan historical roots of Naziism, the Bavarian Illuminati and the Thule Society, are relatively unknown areas yet to be explored by technically competent researchers. Some research is already recorded in French; probably the best introduction in English is a translation of Hitler et la Tradition Cathare by Jean Michel Angebert.6

Angebert reveals the 1933 crusade of Schutzstaffel member Otto Rahn in search of the Holy Grail, which was supposedly located in the Cathar stronghold in Southern France. The early Nazi hierarchy (Hitler and Himmler, as well as Rudolph Hess and Rosenberg) was steeped in a neo-pagan theology, in part associated with the Thule Society, whose ideals were close to those of the Bavarian Illuminati. This was a submerged driving force behind Naziism, with a powerful mystical hold over the hard-core S.S. faithful. Our contemporary establishment historians barely mention, let alone explore, these occult origins; consequently, they miss an element equally as important as the financial origins of National Socialism,

In 1950 James Stewart Martin published a very readable book, All Honorable Men,7 describing his experiences as Chief of the Economic Warfare Section of the Department of Justice investigating the structure of Nazi industry. Martin asserts that American and British businessmen got themselves appointed to key positions in this post-war investigation to divert, stifle and muffle investigation of Nazi industrialists and so keep hidden their own involvement. One British officer was sentenced by court martial to two years in jail for protecting a Nazi, and several American officials were removed from their positions. Why would American and British businessmen want to protect Nazi businessmen? In public they argued that these were merely German businessmen who had nothing to do with the Nazi regime and were innocent of complicity in Nazi conspiracies. Martin does not explore this explanation in depth, but he is obviously unhappy and skeptical about it. The evidence suggests there was a concerted effort not only to protect Nazi businessmen, but also to protect the collaborating elements from American and British business.

The German businessmen could have disclosed a lot of uncomfortable facts. In return for protection, they told very little. It is undoubtedly not coincidental that the Hitler industrialists on trial at Nuremberg received less than a slap on the wrist. We raise the question of whether the Nuremberg trials should not have been held in Washington — with a few prominent U.S. businessmen as well as Nazi businessmen in the dock!

Two extracts from contemporary sources will introduce and suggest the theme to be expanded. The first extract is from Roosevelt’s own files. The U.S. Ambassador in Germany, William Dodd, wrote FDR from Berlin on October 19, 1936 (three years after Hitler came to power), concerning American industrialists and their aid to the Nazis:

Much as I believe in peace as our best policy, I cannot avoid the fears which Wilson emphasized more than once in conversations with me, August 15, 1915 and later: the breakdown of democracy in all Europe will be a disaster to the people. But what can you do? At the present moment more than a hundred American corporations have subsidiaries here or cooperative understandings. The DuPonts have three allies in Germany that are aiding in the armament business. Their chief ally is the I. G. Farben Company, a part of the Government which gives 200,000 marks a year to one propaganda organization operating on American opinion. Standard Oil Company (New York sub-company) sent $2,000,000 here in December 1933 and has made $500,000 a year helping Germans make Ersatz gas for war purposes; but Standard Oil cannot take any of its earnings out of the country except in goods. They do little of this, report their earnings at home, but do not explain the facts. The International Harvester Company president told me their business here rose 33% a year (arms manufacture, I believe), but they could take nothing out. Even our airplanes people have secret arrangement with Krupps. General Motor Company and Ford do enormous businesses [sic] here through their subsidiaries and take no profits out. I mention these facts because they complicate things and add to war dangers.8

Second, a quote from the diary of the same U.S. Ambassador in Germany. The reader should bear in mind that a representative of the cited Vacuum Oil Company — as well as representatives of other Nazi-supporting American firms — was appointed to the post-war Control Commission to de-Nazify the Nazis:

January 23. Thursday. Our Commercial Attaché brought Dr. Engelbrecht, chairman of the Vacuum Oil Company in Hamburg, to see me. Engelbrecht repeated what he had said a year ago: “The Standard Oil Company of New York, the parent company of the Vacuum, has spent 10,000,000 marks in Germany trying to find oil resources and building a great refinery near the Hamburg harbor.” Engelbrecht is still boring wells and finding a good deal of crude oil in the Hanover region, but he had no hope of great deposits. He hopes Dr. Schacht will subsidize his company as he does some German companies that have found no crude oil. The Vacuum spends all its earnings here, employs 1,000 men and never sends any of its money home. I could give him no encouragement. . . .9

And further:

These men were hardly out of the building before the lawyer came in again to report his difficulties. I could not do anything. I asked him, however: Why did the Standard Oil Company of New York send $1,000,000 over here in December, 1933, to aid the Germans in making gasoline from soft coal for war emergencies? Why do the International Harvester people continue to manufacture in Germany when their company gets nothing out of the country and when it has failed to collect its war losses? He saw my point and agreed that it looked foolish and that it only means greater losses if another war breaks loose.10

The alliance between Nazi political power and American “Big Business” may well have looked foolish to Ambassador Dodd and the American attorney he questioned. In practice, of course, “Big Business” is anything but foolish when it comes to promoting its own self-interest. Investment in Nazi Germany (along with similar investments in the Soviet Union) was a reflection of higher policies, with much more than immediate profit at stake, even though profits could not be repatriated. To trace these “higher policies” one has to penetrate the financial control of multinational corporations, because those who control the flow of finance ultimately control the day-to-day policies.

Carroll Quigley11 has shown that the apex of this international financial control system before World War II was the Bank for International Settlements, with representatives from the international banking firms of Europe and the United States, in an arrangement that continued throughout World War II. During the Nazi period, Germany’s representative at the Bank for International Settlements was Hitler’s financial genius and president of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht

Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht

Wall Street involvement with Hitler’s Germany highlights two Germans with Wall Street connections — Hjalmar Schacht and “Putzi” Hanfstaengl. The latter was a friend of Hitler and Roosevelt who played a suspiciously prominent role in the incident that brought Hitler to the peak of dictatorial power — the Reichstag fire of 1933.12

The early history of Hjalmar Schacht, and in particular his role in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, was described in my earlier book, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. The elder Schacht had worked at the Berlin office of the Equitable Trust Company of New York in the early twentieth century. Hjalmar was born in Germany rather than New York only by the accident of his mother’s illness, which required the family to return to Germany. Brother William Schacht was an American-born citizen. To record his American origins, Hjalmar’s middle names were designated “Horace Greeley” after the well-know Democrat politician. Consequently, Hjalmar spoke fluent English and the post-war interrogation of Schacht in Project Dustbin was conducted in both German and English. The point to be made is that the Schacht family had its origins in New York, worked for the prominent Wall Street financial house of Equitable Trust (which was controlled by the Morgan firm), and throughout his life Hjalmar retained these Wall Street connections.13 Newspapers and contemporary sources record repeated visits with Owen Young of General Electric; Farish, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey; and their banking counterparts. In brief, Schacht was a member of the international financial elite that wields its power behind the scenes through the political apparatus of a nation. He is a key link between the Wall Street elite and Hitler’s inner circle.

This book is divided into two major parts. Part One records the build-up of German cartels through the Dawes and Young Plans in the 1920s. These cartels were the major supporters of Hitler and Naziism and were directly responsible for bringing the Nazis to power in 1933. The roles of American I. G. Farben, General Electric, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford, and other U.S. firms is outlined. Part Two presents the known documentary evidence on the financing of Hitler, complete with photographic reproduction of the bank transfer slips used to transfer funds from Farben, General Electric, and other firms to Hitler, through Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht.

PART ONE WALL STREET BUILDS NAZI INDUSTRY

CHAPTER ONE

Wall Street Paves the Way for Hitler

The Dawes Plan, adopted in August 1924, fitted perfectly into the plans of the German General Staffs military economists. (Testimony before United States Senate, Committee on Military Affairs, 1946.)

The post-World War II Kilgore Committee of the United States Senate heard detailed evidence from government officials to the effect that,

. . .when the Nazis came to power in 1933, they found that long strides had been made since 1918 in preparing Germany for war from an economic and industrial point of view.1

This build-up for European war both before and after 1933 was in great part due to Wall Street financial assistance in the 1920s to create the German cartel system, and to technical assistance from well-known American firms which will be identified later, to build the German Wehrmacht. Whereas this financial and technical assistance is referred to as “accidental” or due to the “short-sightedness” of American businessmen, the evidence presented below strongly suggests some degree of premeditation on the part of these American financiers. Similar and unacceptable pleas of “accident” were made on behalf of American financiers and industrialists in the parallel example of building the military power of the Soviet Union from 1917 onwards. Yet these American capitalists were willing to finance and subsidize the Soviet Union while the Vietnam war was underway, knowing that the Soviets were supplying the other side.

The contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations before 1940 can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities. For instance, in 1934 Germany produced domestically only 300,000 tons of natural petroleum products and less than 300,000 tons of synthetic gasoline; the balance was imported. Yet, ten years later in World War II, after transfer of the Standard Oil of New Jersey hydrogenation patents and technology to I. G. Farben (used to produce synthetic gasoline from coal), Germany produced about 6 1/2 million tons of oil — of which 85 percent (5 1/2 million tons) was synthetic oil using the Standard Oil hydrogenation process. Moreover, the control of synthetic oil output in Germany was held by the I. G. Farben subsidiary, Braunkohle-Benzin A. G., and this Farben cartel itself was created in 1926 with Wall Street financial assistance.

On the other hand, the general impression left with the reader by modern historians is that this American technical assistance was accidental and that American industrialists were innocent of wrongdoing. For example, the Kilgore Committee stated:

The United States accidentally played an important role in the technical arming of Germany. Although the German military planners had ordered and persuaded manufacturing corporations to install modern equipment for mass production, neither the military economists nor the corporations seem to have realized to the full extent what that meant. Their eyes were opened when two of the chief American automobile companies built plants in Germany in order to sell in the European market, without the handicap of ocean freight charges and high German tariffs. Germans were brought to Detroit to learn the techniques of specialized production of components, and of straight-line assembly. What they saw caused further reorganization and refitting of other key German war plants. The techniques learned in Detroit were eventually used to construct the dive-bombing Stukas . ... At a later period I. G. Farben representatives in this country enabled a stream of German engineers to visit not only plane plants but others of military importance, in which they learned a great deal that was eventually used against the United States.2

Following these observations, which emphasize the “accidental” nature of the assistance, it has been concluded by such academic writers as Gabriel Kolko, who is not usually a supporter of big business, that:

It is almost superfluous to point out that the motives of the American firms bound to contracts with German concerns were not pro-Nazi, whatever else they may have been.3

Yet, Kolko to the contrary, analyses of the contemporary American business press confirm that business journals and newspapers were fully aware of the Nazi threat and its nature, while warning their business readers of German war preparations. And even Kolko admits that:

The business press [in the United States] was aware, from 1935 on, that German prosperity was based on war preparations. More important, it was conscious of the fact that German industry was under the control of the Nazis and was being directed to serve Germany’s rearmament, and the firm mentioned most frequently in this context was the giant chemical empire, I, G. Farben.4

Further, the evidence presented below suggests that not only was an influential sector of American business aware of the nature of Naziism, but for its own purposes aided Naziism wherever possible (and profitable) — with full knowledge that the probable outcome would be war involving Europe and the United States. As we shall see, the pleas of innocence do not accord with the facts,

1924: The Dawes Plan

The Treaty of Versailles after World War I imposed a heavy reparations burden on defeated Germany. This financial burden — a real cause of the German discontent that led to acceptance of Hitlerism — was utilized by the international bankers for their own benefit. The opportunity to float profitable loans for German cartels in the United States was presented by the Dawes Plan and later the Young Plan. Both plans were engineered by these central bankers, who manned the committees for their own pecuniary advantages, and although technically the committees were not appointed by the U.S. Government, the plans were in fact approved and sponsored by the Government,

Post-war haggling by financiers and politicians fixed German reparations at an annual fee of 132 billion gold marks. This was about one quarter of Germany’s total 1921 exports. When Germany was unable to make these crushing payments, France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr to take by force what could not be obtained voluntarily. In 1924 the Allies appointed a committee of bankers (headed by American banker Charles G. Dawes) to develop a programme of reparations payments. The resulting Dawes Plan was, according to Georgetown University Professor of International Relations Carroll Quigley, “largely a J. P. Morgan production.”5 The Dawes Plan arranged a series of foreign loans totalling $800 million with their proceeds flowing to Germany. These loans are important for our story because the proceeds, raised for the greater part in the United States from dollar investors, were utilized in the mid-1920s to create and consolidate the gigantic chemical and steel combinations of I. G. Farben and Vereinigte Stahlwerke, respectively. These cartels not only helped Hitler to power in 1933; they also produced the bulk of key German war materials used in World War II.

Between 1924 and 1931, under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, Germany paid out to the Allies about 36 billion marks in reparations. At the same time Germany borrowed abroad, mainly in the U.S., about 33 billion marks — thus making a net German payment of only three billion marks for reparations. Consequently, the burden of German monetary reparations to the Allies was actually carried by foreign subscribers to German bonds issued by Wall Street financial houses — at significant profits for themselves, of course. And, let it be noted, these firms were owned by the same financiers who periodically took off their banker hats and donned new ones to become “statesmen.” As “statesmen” they formulated the Dawes and Young Plans to “solve” the “problem” of reparations. As bankers, they floated the loans. As Carroll Quigley points out,

It is worthy of note that this system was set up by the international bankers and that the subsequent lending of other people’s money to Germany was very profitable to these bankers.6

Who were the New York international bankers who formed these reparations commissions?

The 1924 Dawes Plan experts from the United States were banker Charles Dawes and Morgan representative Owen Young, who was president of the General Electric Company. Dawes was chairman of the Allied Committee of Experts in 1924. In 1929 Owen Young became chairman of the Committee of Experts, supported by J. P. Morgan himself, with alternates T. W. Lamont, a Morgan partner, and T. N. Perkins, a banker with Morgan associations. In other words, the U.S. delegations were purely and simply, as Quigley has pointed out, J. P. Morgan delegations using the authority and seal of the United States to promote financial plans for their own pecuniary advantage. As a result, as Quigley puts it, the “international bankers sat in heaven, under a rain of fees and commissions.”7

The German members of the Committee of Experts were equally interesting. In 1924 Hjalmar Schacht was president of the Reichsbank and had taken a prominent role in organization work for the Dawes Plan; so did German banker Carl Melchior. One of the 1928 German delegates was A. Voegler of the German steel cartel Stahlwerke Vereinigte. In brief, the two significant countries involved — the United States and Germany — were represented by the Morgan bankers on one side and Schacht and Voegler on the other, both of whom were key characters in the rise of Hitler’s Germany and subsequent German rearmament,

Finally, the members and advisers of the Dawes and Young Commissions were not only associated with New York financial houses but, as we shall later see, were directors of firms within the German cartels which aided Hitler to power.