The BUSH Cabal Part IIII

The German Ships

*Meanwhile in 1920 the Harrimans had initiated their "German connection", relaunching Germany's Hamburg-Amerika Line, whose steamships the Harrimans had somehow acquired after the ships were confiscated by the US at the end of WWI. They now took a half share in the line, & until 1940 had complete control of the US end.

At the other end was to be Baron Rudolph von Schroeder, vice president and director of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, treasurer of the support organization for the Nazi Party's private armies and a gentleman who sent his grandson Baron Johann Rudolph for a tour of Prescott Bush's Brown Brothers Harriman offices in New York City in December 1932, shortly before Hitler took power in Germany.

When the elected German government tried (unsuccessfully) to make the Nazi Party private armies disband in 1932, the Hamburg-Amerika Line distributed propaganda attacks against it for doing so. After the Nazi takeover, Hamburg-Amerika was henceforth to provide free passage to individuals going abroad for Nazi propaganda and spying purposes, to subsidise pro-Nazi newspapers in the USA, and in general act as a conduit for the Nazi cause.



Bush, Soviet Russia, the Thyssens and the Nazi Connection

*But shipping was just the beginning. WA Harriman & Co. linked with the Hamburg-based Warburg bank to make widespread investments in the new German Republic in the 1920s. Germany was then democratic, but from Berlin they also made huge secretive oil & mining deals with Soviet Russia through commissar Leon Trotsky and KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, helping advance the Soviet state so detested out loud at the time by the Republican Party.

The start of the Great Depression saw heavy financial losses by both Bush and the Harrimans. Indeed Prescott Bush was soon in deep water as a partner. The German Government's moratorium on debt repayments put his own business accounts heavily into the red. The Harrimans had deep pockets though, & magnanimously compensated their protégé Prescott for his shortfalls. In the nature of bankers this was not a straightforward gift however, and relied on new income for the company to resolve the money owed, although Bush was also paid a generous salary to live on in the meantime.

Losses were not the name of the game for long, however. Despite the ruinous Depression there was still money to be made out there, and in Germany soon a whole new political order to make it from. Germany had given the Harrimans and Bush a problem, and Germany could resolve it. The opportunity was made the most of.

While in Berlin in 1922 W. Averell Harriman had become acquainted with leading German industrialist and steel magnate Fritz Thyssen, and agreed to set up a bank for Thyssen in New York. As a result the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was established in August 1924 in the Manhattan offices of WA Harriman & Co., with George Herbert Walker as president.



Thyssen with Hitler

The UBC was no ordinary bank. It was a front in the US for Thyssen, who bankrolled & boosted Adolf Hitler from his early days of the beer hall "putsch" of 1923 onwards, and without whose money and support Hitler could not have come to power. Moreover the Thyssen industrial group became leading builders of the German war machine. In the end (late 1938) Thyssen, a Catholic, rejected Hitler and resigned his State positions after Hitler's murderous intentions towards the Jewish race (and any opposition) became crystal clear. Thyssen fled Germany in 1939. He was eventually arrested in France by the Vichy regime, intending to flee to South America but having failed to leave soon enough during the rapid fall of France, and was sent back to imprisonment in Germany. However his confiscated companies remained in Nazi hands and their Harriman-Bush connection continued as before.

Prescott Bush, his pal "Bunny" Harriman and six others were directors of the UBC from 1934 to 1943, wholly within the Nazi era. Moreover it was Prescott who ran the business day-to-day. Prescott and W. Averell Harriman were also the sole directors of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, which occupied the prestigious address of 1 Wall Street New York (Prescott's father-in-law George Herbert Walker was the company president). Much of Harriman Fifteen's investments were in the Silesian Holding Company, which owned mining operations in Poland. In the Nazi era, Silesian was to boost its profits using slave labor from the death camps.

On 4 January 1933, in the midst of a political crisis and struggle for the Chancellorship in Germany, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler and his crony Rudolf Hess met the influential politician Franz von Papen, a former Chancellor, at the office of merchant banker Kurt von Schroeder, in Cologne. Schroeder, some of whose other family connections are mentioned above, was amongst other things a co-director of theThyssen-Huautte foundry. The other co-director was Johann Groeninger, who also happened to be on the board of the Union Banking Corporation with Prescott Bush.

At this time the Nazi's funding was exhausted from fighting two general elections in seven months. As well, in the second of those elections the Nazi share of representatives elected to the Reichstag had fallen significantly (from 230 to 196). Yet Hitler emerged from this meeting with two trump cards. First, an understanding with von Papen that was to lead to Hitler assuming the Chancellorship on January 30. As a result, a murderous demagogue was soon able to seize dictatorial power, with appalling future consequences for humanity. Secondly, the Nazis received substantial funding to revitalise their party, from a source unknown.

Indeed no one since has ever been able to identify the source of this particular critical payment. For like many other trails of our investigation, any relevant paperwork has conveniently vanished. Given the von Schroeder connection however, there is an obvious candidate.



Fritz Thyssen

In his book "I Paid Hitler", published in several Allied countries in 1941 after his imprisonment by the Nazis he had now broken with, Thyssen confessed "For ten years before he came to power I supported Hitler and his party. I myself was a National Socialist (Nazi)". Much of the book is in fact a rather transparent attempt by Thyssen to distance himself from "Der Fuhrer" in retrospect, and downplay his own role while "dishing dirt" on other prominent figures of the era. However Thyssen did support Hitler financially from 1923, and in the critical 1930-33 period donated possibly over three million German marks to the Nazis (the amount is disputed & he admits only to a million, but there are no doubts the figure was substantial). In return Thyssen gained control of the German steel industry and was given high-sounding positions in the Nazi regime. His American operations were managed during the Nazi era by Prescott Bush, until seized by the US government in late 1942. After WWII Thyssen regained control of his companies, less a 15% "fine", but died in 1951 while visiting his daughter in Argentina.

If the Harrimans & Prescott Bush were not directly involved in promoting Hitler to power they were certainly remarkably quick to take advantage of the new situation. For in May 1933 negotiations were concluded in Berlin between Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's new economics minister, and a US international attorney (John Foster Dulles) to coordinate Nazi-American trade. Coincidentally or not, Kurt von Schroeder was one of the principal German advisers assisting this negotiation. A syndicate of 150 firms and individuals was formed as a result, and it was headed by none other than the Harriman International Company.



On the Side of the Enemy

*As war approached in Europe, Prescott Bush & the Harrimans continued to happily rake in the profits from various enterprises that were "in the possession of and have been operated by the (Nazi) German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country in its war effort" (as described in a US Govt. investigative report).

Bush held at least thirteen other directorships, including the board of the Simmons Company (later a major financial contributor to the campaigns of both Bush presidencies), the Continental Bank & Trust Company of New York, and United States Guaranty Trust. Why did Prescott Bush & the Harrimans not stick to those, and divest themselves of their Nazi connections, disassociate themselves once it was clear what was really happening in Germany? After all, even Thyssen himself had finally rejected Hitler.

But no, on the contrary the shameful truth is they went on during the 1930's as if nothing was changed, and continued to make money from banking for the Nazis, and from being closely involved with the companies that were building the German military might that was to overrun Europe and threaten to annihilate free Western civilisation.

After Germany invaded Poland, the US Govt. blocked Nazi payments to the Silesian-American Corporation's US bondholders. Undeterred, George Herbert Walker tried three times to arrange subterfuge schemes so the money could come in through Switzerland. The next year (1940), the UBC's US assets were frozen, so Prescott Bush & the Harrimans tended to the Thyssen US affairs allegedly for nothing, as a gesture to their client. It seems unlikely that they were not well compensated later, after Thyssen was freed.

Once US soldiers were dying in a war for which the Thyssen companies were providing much of the physical means, the US authorities could no longer stomach what was in effect treason. After October 20 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. Government ordered the seizure of Nazi German operations in the US. Companies seized that Prescott Bush was heavily involved with included the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Holland-American Trading Corporation, the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation & the Silesian-American Corporation. All property of the Hamburg-Amerika Line had already been sequestered two months before.

W. Averell Harriman was also chairman of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, an American group owning one-third of a complex of steel-making, coal-mining and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland, in which one Friedrich Flick owned two-thirds. Flick, later imprisoned after the Nuremberg war crimes trials, was with Fritz Thyssen the major co-owner of the German Steel Trust, and from 1932 contributed large sums to the Nazi Party. Like Thyssen, Flick's money helped finance the Nazis private armies, the black-shirted S.S. (Schutzstaffel) and the brown-shirted S.A. storm troopers (Sturmabteilung), who together destroyed German democracy on the streets, paving the way for Hitler's rise to absolute power.

Prescott Bush concentrated on the Harriman's German activities, and with his father-in-law George Herbert Walker directly supervised the Flick-Harriman operations. Some have claimed that Bush had consciously promoted a "Hitler Project" as being good for Germany and business, others that he was just blinded by greed.


There is no proof that Prescott was himself ever a Nazi or identified with their beliefs - just unassailable evidence of an amoral banker and businessman happy to make money out of the Nazis and to assist their foreign financial dealings in any way possible, as long as there was profit in it.

As to the charge that Bush and the Harrimans personally and intentionally worked to bring Hitler to power, because they thought it would be best for Germany, business and their own pockets, the minimum we can say is "not proven, but cannot be excluded, and circumstantial evidence must cast them under a cloud". Fortunately for Bush and the Harrimans, their ubiquitous circle of friends and Bonesmen kept their names out of the official announcements concerning the seized companies. No charges were ever laid against them, moreover.

Most Americans today have never heard of the Bush-Harriman involvement with the Nazis, and to this day the major media of the USA have generally not investigated these matters, for reasons their corporate directors seem reluctant to discuss.

In this context we note that:
*Prescott Bush was a director of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System, the large media network). *E. Roland Harriman was a director of Newsweek magazine. He also purchased the New York Daily Herald in 1924 and later made further media investments. *Barbara Bush (wife of President Bush Snr.) is the daughter of Marvin Pierce, who was executive vice-president and later head of the McCall Corporation magazine publishing group. *Samuel Bush's son James Bush married Janet Newbold, daughter of the owner of the Evening Star newspaper of Washington. *The Fox TV network and News Corp. newspaper empire are controlled by Rupert Murdoch, an ardent Bush supporter. *Clear Channel Communications fields 1,200 pro-Bush radio stations across the USA. *There are many other US media connections influenced by Bonesmen, and by relatives and friends of the Bushes, Walkers & Harrimans. So the doubtful "independence" of the large US media on an issue like this could only be resolved by its investigatory actions proving otherwise. So far it has failed the test miserably. Unless this situation is reversed, the charge "corrupt and biased" in this area is difficult to refute.

Nor did it end there. After WWII, a further eighteen additional Brown Brothers Harriman and UBC-related client assets were seized under The Trading with the Enemy Act. Some showed a continued relationship with the Thyssen family after the first 1942 seizures. Worse, after the war Bush and the Harrimans did further business for related concerns moving assets into Switzerland, Panama, Argentina & Brazil. This flight of Nazi capital, especially to Latin America, was to lead to much corruption there and protect & assist Nazi holdouts for many years.

How time blurs memories. Today the name Thyssen is more often remembered in connection with the wonderful art collections of Fritz's younger brother Baron Thyssen Bornemisza de Kaszon, and his younger wife the ultra-glamorous Baroness von Thyssen. And the Bushes parade themselves as the defenders of civilisation against totalitarianism, when they made a fortune being exactly the opposite.



The Legacy

*Many people might believe that Prescott Bush should have been punished for his misdeeds. Most would say that if the profits and blood money he gained from dealing for the Nazis were not confiscated that would be an outrage.

But Prescott Bush got away with it all. He was by now extremely well-connected in general, plus his Skull and Bones membership gave him hidden high-placed allies throughout the decision-making levels of Government. So not only did he keep all the money he had made from his Nazi front company dealings, in 1951 Prescott Bush also received US$750,000 (worth about US$5.3 million in today's values) for his single share in the UBC bank.

Some of all this money was used to help fund both his son George Herbert Walker Bush's first business enterprise, and to support his (Prescott Bush's) own political campaigns. With his big money connections it was an easy step for Prescott to become (1947 -1950) Connecticut Republican finance chairman. He could also easily afford a first unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1950, followed by a triumphant bid in the second of two contests in 1952. The Bushes were now launched onto the stage of public power.

The nauseating truth then is that the present US President's family fortune was largely built on corrupt arms trading and Nazi profits, which have helped propel two Bushes to the White House. Worse, the present President's grandfather's efforts had the effect of helping put Hitler in power. The family for whom it seems that "it's all just business" apparently has no qualms even today about its past*. Which is perhaps not so surprising when we look at the later dealings of the Bush dynasty, their Saudi-Bin Laden connections, their scandalous business activities and their willingness to start a war which benefited them personally but which has plunged America into a Vietnam-style maelstrom.

In summary, there is considerably more circumstantial evidence today to suggest that President Bush's grandfather helped put Hitler in power than there was ever genuine evidence in the hands of George W. Bush when he took America to war in Iraq, claiming a threat of current and developing weapons of mass destruction. If this comparison is not instructive to the voters of America, then we must despair for the future of Western democracy.

And if these same facts do not persuade the US media to examine the Bush background more closely, then those same media that followed the war-at-all-costs bandwagon in 2003 without critically examining its credentials have already weighed themselves in the balance and been found wanting.

*Although President Bush Sr. may have kept a few secretly. An interesting sidelight in a family in which dynastic names are carried forward proudly is that George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife Barbara Bush named their daughter Dorothy after George's mother, another daughter (Pauline Robinson) after Barbara's mother, one son after Barbara's father (Marvin), another son after George's mother's father & himself (George), a third son (Jeb, actually John) probably after his brother Jonathan, but omitted his own father's name entirely.

Instead he called his other son Neil Mallon, after the man who gave him his first big job. However the name Prescott has been used again elsewhere in the Bush line, and true to form it crops up most dishonourably on Presidential election night 2000 in the amazing Fox News scam of that evening. (see Part Three).

** On 1 October 2004 the US Air Forces's No.2 weapons buyer, Darleen Druyun, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment after admitting to inflating prices on a Boeing contract and giving Boeing confidential pricing data from a European rival, in connection with future employment at the giant aerospace company. The corruption investigation was pushed by" honest John" Pentagon watchdog Senator John McCain. However the Bush administration is refusing to allow Senate Armed Services Committee investigators access to over 100 emails connected to Marvin Sambur, the No.1. Air Force weapons buyer. Meanwhile Air Force Secretary James Roche, a former vice-president of the huge Northrop Grumman aircraft and weapons systems conglomerate, and White House official Robin Cleveland are also under investigation for a "conflict of interest"...