I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Havana. May 12,  2003

BY ASTRID BARNET —Special for Granma International—

HAVE you ever wondered how Adolph Hitler – a mediocre painter of Austrian origin – transformed himself into Germany’s Fuhrer during the 1930s and 1940s?

The Nazi phenomenon was no historical coincidence, and far less a philosophical whim made real by just one man. Nazism had its followers, many of them exceptionally wealthy, veritable alchemists of the financial world back then.

According to research carried out over the last few years, Wall Street bankers (amongst others) financed Hitler’s rise to power whilst making large profits at the same time. What is yet still more deplorable is the fact that relatives of the current U.S. president were amongst this group of individuals.

U.S. authors Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Cheitkin reveal in the recently published George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography that Prescott Bush (George W. Bush’s grandfather) and other directors of the Union Banking Company (UBC) were Nazi collaborators.

The book relates how in 1922 – when national socialism was emerging – railroad impresario W. Averell Harriman traveled to Berlin and interviewed the Thyssen family with a view to founding a German-U.S. bank. The Thyssens were already behind-the-scenes owners of several financial institutions that allowed them to transfer their money from Germany to the Netherlands and from there onto the United States.

The banks in question were the August Thyssen Bank whose headquarters were located in Berlin; the Bank voor Handel (Netherlands) and the Union Banking Corporation (New York). At the beginning of the 1920s, one of the members of this family, Fritz Thyssen – author of I Paid Hitler – contributed some $25,000 USD to the recently formed German National Socialist Workers’ Party, becoming the prime and most important financier of the Fuhrer in his ascent to power.

According to the book’s authors, Thyssen was fascinated by Hitler, citing his talent as a public speaker and his ability to lead the masses. However, what impressed him most was the order that prevailed at his rallies and the almost military discipline of his followers.

And so, in 1931 Thyssen joined the Nazi party, becoming one of the most powerful members of the Nazi war machine.

At that time, the magnate presided over the German Steel Trust, a steel industry consortium founded by Clarence Dillon, one of Wall Street’s most influential men. One of Dillon’s most trustworthy collaborators was Samuel Bush: Prescott’s father, George Senior’s grandfather and great-grandfather of the current U.S. president George W. Bush.

In 1923, Harriman and the Thyssens decided to set up a bank and appointed George Herbert Walker – Prescott’s father-in-law – as president. Later, in 1926, they established the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) with Prescott Bush at the helm. That same year, he was also named vice president and partner at Brown Brothers Harriman. Both firms allowed the Thyssens to send money to the United States from Germany via the Netherlands.

U.S. economist Victor Thorn has noted that although a large number of other corporations aided the Nazis (such as Standard Oil and Rockefeller’s Chase Bank, as well as U.S. automobile manufacturers) Prescott Bush’s interests were much more profound and sinister.

Thorn adds that UBC became a secret channel to protect Nazi capital leaving Germany for the United States via the Netherlands. When the Nazis needed to retrieve their funds, Brown Brothers Harriman sent them directly to Germany.

In this way, UBC received money from the Netherlands and Brown Brothers Harriman sent it back. And who was on the executive of both of these companies? Prescott Bush himself, the Nazis’ first money launderer.

In their book, Tarpley and Cheitkin explain that in this way a significant part of the Bush family’s financial base is related to supporting and aiding Adolph Hitler. Therefore, the current U.S. president, just like his father (former CIA director, vice president and president) reached the peak of the U.S. political hierarchy thanks to his great-grandfather and grandfather and generally his entire family, who financially aided and encouraged the Nazis.

Some time later, in October 1942, the U.S. authorities confiscated Nazi bank funds from the New York UBC, whose then president was Prescott. The firm was condemned as a financial and commercial collaborator with the enemy and all its assets were seized.

Later, the U.S. government also ordered the seizure of the assets of a further two leading financial agencies directed by Prescott through the accounts of the Harriman banking institution: the Holland-America Trading Corporation (a U.S.-Dutch commercial firm) and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.

Then on November 11, 1942, an embargo was imposed on the Silesian-American Corporation – another firm headed by Bush and Walker – under the same Trading with the Enemy Act.

However, in 1951, the embargo was lifted and the enterprising businessman recovered some $1.5 million USD, earmarked for new investments largely to swell the Bush family’s patrimony.

To this should be added a resumé of files belonging to Dutch and U.S. information services confirming the direct links between Prescott Bush, the German Thyssen family and the blood money of a group of rich U.S. families from the Second World War.

Tarpley and Cheitkin affirm that the great financial crash of 1929-1931 affected the United States, Germany and Britain, weakening their respective governments. At the same time, Prescott Bush became even more diligent, still more desirous of doing everything that was necessary to safeguard his place in the world. It was during this crisis that some members of the Anglo-U.S wealthy class supported the installation of Hitler’s regime in Germany.

To sum up, the authors categorically state that the Bush family’s fortune arose as a result of its unconditional support for Adolph Hitler’s political project.

The UBC, under Prescott Bush’s direction and with the long-term cooperation of Fritz Thyssen’s German Steel Trust participated in the emergence, preparation and financing of the Nazi war machine through the manufacture of armored vehicles, fighter planes, guns and explosives.

The Bush family’s habit of dominating territories and wealth is nothing new. Their fascist genes were generated during the 1930s. Therefore defining the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the threats to other countries as a continuance of blitzkreig offensives as fascist is no blunder. Neither is convening an anti-fascist front is a rhetorical exercise.