The Big Stink Guide

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 800,000 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.

The Treaty of Versailles after World War I imposed a heavy reparations burden on defeated Germany. This financial burden 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.

Post-war haggling by financiers and politicians fixed German reparations at an annual fee of 132 billion gold marks. In 1924 the Allies appointed a committee of bankers (headed by American banker Charles G. Dawes) to develop a program of reparations payments. The Dawes Plan arranged a series of foreign loans totalling $800 million with their proceeds flowing to Germany. 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.

According to Hitler's financial genie, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, and Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, it was the 1928 Young Plan (the successor to the Dawes Plan), formulated by Morgan agent Owen Young, that brought Hitler to power in 1933.

It is noteworthy that German firms with U.S. affiliations evaded the Plan by the device of temporary foreign ownership. For instance, A.E.G. (German General Electric), affiliated with General Electric in the U.S., was sold to a Franco-Belgian holding company and evaded the conditions of the Young Plan.

It should be noted in passing that Owen Young was the major financial backer for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United European venture when FDR, as a budding Wall Street financier, endeavoured to take advantage of Germany's 1925 hyperinflation. The United European venture was a vehicle to speculate and to profit upon the imposition of the Dawes Plan.

However, it was Schacht, not Owen Young, who conceived the idea which later became the Bank for International Settlements. The B.I.S. was essential under the Young Plan as a means to afford a ready instrument for promoting international financial relations. According to his own statements, Schacht also gave Owen Young the idea that later became the post-World War II International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

This interplay of ideas and cooperation between Hjalmar Sehacht in Germany and, through Owen Young, the J.P. Morgan interests in New York, was only one facet of a vast and ambitious system of cooperation and international alliance for world control. This feudal system worked in the 1920s, as it works today, through the medium of the private central bankers in each country who control the national money supply of individual economies.

The B.I.S. apex continued its work during World War II as the medium through which the bankers — who apparently were not at war with each other — continued a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas, information, and planning for the post-war world.

The three largest loans handled by the Wall Street international bankers for German borrowers in the 1920s under the Dawes Plan were for the benefit of three German cartels which a few years later aided Hitler and the Nazis to power. American financiers were directly represented on the boards of two of these three German cartels.

German combines of I.G. Farben and Vereinigte Stahlwerke dominated the chemical and steel cartel system created by these loans. The two cartels produced 95 percent of German explosives in 1937-8 on the eve of World War II. The I. G. Farben-Standard Oil cooperation for production of synthetic oil from coal gave I. G. Farben a monopoly of German gasoline production during World War II.

Moreover, American assistance to Nazi war efforts extended into other areas. The two largest tank producers in Hitler's Germany were Opel, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors (controlled by the J.P. Morgan firm), and the Ford A. G. subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company of Detroit.

Alcoa and Dow Chemical worked closely with Nazi industry with numerous transfers of their domestic U.S. technology. Bendix Aviation, in which the General Motors firm had a major stock interest, supplied Siemens & Halske A. G. in Germany with data on automatic pilots and aircraft instruments. As late as 1940, Bendix Aviation supplied complete technical data to Robert Bosch for aircraft and diesel engine starters and received royalty payments in return.

The Farben cartel dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six already giant German chemical companies — Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer, and Griesheim-Elektron. These companies were merged to become Inter-nationale Gesellschaft Farbenindustrie A.G. — or I.G. Farben for short.

Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I. G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.

German bankers on the Farben Aufsichsrat (the supervisory Board of Directors) in the late 1920s included the Hamburg banker Max War-burg, whose brother Paul Warburg was a founder of the Federal Reserve System in the United States. Not coincidentally, Paul Warburg was also on the board of American I. G., Farben's wholly owned U.S. subsidiary.

In 1928 the American holdings of I. G. Farben (i.e., the Bayer Company, General Aniline Works, Agfa Ansco, and Winthrop Chemical Company) were organized into a Swiss holding company, I. G. Chemic (Inter-nationale Gesellschaft fur Chemisehe Unternehmungen A. G.), controlled by I. G. Farben in Germany. In the following year these American firms merged to become American I. G. Chemical Corporation, later renamed General Aniline & Film.

There were over 2,000 cartel agreements between I. G. and foreign firms — including Standard Oil of New Jersey, DuPont, Alcoa, Dow Chemical, and others in the United States.

Without I.G.'s immense productive facilities, its intense research, and vast international affiliations, Germany's prosecution of the war would have been unthinkable and impossible. The proof is overwhelming that I. G. Farben officials had full prior knowledge of Germany's plan for world conquest and of each specific aggressive act later undertaken.

The process for manufacturing tetra-ethyl lead essential for aviation gasoline was obtained by I. G. Farben from the United States, and in 1939 I.G. was sold $20 million of high-grade aviation gasoline by Standard Oil of New Jersey. Even before Germany manufactured tetra-ethyl lead by the American process it was able to "borrow" 500 tons from the Ethyl Corporation.

One of the more horrifying aspects of I.G. Farben's cartel was the invention, production, and distribution of the Zyklon B gas, used in Nazi concentration camps. Zyklon B was pure Prussic acid, a lethal poison produced by I.G. Farben Leverkusen, enough gas to kill 200 million humans was produced and sold by I.G. Farben. The Kilgore Committee report of 1942 makes it clear that the I.G. Farben directors had precise knowledge of the Nazi concentration camps and the use of I.G. chemicals. This prior knowledge becomes significant when we later consider the role of the American directors in I.G.'s American subsidiary.

The Berlin N.W. 7 office of I.G. Farben was the key Nazi overseas espionage center. The unit operated under Farben director Max Ilgner, nephew of I.G. Farben president Hermann Schmitz. Max Ilgner and Hermann Schmitz were on the board of American I.G., with fellow directors Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company, Paul Warburg of Bank of Manhattan, and Charles E. Mitchell of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Utilizing normal business contacts Chemnyco was able to transmit to Germany tremendous amounts of material ranging from photographs and blueprints to detailed descriptions of whole industrial plants.

Farben acted as a research and intelligence organization for the German Army and voluntarily initiated Wehrmacht projects. In fact the Army only rarely had to approach Farben; it is estimated that about 40 to 50 percent of Farben projects for the Army were initiated by Farben itself. In brief, in the words of Dr, von Schnitzler:

Thus, in acting as it had done, I.G. contracted a great responsibility and constituted a substantial aid in the chemical domain and decisive help to Hitler's foreign policy, which led to war and to the ruin of Germany. Thus, I must conclude that I.G. is largely responsible for Hitler's policy.

American I.G. (later General Aniline) board of directors included nine members who were, or had been, members of the board of I.G. Farben in Germany. The remaining four members of the American I.G. board were C.E. Mitchell, chairman of National City Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Edsel B. Ford, president of Ford Motor Company; W.C. Teagle, another director of Standard Oil of New Jersey; and, Paul Warburg, first member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and chairman of the Bank of Manhattan Company. Three members of the board of this American I.G. were found guilty at Nuremburg War Crimes Trials.

Among early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933. These ideas were first suggested by Gerard Swope of the General Electric Company. The General Electric Company electrified the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. There was a long-lasting, intimate relationship between Swope and Young of General Electric Company and the Roosevelt family, as there was between General Electric and the Soviet Union.

In 1936 Senator James A. Reed of Missouri, attacked the Roosevelt New Deal program as a "tyrannical" measure "leading to despotism. Senator Reed further charged on the floor of the Senate that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a "hired man for the economic royalists" in Wall Street and that the Roosevelt family "is one of the largest stockholders in the General Electric Company."

In 1930 Owen D. Young, after whom the Young Plan for German reparations was named, became chairman of the Board of General Electric Company in New York City. Young was also chairman of the Executive Committee of Radio Corporation of America and a director of both German General Electric (A.E.G.) and Osram in Germany.

In July 1929 great interest was shown in rumors circulating in German financial circles that General Electric was also buying into A.E.G. In August it was confirmed that 14 million marks of common A.E.G. stock were to be issued to General Electric. These shares, added to shares bought on the open market, gave General Electric a 25-percent interest in A.E.G. A closer working agreement was signed between the two companies, providing the German company U.S. technology and patents.

General Electric had similarly gained an effective technical monopoly of the Soviet electrical industry and was soon to penetrate even the remaining bastions in Germany, particularly the Siemens group. In January 1930 three G.E. men were elected to the board of A.E.G. — Clark H. Minor, Gerard Swope, and E. H. Baldwin — and International General Electric (I.G.E.) continued its moves to merge the world electrical industry into a giant cartel under Wall Street control.

By 1939 the German electrical industry had become closely affiliated with two U.S. firms: International General Electric and International Telephone and Telegraph. This industrial complex was never a prime target for bombing in World War II. As a result, German production of electrical war equipment rose steadily throughout World War II, peaking as late as 1944.

The Standard Oil group of companies, in which the Rockefeller family owned a one-quarter (and controlling) interest, was of critical assistance in helping Nazi Germany prepare for World War II. Germany's relatively insignificant supplies of crude petroleum were quite insufficient for modern mechanized warfare.

The solution adopted by Nazi Germany was to manufacture synthetic gasoline from its plentiful domestic coal supplies. It was the hydrogenation process of producing synthetic gasoline and iso-octane properties in gasoline that enabled Germany to go to war in 1940 — and this hydrogenation process was developed and financed by the Standard Oil laboratories in the United States in partnership with I.G. Farben.

Evidence presented to the Truman, Bone, and Kilgore Committees after World War II confirmed that Standard Oil had at the same time "seriously imperilled the war preparations of the United States." Documentary evidence was presented to all three Congressional committees that before World War II Standard Oil had agreed with I.G. Farben, in the so-called Jasco agreement, that synthetic rubber was within Farben's sphere of influence, while Standard Oil was to have an absolute monopoly in the U.S. only if and when Farben allowed development of synthetic rubber to take place in the U.S.:

In April 1929 Walter C. Teagle, president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, became a director of the newly organized American I.G. Farben. It was announced by Teagle that joint research work on production of oil from coal had been carried on for some time and that a research laboratory for this work was to be established in the United States. In November 1929 this jointly owned Standard — Farben research company was established under the management of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. In December 1929 the new company, Standard I.G. Company, was organized. The results of this research were made available to I.G. Farben and became the basis for the development of Hitler's oil from-coal-program which made World War II possible.

Farben memorandum reads, in part,

By reason of their decades of work on motor fuels, the Americans were ahead of us in their knowledge of the quality requirements that are called for by the different uses of motor fuels. On the basis of their experiments they had recognized the good anti, knock quality of iso-octane. Shortly before the war, a new method for the production of iso-octane was found in America — alkylation with isomerization as a preliminary step. This process, originates in fact entirely with the Americans and has become known to us in detail in its separate stages through our agreements with them, and is being used very extensively by us.

Another prominent example of Standard Oil assistance to Nazi Germany — in cooperation with General Motors — was in supplying ethyl lead. Ethyl fluid is an anti-knock compound used in both aviation and automobile fuels to eliminate knocking, and so improve engine efficiency; without such anti-knocking compounds modern mobile warfare would be impractical.

In 1924 the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation was formed in New York City, jointly owned by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and General Motors Corporation, to control and utilize U.S. patents for the manufacture and distribution of tetraethyl lead and ethyl fluid in the U.S. and abroad. Up to 1935 manufacture of these products was undertaken only in the United States. In 1935 Ethyl Gasoline Corporation transferred its know-how to Germany for use in the Nazi rearmament program. This transfer was undertaken over the protests of the U.S. Government.

The Standard Oil subsidiary in Germany, Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G. (DAPAG), was 94-percent owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey. DAPAG had branches throughout Germany, a refinery at Bremen, and a head office in Hamburg. Through DAPAG, Standard Oil of New Jersey was represented in the inner circles of Nazism.

It was Henry Ford who in the 1930s built the Soviet Union's first modern automobile plant (located at Gorki) and which in the 50s and 60s produced the trucks used by the North Vietnamese to carry weapons and munitions for use against Americans. Henry Ford was also the most famous of Hitler's foreign backers.

On December 20, 1922 the New York Times reported that automobile manufacturer Henry Ford was financing Adolph Hitler's nationalist and anti-Semitic movements in Munich. Henry Ford's portrait was prominently displayed on the walls of Hitler's personal office. Henry Ford's book, The International Jew, earlier circulated by the Nazis, was translated by them into a dozen languages, and Hitler utilized sections of the book verbatim in writing Mein Kampf.

In 1928 Henry Ford merged his German assets with those of the I.G. Farben chemical cartel. A substantial holding, 40 percent of Ford Motor A.G. of Germany, was transferred to I.G. Farben; Carl Bosch of I.G. Farben became head of Ford A.G. Motor in Germany. Simultaneously, in the United States Edsel Ford joined the board of American I.G. Farben.

A decade later, in August 1938 — after Hitler had achieved power with the aid of the cartels — Henry Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a Nazi decoration for distinguished foreigners. At the outbreak of the war Ford-Werke A.G. placed itself at the disposal of the Wehrmacht for armament production.

In July 1942 word filtered back to Washington from Ford of France about Ford's activities on behalf of the German war effort in Europe. The incriminating information was promptly buried and even today only part of the known documentation can be traced in Washington.

U.S. Consul General in Algeria had possession of a letter from Maurice Dollfuss of French Ford — to Edsel Ford about a plan by which Ford Motor could contribute to the Nazi war effort. French Ford was able to produce 20 trucks a day for the Wehrmacht, which [wrote Dollfuss] is better than, our less fortunate French competitors are doing. The reason is that our trucks are in very large demand by the German authorities and I believe that as long as the war goes on and at least for some period of time, all that we shall produce will be taken by the German authorities.

Although there is evidence that European plants owned by Wall Street interests were not bombed by the U.S. Air Force in World War II, this restriction apparently did not reach the British Bombing Command. In March 1942 the Royal Air Force bombed the Ford plant at Poissy, France. A subsequent letter from Edsel Ford to Ford General Manager Sorenson about this RAF raid commented, "Photographs of the plant on fire were published in American newspapers but fortunately no reference was made to the Ford Motor Company. In any event, the Vichy government paid Ford Motor Company 38 million francs as compensation for damage done to the Poissy plant.

Another elusive case of reported financing of Hitler is that of Fritz Thyssen, the German steel magnate who associated himself with the Nazi movement in the early 20s.

The Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. in Rotterdam, Holland was a subsidiary of the August Thyssen Bank of Germany (formerly von der Heydt's Bank A.G.) controlled the Union Banking Corporation in New York. The Harrimans had a financial interest in, and E. Roland Harriman (Averell's brother) was a director of, this Union Banking Corporation. The Union Banking Corporation of New York City was a joint Thyssen-Harriman operation.

Edward Henry Harriman, the nineteenth-century railroad magnate, had two sons, W. Averell Harriman (born in 1891), and E. Roland Harriman (born in 1895). In 1917 W. Averell Harriman was a director of Guaranty Trust Company and he was involved in the Bolshevik Revolution.

Nazi financier Hendrik Jozef Kouwenhoven, Roland Harriman's fellow-director at Union Banking Corporation in New York, was managing director of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V. (BHS) of Rotterdam. In 1940 the BHS held approximately $2.2 million assets in the Union Banking Corporation, which in turn did most of its business with BHS. In the 1930s Kouwenhoven was also a director of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke A.G., the steel cartel founded with Wall Street funds in the mid-1920s.

There exists irrefutable documentary evidence of a further role of international bankers and industrialists in the financing of the Nazi Party and the Volkspartie for the March 1933 German election. A total of three million Reichmarks was subscribed by prominent firms and businessmen.

This transfer of funds was followed by the Reichstag fire, abrogation of constitutional rights, and consolidation of Nazi power. The fund-raising meeting was held February 20, 1933 in the home of Goering, who was then president of the Reichstag, with Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht acting as host.

The payments to Hitler in this final step on the road to dictatorial Nazism were made through the private bank of Delbruck Sehickler. The Delbruck Schickler Bank was a subsidiary of Metallgesellschaft A.G. ("Metall"), an industrial giant, the largest non-ferrous metal company in Germany, and the dominant influence in the world's nonferrous metal 'trading. The principal shareholders of "Metall" were I.G. Farben and the British Metal Corporation.

Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler