The Real Reason the Government Won't Debate
Medical Cannabis and Industrial Hemp Re-legalization

An Open Letter to All Americans
By R. William Davis

Documented Evidence of a Secret Business and Political Alliance
Between the U.S. "Establishment" and the Nazis -
Before, During and After World War II - up to the Present.

Source: http://www.sumeria.net/politics/shadv3.html

PREFACE

Before the Gatewood Galbraith for Governor Campaign in 1991, few Kentuckians knew that the plant that the federal government had demonized for over 50 years as "Marijuana - Assassin of Youth," was, in fact, Cannabis Hemp, the most traded commodity in the world until the mid-1800s, and our state's number one crop, industry, and most important source of revenue, for over 150 years.

Today, thanks to the efforts of pioneer hemp researchers and public advocates such as Galbraith, Jack Fraizer, Jack Herer, Chris Conrad, Ed Rosenthal, Don Wirtshafter and others, the federal government's unjustifiable suppression of our state's right to develop our most valuable and versatile natural resource, is facing increasing opposition from an informed public. Hemp is now recognized as the number one agriculturally renewable raw material in the world, and perhaps the only crop / industry which can guarantee us industrial and economic independence from the trans-national corporations.

"Shadow of the Swastika" is a follow-up to my earlier work, "Cannabis Hemp: the Invisible Prohibition Revealed," which I wrote and published in support of the Galbraith Campaign. Since publication of that booklet, there has been growing public acceptance of the evidence that Marijuana Prohibition was created in 1937, not to protect society from the "evils of the drug Marijuana," as the Federal government claimed, but as an act of deliberate economic and industrial sabotage against the re-emerging Industrial Hemp Industry.

Previous investigations by hemp researchers have been limited to the suppression of free-market competition from the hemp industry, and focused on the activities of three prominent members of America's corporate, industrial and banking establishment during the mid- to late-1930s:

WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST, the newspaper and magazine tycoon.

The expected rebirth of cannabis hemp as a less expensive source of pulp for paper meant his millions of acres of prime timberland, and investment in wood pulp papermaking equipment, would soon be worth much less. In the 1920s, about the same time as the equipment was developed to economically mass-produce raw hemp into pulp and fiber for paper, he began the "Reefer Madness" hoax in his newspaper and magazine publications.

ANDREW MELLON, founder of the Gulf Oil Corporation.

He knew that cannabis hemp was an alternative industrial raw material for the production of thousands of products, including fuel and plastics, which, if allowed to compete in the free-market, would threaten the future profits of the oil companies. As Secretary of the Treasury he created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and appointed his own future nephew-in-law, Harry Anslinger, as director. Anslinger would later use the sensational, and totally fabricated, articles published by Hearst, to push the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 through Congress, which successfully destroyed the rebirth of the cannabis hemp industry.

A prominent member of one Congressional subcommittee who voted in favor of this bill was Joseph Guffey of Pennsylvania, an oil tycoon and former business partner of Andrew Mellon in the Spindletop oil fields in Texas.

THE DU PONT CHEMICAL CORPORATION,

which owned the patents on synthetic petrochemicals and industrial processes that promised billions of dollars in future profits from the sale of wood pulp paper, lead additives for gasoline, synthetic fibers and plastics, if hemp could be suppressed. At the time, du Pont family influence in both government and the private sector was unmatched, according to historians and journalists.

This publication, however, reveals documented historical evidence that the suppression of the hemp industry was only one key part of a much larger conspiracy in the 1930s, not only by the three corporate interests named above, but by many others, as well.

Congressional records, FBI reports and investigations by the Justice Department, during the 1930s and 1940s, have already documented evidence of this wider plot. A list of the corporations named include Du Pont, Standard Oil, and General Motors, all of which were proven to be conspiring with Nazi industrial cartels to eliminate competition world-wide and divide among themselves the Earth's industrial resources and commercial markets, for profitable exploitation.

This conspiracy succeeded. It is now obvious that this lack of serious competition in the industrial raw materials market caused our present - and totally contrived - addiction to petrochemicals. Its success is directly responsible for the most troubling problems we now face in the 1990s; serious damage to our environment, concentration of economic and political power into fewer and fewer hands, and the weakening of the rights of individuals and states to determine their own futures.

It is more and more evident that, given the historical record, the structure of the New World Order is being built upon the Foundation of Marijuana Prohibition, and only the relegalization of free-market hemp competition can save us.

R. William Davis
July 4, 1996
Louisville, Kentucky

INTRODUCTION

To clearly understand the circumstances which existed during the 1930s and 1940s, and are the subject of this booklet, it would be helpful to first put the hemp / petrochemical conflict into historical perspective. The events which took place in the years leading up to World War II were a continuation of a struggle between agricultural and industrial interests that began before the American Revolution, a struggle which has yet to be decided, even today.

AGRICULTURE VS. INDUSTRY

The historical record, at least as it has been presented to us in the public school system, is that the Civil War was fought to end slavery. This is not the whole story. The truth of the matter is that it was also a clash between Northern industrialists and Southern agriculturists, over control of the expansion into the newly opened West.

In 1845, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "I hold it a paramount duty of us in the free states due to the union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself, to let the slavery of other states alone." (1)

Concerning the Western territories, he said "The whole Nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for homes and free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery be planted within them." (2)

Lincoln was caught in the middle between the Northern industrialists and the Southern agriculturists, who both wanted to dominate Western expansion because of the wealth it offered. The industrialists knew that the agriculturists depended on slavery because cotton, upon which Southern wealth was based, was very labor intensive and required the inexpensive labor that slavery provided. They knew that if the Western lands were declared "free states" then the Southern agriculturists would be unable to compete, and would be forced to leave Western expansion, and its potential profits, to the Northern industrialists.

Quoting "The Irony of Democracy," by Thomas R. Dye and T. Harmon Zeigler,

"The importance of the Civil War for America's elite structure was the commanding position that the new industrial capitalists won during the course of the struggle. . . . The economic transformation of the United States from an agricultural to an industrial nation reached the crescendo of a revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century.

"Civil War profits compounded the capital of the industrialists and placed them in a position to dominate the economic life of the nation. Moreover, when the Southern planters were removed from the national scene, the government in Washington became the exclusive domain of the new industrial leaders." (3)

The Northern industrialists used this increased capital to build the system of transcontinental railways, linking the Northeast with both the South and West. The labor for this undertaking was from the Northeastern Establishment's own source of cheap labor - recently freed slaves and poor immigrants from Europe and China - who suffered under living conditions which were often little better than those which existed under the Slave System just a few years before.

It was during the years between the Civil War and the beginning of the Twentieth Century that the Northern industrialists altered the role of the American government. Originally established by the Revolution to protect and preserve the lives, property and freedoms of all Americans from repressive government, it was transformed into an agency to protect the economic future of Northern industrialists.

"[T]he industrial elites," according to Dye and Zeigler, "saw no objection to legislation if it furthered their success in business. Unrestricted competition might prove who was the fittest, but as an added precaution to insure that the industrial capitalists themselves emerged as the fittest, these new elites also insisted upon government subsidies, patents, tariffs, loans, and massive giveaways of land and other natural resources." (4)

The struggle between Western farmers and the railroads owned by the Northern industrialists is a good example. To protect their interests, citizens created "the Grange," an organization which helped to enact state laws regulating the "ruthless aggression" of the railroads. In 1877, these laws were upheld by the Supreme Court in the Munn v. Illinois decision. But, a few years later, Justice Stephen A. Field changed the role, and the very definition, of the corporation. He gave a new interpretation to the Fourteenth Amendment that actually gave corporations legal status as citizens . . . as artificial persons. (5)

It was not long after this change in the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that John D. Rockefeller, the father of the modern-day corporation, created the great Standard Oil Corporation which, by the late 1880s, gained control over 90% of all the oil refineries in America. (6)

The roots of 20th Century American politics can best be illustrated by the 1896 Presidential Election, won by Republican William McKinley by a landslide. The McKinley campaign was directed by Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Standard Oil and raised a $16,000,000 campaign fund from wealthy fellow industrialists, (an amount that was unmatched in Presidential campaigns until the 1960s). The major theme of the campaign, and one that would echo far into the future, was "what's good for business is good for the country." (7)

This emerging political and judicial misuse of power in America was feared by Thomas Jefferson who, in 1787, wrote, "I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they remain chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe they will become corrupt as in Europe." (8)

It is important to remember that the American Revolution was a clash between the agriculturists in the colonies, and the British industrialists who controlled the government in England. Almost 100 years later the Civil War was fought as a continuation of the same basic struggle, but with the victory going back to the industrialists. This began the erosion of the American government "of the people, for the people and by the people." The buying of the 1896 Presidential Election, by Hanna of Standard Oil and the Northern industrial interests, was the next important step on the long road to the American government "of the corporation, for the corporation and by the corporation."

A few years later, World War I would forge an even closer relationship between corporations and government in the United States, as well as around the world. Anthony Sampson, in his book "The Arms Bazaar," notes that "the American companies, led by US Steel and du Pont, were transformed by war orders. US Steel, which had absorbed Carnegie's old steel company, had made average annual profits in the four pre-war years of $105 million, while in the four war years they were $240 million; and du Pont's average profit went up from $6 million to $58 million. . . .

"Certainly the arms companies had become much richer through the war, and there were widespread suspicions that they were actually trying to prolong it." (9)

The bottom line is, of course, victory or profit, and in what proportions? To what lengths would this nation's top industrial leaders go to secure their share of the profits before and during the next "war to end all war?"

NOTES: INTRODUCTION

back to top

U.S. CORPORATIONS AND THE NAZIS

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. . . .

"Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.(1)

A large volume of documentary evidence exists that reveals that many of the richest, most powerful men in the United States, and the giant corporations they controlled, were secretly allied with the Nazis, both before and during World War II, even after war was declared between Germany and America. This alliance began with U.S. corporate investment during the reconstruction of post-World War I Germany in the 1920s and, years later, included financial, industrial and military aid to the Nazis.

On the pages which follow we will review which prominent Americans and corporations were involved, what aid and comfort they gave our nation's enemies - treasonable offenses during time of war, and investigations into these matters which produced evidence of a US/Nazi corporate conspiracy to bring a fascist state to America, and eliminate competition in the industrial raw materials market in order to force world-wide dependance on oil-based petrochemicals.

Hearst, who was so concerned about the American public's health and safety on the matter of marijuana use, apparently had no such fears when it came to Hitler and the Nazis. According to journalist George Seldes:

". . . Hitler had the support of the most widely circulated magazine in history, 'Readers Digest,' as well as nineteen big-city newspapers and one of the three great American news agencies, the $220-million Hearst press empire.

". . . William Randolph Hearst, Sr., . . . was the lord of all the press lords in the United States. The millions who read the Hearst newspapers and magazines and saw Hearst newsreels in the nation's moviehouses had their minds poisoned by Hitler propaganda.

"It was . . . disclosed first to President Roosevelt [by Ambassador Dodd] almost on the day it happened, in September 1934, and it is detailed in the book 'Ambassador Dodd's Diary,' published in 1941, and again in libel-proof documents on file in the courts of the state of New York. William E. Dodd, professor of history [at the University of Chicago], told me about the Hearst sell-out . . .

"According to Ambassador Dodd, Hearst came to take the waters at Bad Nauheim in September 1934, and Dodd somehow learned immediately that Hitler had sent two of his most trusted Nazi propagandists, Hanfstangel and Rosenberg, to ask Hearst how Nazism could present a better image in the United States. When Hearst went to Berlin later in the month, he was taken to see Hitler."

Seldes reports that a $400,000 a year deal was struck between Hearst and Hitler, and signed by Doctor Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. "Hearst," continues Seldes, "completely changed the editorial policy of his nineteen daily newspapers the same month he got the money."

In the court documents filed on behalf of Dan Gillmor, publisher of a magazine named "Friday," in response to a lawsuit by Hearst, under item 61, he states: "Promptly after this said visit with Adolf Hitler and the making of said arrangements. . . said plaintiff, William Randolph Hearst, instructed all Hearst press correspondents in Germany, including those of INS [Hearst's International News Service] to report happenings in Germany only in a friendly' manner. All of such correspondents reporting happenings in Germany accurately and without friendliness, sympathy and bias for the actions of the then German government, were transferred elsewhere, discharged, or forced to resign. . . ."

In the late 1930s, Seldes recounts, when "several sedition indictments [were brought by] the Department of Justice . . . against a score or two of Americans, the defendants included an unusually large minority of newspaper men and women, most of them Hearst employees." (2)

"Thurman Arnold, as assistant district attorney of the United States, his assistant, Norman Littell, and several Congressional investigations, have produced incontrovertible evidence that some of our biggest monopolies entered into secret agreements with the Nazi cartels and divided the world up among them," states Seldes in his book, "Facts and Fascism," published in 1943. "Most notorious of all was Alcoa, the Mellon-Davis-Duke monopoly which is largely responsible for the fact America did not have the aluminum with which to build airplanes before and after Pearl Harbor, while Germany had an unlimited supply." (3)

Alcoa sabotage of American war production had already cost the U.S. "10,000 fighters or 1,665 bombers," according to Congressman Pierce of Oregon speaking in May 1941, because of "the effort to protect Alcoa's monopolistic position. . ."

"If America loses this war," said Secretary of the Interior [Harold] Ickes, June 26, 1941, "it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America."

"By its cartel agreement with I.G. Farben, controlled by Hitler," writes Seldes, "Alcoa sabotaged the aluminum program of the U.S. air force. The Truman Committee [on National Defense, chaired by then-Senator Harry S. Truman in 1942] heard testimony that Alcoa's representative, A.H. Bunker, $1-a-year head of the aluminum section of O.P.M., prevented work on our $600,000,000 aluminum expansion program." (4)

General Motors is included here because, by 1929, the Du Pont corporation had acquired controlling interest in, and had interlocking directorships with, General Motors.

Irenee du Pont, "the most imposing and powerful member of the clan," according to biographer and historian Charles Higham, "was obsessed with Hitler's principles." "He keenly followed the career of the future Fuhrer in the 1920s, and on September 7, 1926, in a speech to the American Chemical Society, he advocated a race of supermen, to be achieved by injecting special drugs into them in boyhood to make their characters to order." Higham's book on this subject, "Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949," is highly recommended.

Du Pont's anti-Semitism "matched that of Hitler" and, in 1933, the Du Ponts "began financing native fascist groups in America . . ." one of which Higham identifies as the American Liberty League: "a Nazi organization whipping up hatred of blacks and Jews," and the "love of Hitler.

"Financed . . . to the tune of $500,000 the first year, the Liberty League had a lavish thirty-one-room office in New York, branches in twenty-six colleges, and fifteen subsidiary organizations nationwide that distributed fifty million copies of its Nazi pamphlets. . . .

"The Du Ponts' fascistic behavior was seen in 1936, when Irenee du Pont used General Motors money to finance the notorious Black Legion. This terrorist organization had as its purpose the prevention of automobile workers from unionizing. The members wore hoods and black robes, with skulls and crossbones. They fire-bombed union meetings, murdered union organizers, often by beating them to death, and dedicated their lives to destroying Jews and communists. They linked to the Ku Klux Klan. . . . It was brought out that at least fifty people, many of them blacks, had been butchered by the Legion." (5)

Du Pont support of Hitler extended into the very heart of the Nazi war machine as well, according to Higham, and several other researchers: "General Motors, under the control of the Du Pont family of Delaware, played a part in collaboration" with the Nazis.

"Between 1932 and 1939, bosses of General Motors poured $30 million into I.G. Farben plants . . ." Further, Higham informs us that by "the mid-1930s, General Motors was committed to full-scale production of trucks, armored cars, and tanks in Nazi Germany." (6)

Researchers Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen, in their book, "Power Inc.," describe the Du Pont-GM-Nazi relationship in these terms:

". . . In 1929, [Du Pont-controlled] GM acquired the largest automobile company in Germany, Adam Opel, A.G. This predestined the subsidiary to become important to the Nazi war effort. In a heavily documented study presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly in February 1974, Bradford C. Snell, an assistant subcommittee counsel, wrote:

"'GM's participation in Germany's preparation for war began in 1935. That year its Opel subsidiary cooperated with the Reich in locating a new heavy truck facility at Brandenburg, which military officials advised would be less vulnerable to enemy air attacks. During the succeeding years, GM supplied the Wehrmact with Opel "Blitz" trucks from the Brandenburg complex. For these and other contributions to [the Nazis] wartime preparations, GM's chief executive for overseas operations [James Mooney] was awarded the Order of the German Eagle (first class) by Adolf Hitler.'"

Du Pont-GM Nazi collaboration, according to Snell, included the participation of Standard Oil of New Jersey [now Exxon] in one, very important arrangement. GM and Standard Oil of New Jersey formed a joint subsidiary with the giant Nazi chemical cartel, I.G. Farben, named Ethyl G.m.b.H. [now Ethyl, Inc.] which, according to Snell: "provided the mechanized German armies with synthetic tetraethyl fuel [leaded gas]. During 1936-39, at the urgent request of Nazi officials who realized that Germany's scarce petroleum reserves would not satisfy war demands, GM and Exxon joined with German chemical interests in the erection of the lead-tetraethyl plants. According to captured German records, these facilities contributed substantially to the German war effort: 'The fact that since the beginning of the war we could produce lead-tetraethyl is entirely due to the circumstances that, shortly before, the Americans [Du Pont, GM and Standard Oil] had presented us with the production plants complete with experimental knowledge. Without lead-tetraethyl the present method of warfare would be unthinkable.'" (7)

At about the same time the Du Ponts were serving the Nazi cause in Germany, they were involved in a Fascist plot to overthrow the United States government.

"Along with friends of the Morgan Bank and General Motors," in early 1934, writes Higham, "certain Du Pont backers financed a coup d'etat that would overthrow the President with the aid of a $3 million-funded army of terrorists . . ." The object was to force Roosevelt "to take orders from businessmen as part of a fascist government or face the alternative of imprisonment and execution . . ."

Higham reports that "Du Pont men allegedly held an urgent series of meetings with the Morgans," to choose who would lead this "bizarre conspiracy." "They finally settled on one of the most popular soldiers in America, General Smedly Butler of Pennsylvania." Butler was approached by "fascist attorney" Gerald MacGuire (an official of the American Legion), who attempted to recruit Butler into the role of an American Hitler.

"Butler was horrified," but played along with MacGuire until, a short time later, he notified the White House of the plot. Roosevelt considered having "the leaders of the houses of Morgan and Du Pont" arrested, but feared that "it would create an unthinkable national crisis in the midst of a depression and perhaps another Wall Street crash." Roosevelt decided the best way to defuse the plot was to expose it, and leaked the story to the press.

"The newspapers ran the story of the attempted coup on the front page, but generally ridiculed it as absurd and preposterous." But an investigation by the Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities - 74th Congress, first session, House of Representatives, Investigation of Nazi and other propaganda - was begun later that same year.

"It was four years," continues Higham, "before the committee dared to publish its report in a white paper that was marked for 'restricted circulation.' They were forced to admit that 'certain persons made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country . . . [The] committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler.' This admission that the entire plan was deadly in intent was not accompanied by the imprisonment of anybody. Further investigations disclosed that over a million people had been guaranteed to join the scheme and that the arms and munitions necessary would have been supplied by Remington, a Du Pont subsidiary." (8)

The names of important individuals and groups involved in the conspiracy were suppressed by the committee, but later revealed by Seldes, Philadelphia Record reporter Paul French, and Jules Archer, author of the book, "The Plot to Seize the White House." Included were John W. Davis (attorney for the J.P. Morgan banking group), Robert Sterling Clark (Wall Street broker and heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune), William Doyle (American Legion official), and the American Liberty League (backed by executives from J.P. Morgan and Co., Rockefeller interests, E.F. Hutton, and Du Pont-controlled General Motors). (9)

THE US/NAZI CARTEL AGREEMENT

"On November 23, 1937," states Higham, "representatives of General Motors held a secret meeting in Boston with Baron Manfred von Killinger, who was . . . in charge of West Coast espionage [for the Nazis], and Baron von Tipplekirsch, Nazi consul general and Gestapo leader in Boston. This group signed a joint agreement showing total commitment to the Nazi cause for the indefinite future. . . ." (10)

Seldes describes the plotters as "the great owners and rulers of America who planned world domination through political and military Fascism" including "several leading American industrialists, members of the Congress of the United States, and representatives of large business and political organizations . . ."

He obtained the text of the agreement, and published it in his newsletter, "In Fact," on July 13, 1942. The plan "goes much further than the mere cartel conspiracies of Big Business of both countries," writes Seldes, "because it has political clauses and points to a bigger conspiracy of money and politicians such as helped betray Norway and France and other lands to the Nazi machine. The most powerful fortress in America is the production monopolies, but its betrayal would involve, as it did in France, the participation of some of the most powerful figures of the political as well as the industrial world." (11)

back to top

STANDARD OIL OF NEW JERSEY (Now Exxon)

"On February 27, 1942," according to Higham, "Arnold, with documents stuffed under his arms, . . . strode into the lion's den of Standard at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Just behind him were Secretary of the Navy Franklin Knox and Secretary of the Army Henry L. Stimson." They confronted Standard official William Farish and "Arnold sharply laid down his charges" that "by continuing to favor Hitler in rubber deal and patent arrangements," Standard Oil "had acted against the interests of the American government . . . suggested a fine of $1.5 million and a consent decree whereby Standard would turn over for the duration all the patents" in question.

"Farish rejected the proposal on the spot. He pointed out that Standard" was also selling the U.S. a "high percentage" of the fuel being used by the Army, Navy, and Air Force "making it possible for America to win the war. Where would America be without it?"

Blackmail? Yes, says Higham. And effective. Arnold was finally reduced to asking the oil company official "to what Standard Oil would agree. After all, there had to be at least token punishment. . . . Arnold, Stimson, and Knox soon realized they had no power to compare with that of Standard."

The price Standard Oil "agreed" to pay for its crime? A modest fine of a few thousand dollars divided up among ten defendants. "Farish paid $1,000, or a quarter of one week's salary, for having betrayed America."

In New Jersey, charges of "criminal conspiracy with the enemy" were filed against Standard, then "dropped in return for Standard releasing its patents and paying the modest fine." But Arnold, and his ally, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, weren't finished with Standard Oil just yet. They approached Senator Truman, chairman of the Senate Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program. "With great enthusiasm Give 'em Hell Harry embarked on a series of hearings in March 1942, in order to disclose the truth about Standard."

Between the 26th and the 28th of March, 1942, Arnold "produced documents showing that Standard and Farben in Germany had literally carved up the world markets, with oil and chemical monopolies all over the map," according to Higham. (12)

Mintz and Cohen describe the confrontation:

"Four months after the United States entered World War II, the Justice Department obtained an indictment of Exxon and its principal officers for having made arrangements, starting in the late 1920s with I.G. Farben involving patent sharing and division of world markets. Jersey Standard agreed not to develop processes for the manufacture of synthetic rubber; in exchange, Farben agreed not to compete in the American petroleum market. After war broke out in Europe, but before the attack on Pearl Harbor, executives of Standard Oil and Farben, at a meeting in Holland, established a 'modus vivendi' for continuing the arrangements in event of war between the United States and Germany - although the arrangements interfered with the ability of the United States to make synthetic rubber desperately needed after it entered the war in December 1941. Rather than face a criminal trial, Exxon and the indicted executives entered no-contest pleas - the legal equivalent of guilty pleas - and were fined the minor sums which were the maximum amounts permitted by law. A few days later, on March 26, 1942, the Senate Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program held a hearing at which Thurman Arnold, chief of the Antitrust Division, put into the record documents on which the [criminal] indictment had been based, including a memo from a Standard Oil official on the 'modus vivendi' agreed to in Holland. After the hearing, the committee chairman, Harry S. Truman, characterized the arrangements as treasonable." (13)

Another source book on this subject of US / Nazi corporate activities is "The Secret War Against the Jews," by Mark Aarons and John Loftus. Here is their version of the events:

"Before the war Standard of New Jersey had forged a synthetic oil and rubber cartel with the Nazi-controlled I.G. Farben," which "worked well until the United States joined the war in 1941. . . . Next to the Rockefellers, I.G. Farben owned the largest share of stock in Standard Oil of New Jersey. Among other things, Standard had provided Farben with its synthetic rubber patents and technical knowledge, while Farben had kept its patents to itself, under strict instructions from the Nazi government."

Evidence which Thurman Arnold turned over to the Truman Committee, which Truman would declare "treasonous," included "Standard's 1939 letter renewing its agreement, which made it clear that the Rockefellers' company was prepared to work with the Nazis whether their own government was at war with the Third Reich or not. Truman's Senate Committee on the National Defense was outraged and began to probe into the whole scandalous arrangement, much to the discomfort of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Suddenly, however, the whole matter was dropped.

"There was a reason for Rockefeller's escape: blackmail. According to the former intelligence officers we interviewed on this point, the blackmail was simple and powerful: The Dulles brothers [John Foster, later Secretary of State, and Allen, later director of the CIA] had one of their clients threaten to interrupt the U.S. oil supply during wartime."

When confronted by Arnold on the Standard - Farben arrangement "Standard executives made it clear that the entire U.S. war effort was fueled by their oil and it could be stopped. . . . The American government had no choice but to go along if it wanted to win the war." (14)

July 13, 1944, Ralph W. Gallagher, attorney for Standard Oil, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government's seizure of the contested patents. "On November 7, 1945, Judge Charles E. Wyzanski gave his verdict," according to Higham. "He decided that the government had been entitled to seize the patents. Gallagher appealed. On September 22, 1947, Judge Charles Clark delivered the final word on the subject. He said, 'Standard Oil can be considered an enemy national in view of its relationships with I.G. Farben after the United States and Germany had become active enemies.' The appeal was denied." (15)

One aspect of this Standard - I.G. Farben relationship, revealed in testimony during the Patents Committee hearings, chaired by Senator Homer T. Bone in May 1942, is of interest to those who seek direct evidence of a conspiracy by big oil companies to suppress development of synthetic substitutes to petrochemical products such as industrial chemicals, aircraft lubricants and fuel, all of which can be made from hemp:

"On May 6th, John R. Jacobs, Jr., of the Attorney General's department, testified that Standard had interfered with the American explosives industry by blocking the use of a method of producing synthetic ammonia. As a result of its deals with Farben, the United States had been unable to get the use of this vital process even after Pearl Harbor. Also, the United States had been restricted in techniques of producing hydrogen from natural gas and from obtaining paraflow, a product used for airplane lubrication at high altitudes. . . ."

On August 7th, "Texas oil operator C.R. Starnes appeared to testify that Standard had blocked him at every turn in his efforts to produce synthetic rubber after Pearl Harbor. . . ."

On August 12th, "John R. Jacobs reappeared in an Army private's uniform (he had been inducted the day before) to bring up another disagreeable matter: Standard had also, in league with Farben, restricted production of methanol, a wood alcohol that was sometimes used as motor fuel." (16)

The restriction against methanol production apparently did not apply to the Nazis, however. "As late as April 1943," Higham reveals, "General Motors in Stockholm [Sweden] was reported as trading with the enemy. . . . Further documents show that, as with Ford, repairs on German army trucks and conversion from gasoline to wood-gasoline production were being handled by GM in Switzerland." (17)

The use of hemp as a source of methanol was known to the Nazis, revealed in the pamphlet "The Humorous Hemp Primer," published in Berlin, also in 1943. This document, recently re-published in the 1995 edition of "Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes," by veteran hemp conspiracy researcher Jack Herer, states that:

"Crops should not only provide food in large quantities, they can provide raw materials for industry. . . . Among such raw materials of especially high value is hemp . . .

"The woody part of this large plant is not to be thrown out, since it can easily be used for surface coatings for the finest floors. It also provides paper and cardboard, building materials and wall paneling. Further processing will even produce wood sugar and wood gas. . . .

"Anyone who grows hemp today need not fear a lack of a market, because hemp, as useful as it is, will be purchased in unlimited amounts." (18)

The Nazis obviously considered hemp a vital war material that could be used to produce methanol, or "wood gas," at the same time, in 1943, that Du Pont-controlled General Motors in Switzerland was "converting from gasoline to wood-gasoline production." This, taken into consideration along with the earlier statement that Standard Oil-I.G. Farben had "restricted production of methanol" and the GM-Standard Oil-I.G. Farben joint venture, Ethyl, Inc., whose profitability depended on the production of lead-tetraethyl for oil-based petrochemical gasoline - in direct competition with the alternative methanol, or "wood gas," certainly opens new avenues of investigation into the existence of a conspiracy against hemp as an alternative, and competing, industrial raw material, by these very same corporations which sold America out to the Nazis for profit and control of world resources and markets.

"Just after Pearl Harbor," writes Seldes, "the Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Thurman Arnold, issued a sensational report of the sabotage of the national [war production] program, the first report naming the practices which were later to be referred to as the treason of big business in wartime. Said Mr. Arnold:

"Looking back over 10 months of defense effort we can now see how much it has been hampered by the attitude of powerful basic industries who have feared to expand their production because expansion would endanger their future control of industry.

"Anti-trust investigations during the past year have shown that there is not an organized basic industry in the United States which has not been restricting production by some device or other in order to avoid what they call 'ruinous overproduction after the war'." (19)

By "ruinous overproduction," of course, they meant free-market competition. So, to question the existence of an industrial conspiracy against competition, during the 1930s and 1940s, is pointless. It has long been totally documented by volumes of evidence, available in the public record. And among this list of convicted corporate conspirators are murderers, racists, pro-Nazi collaborators, blackmailers and American Fascists who plotted at least one armed take-over of the U.S. government. And the list is not yet complete.

back to top

THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY

Henry Ford, writes Higham, "admired Hitler from the beginning, when the future Fuhrer was a struggling and obscure fanatic. He shared with Hitler a fanatical hatred of Jews."

"Ford's book 'The International Jew' was issued in 1927. A virulent anti-Semitic tract, it was still being distributed in Latin America and the Arab countries as late as 1945. Hitler admired the book and it influenced him deeply. Visitors to Hitler's headquarters at the Brown House in Munich noticed a large photograph of Henry Ford hanging in his office. Stacked high on the table outside were copies of Ford's book. As early as 1923," when Hitler heard that Ford was planning to run for President, he "told an interviewer from the 'Chicago-Tribune,' 'I wish that I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help'."

As late as 1940, Ford Motor Company "refused to build aircraft engines for England and instead built supplies of the 5-ton military trucks that were the backbone of German army transportation." (20)

The Ford Motor Company was also aware of the potential of hemp as an alternative industrial resource, devoting many years research to the subject.

In a 1989 ABC Radio broadcast, Hugh Downs reported that in the 1930s, "the Ford Motor Company also saw a future in biomass fuels. Ford operated a successful biomass conversion plant that included hemp at their Iron Mountain facility in Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl acetate, and creosote - all fundamental ingredients for modern industry, and now supplied by oil-related industries. . . . Henry Ford's experiments with methanol promised cheap, readily-available fuel." (21)

As reported in "Popular Mechanics" in December, 1941, Ford's research represented "an industrial revolution in progress . . . a revolution in materials that will affect every home." (22)

So, it is possible, even likely, that Ford and General Motors conversion "from gasoline to wood-gasoline production" for Nazi Germany, as earlier reported by Higham, involved at least some consideration of hemp as a resource, if not actual production of "wood-gas" from hemp. After all, Ford had already committed several years and significant research dollars to the subject.

The implication of methanol fuel patents, hemp industry research and production facilities, all in the hands of this cabal of Nazi-allied American corporations, during a proven period of anti-competition conspiracies, and wartime blackmail against the U.S. government, should provide additional support for the hemp conspiracy theories. The fact is that Nazi Germany recognized hemp as a vital war material - one which, just before America's entrance into World War II, was positioned to compete in the free-market against the products controlled by the Pro-Nazi American corporations. Unrestricted expansion of United States industrial hemp production threatened not only the profits of these treasonous corporations, but the degree of their control over America's production of vital war materials.

This view of hemp, not as a "dangerous drug" but as a vital war material, was acknowledged by the Kentucky Legislature a little over 100 years before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1841, according to Professor James F. Hopkins, author of "A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky," published by the University of Kentucky Press in 1951:

"When the farmers of Woodford County [KY] assembled in October, 1841, to consider a program of hemp production for the navy, they only went as far as to express an opinion that the government should employ a rope spinner in Kentucky for the purpose of converting the fiber into yarns, which could be transported much more cheaply and safely than the bulky raw material. The Committee on Agriculture of the Kentucky House of Representatives inquired into the matter early in 1842 . . .

"Both houses of the General Assembly sent to the Senators and Congressmen from Kentucky a request that they use their 'best exertions' to have established in the state one or more agencies for the inspection and manufacture of hemp for the navy. A select committee of Congress, appointed to consider the resolutions from Kentucky, reported three resolutions of its own: that the navy be directed to construct a factory at Louisville 'for the purpose of depositing and manufacturing . . . such hempen fabrics of domestic water-rotted hemp as the public service may require'; that inspectors be appointed to test the fiber that might be offered for sale; and that, after due notice to the public, purchase of the necessary amount of fiber be made at the factory. The Committee contended that its plan would build up during peacetime a source of hemp which would be vitally important in case of war, encourage American agriculture and manufactures, and decrease the unfavorable balance of trade." (23)

INTERNATIONAL TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH

Even after Pearl Harbor, ITT was working for the Nazis, reports Higham: ". . . the German army, navy, and air force contracted with ITT for the manufacture of switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment, and thirty thousand fuses per month for artillery shells used to kill British and American troops."

ITT also "supplied ingredients for the rocket bombs that fell on London," and other devices as well, without which "it would have been impossible for the German air force to kill American and British troops, for the German army to fight the Allies in Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, for England to have been bombed, or for Allied ships to have been attacked at sea." (24)

In 1938, "following a series of meetings with Luftwaffe chief Herman Goring, [ITT founder and chairman Sosthenes] Behn encouraged ITT's Lorenz subsidiary to purchase 28 percent of the Focke-Wulf firm, manufacturer of the bombers that were to sink so many Allied ships during the war," according to researcher and author Jim Hougan. (25)

Anthony Sampson, in "The Sovereign State of ITT," reports on what is perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the US/Nazi corporate partnership, war reparations:

". . . ITT now presents itself as the innocent victim of the Second World War, and has been handsomely recompensed for its injuries. In 1967, nearly thirty years after the events, ITT actually managed to obtain $27 million in compensation from the American government, for war damage to Focke-Wulf plants - on the basis that they were American property bombed by Allied bombers." (26)

The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission was responsible for this payment to ITT, and other U.S. corporations as well.

Bradford Snell reports that "After the cessation of hostilities, GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing. By 1967 GM had collected more than $33 million in reparations and Federal tax benefits for damages to its warplane and motor vehicle properties in formerly Axis territories . . . Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne." (27)

back to top

ALLEN DULLES: ARCHITECT OF THE US-NAZI NETWORK

Contemporary history records Allen Dulles as one of America's top spymasters, from his early days in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II, to his position as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1950s and early 1960s (until President John F. Kennedy fired him over the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961), and finally to his membership on the controversial Warren Commission, which investigated President Kennedy's assassination. Until recently, his pivotal role in promoting a U.S. corporate relationship with the Nazis was little known. Loftus and Aarons describe the post-World War I role of Allen, and his brother, John Foster, in the following terms:

"We first turn to Dulles's creation of international finance networks for the benefit of the Nazis. In the beginning, moving money into the Third Reich was quite legal. Lawyers saw to that. And Allen and his brother John Foster were not just any lawyers. They were international finance specialists for the powerful Wall Street law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. . . .

"The Dulles brothers were the ones who convinced American businessmen to avoid U.S. government regulation by investing in Germany. It began with the Versailles Treaty, in which they played no small role. After World War I the defeated German government promised to pay war reparations to the Allies in gold, but Germany had no gold. It had to borrow the gold from Sullivan & Cromwell's clients in the United States. Nearly 70 percent of the money that flowed into Germany during the 1930s came from investors in the United States, many of them Sullivan & Cromwell clients. . .

"Foster Dulles, as a member of the board of I.G. Farben, seems to have had little difficulty in getting along with whoever was in charge. Some of our sources insist that both Dulles brothers made substantial but indirect contributions to the Nazi party as the price of continued influence inside the new German order. . . ." (28)

NOTES: U.S. CORPORATIONS AND THE NAZIS

THE NEW WORLD (DIS)ORDER

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling power.

"Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing." - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1)

As mentioned earlier, the secret U.S./Nazi corporate alliance during World War II was the result of substantial American investment in post-World War I Germany. In order to protect these investments, and the accumulating profits, the U.S. multinational corporations remained an important part of the Nazi war machine until the final defeat of Germany in 1945. What effect did the end of World War II have on this faction of American Nazi collaborators?

In this section we will review the evidence, much of it from recently de-classified documents, that this pro-Nazi faction, rather than facing charges of high treason, became an integral part of the United States national security apparatus, extending its fascist influence in both foreign and domestic policies and, in effect, creating what has been referred to as America's "Invisible Government." The excuse, of course, was Communism.

back to top

THE BUGGING OF WALL STREET

Aarons and Loftus' research, which documents the Dulles brothers' pro-Nazi activities, did not go unnoticed. "Before his death, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg granted one of the authors an interview. Justice Goldberg had served in U.S. intelligence during World War II. Although he said little in public, he had collected information on the Dulles boys' activities over the years. His verdict was blunt. 'The Dulles brothers were traitors.' They had betrayed their country, by giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war." (2)

Much of what is now known about the activities of the Dulles brothers and other American Nazi collaborators in banking and industry came as a result of a top-secret joint U.S.-British intelligence program known as the Ultra Project. "Prior to the United States' entry into the war," write Loftus and Aarons, "Roosevelt permitted British intelligence to wiretap American targets.

"According to our sources in the intelligence community, the area of coverage included a good bit of the New York financial district, several floors of Rockefeller Plaza, part of the RCA Building, two prominent clubs, and various shipping firms. . . .

"The wiretap unit reported to Sir William Stephenson, a Canadian electronics genius better known by his code name, 'Intrepid.' From his headquarters in the Rockefeller building, Stephenson's job was to identify U.S. companies that were aiding the Nazis." (3)

"Several months before the United States declared war," continue Loftus and Aarons, "Bill Donovan invited Allen Dulles to head up the New York branch of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), President Roosevelt's new intelligence agency and the precursor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Its primary mission was to collect information against the Nazis and their collaborators. In other words, Dulles was asked to inform on his own clients in New York. . . ."

"Roosevelt had approved his selection as head of the COI Manhattan branch because he wanted Dulles where the British wiretappers could keep an eye on him. . . .

"One floor below Dulles was Stephenson's wiretap shop. Inside Dulles's operation was one of Roosevelt's spies, Arthur Goldberg . . ." who, "confirmed . . . that Dulles's appointment was a setup. . . .

"Roosevelt was giving Dulles enough rope to hang himself. From Stephenson's Manhattan wiretaps, it is known that Dulles was continuing to work with his German business clients, who wanted to remove Hitler and install a puppet of their own who would make peace with the West while forging an alliance against Stalin. It was to be a kinder, gentler Third Reich, favorably disposed to American financial interests. . . . (4)

"The wiretap evidence against Dulles originally was collected by a special section of Operation Safehaven, the U.S. Treasury Department's effort to trace the movement of stolen Nazi booty towards the end of the war. Roosevelt and Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau had set up Dulles by giving him the one assignment - intelligence chief in Switzerland - where he would be most tempted to aid his German clients with their money laundering."

Roosevelt had one thing in mind: "The sudden release of the Safehaven intercepts would force a public outcry to bring treason charges against those British and American businessmen who aided the enemy in time of war." Among the targets were Allen Dulles, Henry Ford, and other U.S. industrialists. (5)

The plan failed, however, due to Dulles being "tipped off . . . that he was under surveillance" in time to cover his tracks. One possible source of the leak was Vice President Henry Wallace, "who constantly shared information with his brother-in-law, the Swiss minister in Washington during the war."

"Wallace," the authors reveal, "gave many details of his secret meetings with Roosevelt to the Swiss diplomat." The problem was that, at the time, the Nazis "had recruited the head of the Swiss secret service."

It is, perhaps, no coincidence that Roosevelt dropped Wallace during the 1944 election, choosing instead Senator Harry S. Truman as his new running mate. (6)

back to top

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

"After the Nazis' 1943 defeat at Stalingrad," write Loftus and Aarons, "various Nazi businessmen realized they were on the losing side and made plans to evacuate their wealth. The Peron government in Argentina was receiving the Nazi flight capital with open arms, and Dulles helped it hide the money. . . .

"The Guinness Book of Records lists the missing Reichsbank treasure [estimated at $2.5 billion dollars] as the greatest unsolved bank robbery in history. Where did it go? . . . .

"According to our source, the bulk of the treasure was simply shipped a very short distance across Austria and through the Brenner Pass into Italy. Dulles's contacts were waiting at the Vatican. The German-Vatican connection was how Allen Dulles and the Nazi industrialists planned to get away with it. . . ." (7)

The effort was successful, according to the authors, who state that the "vast bulk of the wealth of the Nazi empire" which "disappeared before the end of World War II" reappeared "within a decade in the hands of the same men who financed Hitler's war against the Jews. Allen Dulles's clients were not defeated, only inconvenienced." The authors identify two of Dulles's accomplices as James Jesus Angleton and his father, Hugh Angleton. The Angletons were members of X-2, the OSS counterintelligence branch in Italy, in 1943.

Like Dulles, Hugh Angleton was financially involved with Axis powers. He was the European representative for National Cash Register in Italy before the war and business associate of Dulles. When World War II broke out, the authors write,

". . . Angleton was crushed financially as all his investments were in enemy hands.

"Like Dulles's clients, he wanted his money back. Like Dulles, Hugh offered his services to the OSS." With high-placed contacts in Mussolini's Interior Ministry, Hugh was accepted and "promoted rapidly in U.S. intelligence. He became second in command to Colonel Clifton Carter, the OSS commander in Italy at the end of World War II." (8)

Perhaps the most controversial information which is now emerging with the release of recently declassified documents concerning World War II, is the role of the Vatican, both in its pre-war German investments, and its role in helping Nazi war criminals escape justice after the war. Concerning the Vatican-German investments, Loftus and Aarons are quite clear:

"That the Vatican encouraged such investments and even donated money to Hitler himself cannot be denied. A German nun, Sister Pascalina, was present at its creation. In the early 1920s she was the housekeeper for Archbishop of the Vatican-Nazi connection . . . Eugenio Pacelli, then the papal nuncio in Munich. Sister Pascalina vividly recalls receiving Adolf Hitler late one night and watching the archbishop give Hitler a large amount of Church money."

In addition, Eugenio Pacelli

"later convinced the Vatican to invest millions of dollars in the rising German economy, money from the Vatican's land settlement that ended the Pope's claim of sovereignty over territory outside the walls of Vatican City. It was Pacelli who negotiated the Concordat with Germany and then had to deal with the consequences of his own mistakes when he became pope on the eve of World War II.

"The Vatican and the Dulles brothers had the same problem. Once their money was in Hitler's hands, how would they get it back?"

The authors interviewed "a former colonel in U.S. Military Intelligence who specialized in tracing enemy assets. He claimed that only a tiny portion of the Reichbank's gold ingots actually reached the Vatican Bank, while the rest was held in cooperative banks in Belgium, Liechtenstein, and especially Switzerland." It was only necessary to transfer the paperwork on the gold, not the gold itself. Since, by that time, Dulles knew his telegraph communications were being monitored by the British wiretap operation in New York, he instead used couriers to "ensure absolute secrecy in moving the foreign currency and the ownership documents out of Switzerland . . . special agents of the Vatican who had diplomatic immunity to move back and forth across both Nazi and Allied lines. . . ." (9)

". . . . The Vatican's eminence grise for Balkan intelligence, the Bosnian-Croat priest Krunoslav Draganovic, was involved in transporting large quantities of Nazi booty, especially gold bullion, from Austria to the safety of the Holy See with the help of the Dulles-Angleton clique in Rome. Some of the booty was transported in truck convoys run by British troops. Other shipments were carried in U.S. Army jeeps provided to Father Draganovic so that he could conduct pastoral visits' on behalf of the Vatican.

"Another ardent Nazi propagandist and agent, Slovenian bishop Gregory Rozman, was sent to Bern with the help of Dulles's friends in U.S. intelligence. Declassified U.S. intelligence files confirm that Bishop Rozman was suspected of trying to arrange the transfer of huge quantities of Nazi-controlled gold and Western currency that had been discreetly secreted in Swiss banks during the war. For a few months the Allies prevented Rozman from gaining access to this treasure, but then the way was mysteriously cleared. In fact, the Dulles-Vatican connection had fixed it, and before too long the bishop obtained the loot for his Nazi friends, who were hiding in Argentina.

"Such instances turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg. It has long been acknowledged that it was Allen Dulles who tipped off General Patton about the buried German treasure that lay in the path of the U.S. Third Army. Patton explicitly urged General Eisenhower to conceal as much of the gold as possible, but his advice was refused.

"Our sources claim that Dulles and his colleagues exerted a great deal of influence to ensure that Western investments in Nazi Germany were not seized by the Allies as reparations for the Jews. After all, much of 'Hitler's Gold' had originally belonged to the bankers in London and New York. The . . . captured Nazi loot went underground. . . .

"In the cause of anticommunism, and to retrieve its own investments in Germany, the Vatican agreed to become part of Dulles's smuggling window, through which the Nazis and their treasure could be moved to safety." (10)

On April 12th, 1945, Roosevelt died, and Truman became President. May 7th, Nazi Germany surrendered after the suicide of Adolf Hitler. September 2nd, Japan surrendered.

World War II finally ended, but at the cost of more than 35,000,000 lives, over half that amount civilians. The death toll for the United States was 294,000. (11)

back to top

A PLEDGE BETRAYED

"Dulles and some of his friends volunteered for postwar service with the government not out of patriotism but of necessity," according to Loftus and Aarons. "They had to be in positions of power to suppress the evidence of their own dealings with the Nazis. The Safehaven investigation was quickly stripped from Treasury . . . and turned over to the State Department. There Dulles's friends shredded the index to the interlocking corporations and blocked further investigations.

"Dulles had this goal in mind: Not a single American businessman was ever going to be convicted of treason for helping the Nazis. None ever was, despite the evidence. According to one of our sources in the intelligence community, the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps had two large 'Civilian Internment Centers' in Occupied Germany, code named 'Ashcan' and 'Dustbin.' The CIC had identified and captured a large number of U.S. citizens who had stayed in Germany and aided the Third Reich all through World War II. The evidence of their treason was overwhelming. The captured German records were horribly incriminating.

"Yet Victor Wohreheide, the young Justice Department attorney responsible for preparing the treason trials, suddenly ordered the prisoners' release. All of the Nazi collaborators were allowed to return to the United States and reclaim their citizenship. At the same time, another Justice Department attorney, O. John Rogge, who dared to make a speech about Nazi collaborators in the United States was quickly fired. However, the attorney who buried the treason cases was later promoted to special assistant attorney general.

"Dulles and his clients had won. The proof is in the bottom line. Forty years after World War II, Fortune magazine published a list of the hundred richest men in the world. There were no Jews on the list. The great fortunes of the Rothschilds and Warburgs had been diminished to insignificance by the Depression, the Nazis, and World War II.

"Near the top of the list were several multibillionaires who had been prominent members of Hitler's inner circle. A few even had served time in Allied prisons as Nazi war criminals, but they were all released quickly. The bottom line is that the Nazi businessmen survived the war with their fortunes intact and rebuilt their industrial empires to become the richest men in the world. Dulles's clients got away with it. President Roosevelt's dream of putting the Nazis' moneymen on trial died with him."

England also failed to see justice done, according to the authors: "The British authorities in Germany ordered the U.S. Army to release all of the VIP British Nazis and hand over the evidence against them. Even before Roosevelt's death, Churchill had already begun to withdraw from his commitment to prosecute Nazis." The reason?" Too many British industries might be seized as Nazi fronts. Too many upper-class collaborators might have to be prosecuted. The Germans were defeated, and the Soviets were now the enemy.

"Funding for British war crimes investigations suddenly dried up. Nazi bankers such as Herman Abs were released from prison to work as economic advisers in the British zone of Germany. The history of British 'efforts' to punish Nazis after the war is aptly summarized in Tom Bower's book, 'The Pledge betrayed'. . . .

"The pattern was repeated all over the remnants of the Third Reich. Despite direct orders from President Truman and General Eisenhower, I.G. Farben, the citadel of the Nazi industrialists, was never dismantled. Dulles's clients demanded, and received, Allied compensation for bomb damage to their factories in Germany. Only a few of the top Nazis were executed. Most of the rest were released from prison within a few years. Others, . . . would go virtually unpunished. No one ever investigated the Nazi sympathizers in Western intelligence who had made it all possible." (12)

As we have seen, the American industrialists who did business with the Nazis were in no way inconvenienced by war crimes trials, and even received compensation for damages to their Nazi war plants. Some Nazi industrialists were charged and convicted by the Nuremberg war crimes trials but, in their book, "The American Establishment," authors Leonard and Mark Silk observe that in the late 1940s "the United States and its leaders faced an agonizing moral problem in coming to terms with those German industrialists who had willingly done business with the Nazis and who were now just as willing to do business with the Americans in the reconstruction of Germany. The problem was dramatized when those German industrialists who had been convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg were all released from Landsberg prison in early 1951, their sentences commuted by the American High Commissioner [of German Occupation], John J. McCloy.

". . . . Whatever the motivation," the authors continue, "the blanket release of the convicted industrialists was taken within Germany - and by them - as a sign that businessmen were not to be seriously blamed for their involvement in matters for which others were hanged or suffered long imprisonment." (13)

The motivation for the mass release of imprisoned Nazi war criminals is described in the book, "The New Germany and the Old Nazis," by T.H. Tetens, an expert in German affairs.