• Thyssen funds found in US is a 1941 news article, briefly summarizing an investigation into the financiers of Adolf Hitler, including Prescott Bush, the father of American President George H. W. Bush, and grandfather of American President George W. Bush. We've added some hyperlinks, to help readers acquaint themselves with the mostly-forgotten cast of characters.
• Bush, the Nazis and America, by David Neiwert, is an exhaustively researched, long and thorough yet easy to under-stand examination of the relationship between the Bush family and the Nazi regime. This article makes it clear that nobody in the Bush family was a brownshirt hell-bent on killing Jews, but that the opportunity to make a profit dealing with Germany outweighed any moral concerns -- and a substantial profit was made. The article also debunks several of the hyperbolic claims swirling around the subject of Bushes and Nazis.
• Heir to the Holocaust, by Toby Rogers, covers some of the same ground as Mr Neiwert's article, and provides another easily understood overview of how Prescott Bush came out at least $1.5-million ahead from his dealings with Nazis. Adjusted for inflation since 1951, that's about $11-million in 2005 funds -- not a Rockefeller fortune, but considering how it was earned, certainly nothing to be proud of.
• Bush grandfather was director of bank linked to Nazis is a curious Associated Press article from 2003. It's curious for what's left out, especially when contrasted to Neiwert and Rogers' articles above. For example, while the author spotlights the fact that Prescott Bush owned only a single share of the Union Banking Corporation, there's no mention of the substantial payout Bush received for that single share.
• And finally, we link to a 2004 article from London's Guardian, How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power, which explains everything again, adding interesting coverage of two Holocaust survivors who sought to sue the U.S. government and the Bush family, and brief accounts of several upcoming books on the subject.
Helen & Harry Highwater, Unknown News
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Former war crimes prosecutor
links Bush family to Nazis
Sarasota [FL] Herald-Tribune
Nov. 12, 2000
The president of the Florida Holocaust Museum said Saturday that George W. Bush's grandfather derived a portion of his personal fortune through his affiliation with a Nazi-controlled bank.
John Loftus, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit, said his research found that Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a principal in the Union Banking Corp. in Manhattan in the late 1930s and the 1940s. Leading Nazi industrialists secretly owned the bank at that time, Loftus said, and were moving money into it through a second bank in Holland even after the United States declared war on Germany.
The bank was liquidated in 1951, Loftus said, and Bush's grandfather and great-grandfather received $1.5 million from the bank as part of that dissolution.
"That's where the Bush family fortune came from: It came from the Third Reich," Loftus said.Loftus made his remarks during a speech as part of the Sarasota Reading Festival. The co-author of Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis and the Swiss Banks, Loftus documented the Swiss bank accounts that harbored funds confiscated from Holocaust victims and the participation of Italian priests in smuggling Nazi war criminals to safe haven in Canada, Central and South America and the United States after the war.
Although he said he had a file of paperwork linking the bank and Prescott Bush to Nazi money, Loftus did not provide that documentation Saturday.
Loftus pointed out that the Bush family would not be the only American political dynasty to have ties to the "wrong side of World War II." The Rockefellers had financial connections to Nazi Germany, he said.
Loftus also reminded his audience that John F. Kennedy's father, an avowed isolationist and former ambassador to Great Britain, profited during the 1930s and '40s from Nazi stocks that he owned.
"No one today blames the Democrats because Jack Kennedy's father bought Nazi stocks," Loftus said. Still, he said, it is important to understand these historical connections for what they tell us about politics today. The World War II experience points out how easy it was then -- and remains today -- to hide money in multinational funds.
That money flows into American politics today, he said, from "a series of multinational corporations behaving like pirates. They don't care about ideology; they care about money."
Loftus' speech left many in tears.
"I am absolutely shocked," said Nancy Krauss of Punta Gorda. "I wish this would have come out before the election. My husband voted for Bush. I don't think he would have voted for him if he would have known."
NEW YORK -- Existence of a $3,000,000 fund established here by Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist and original banker of Adolf Hitler was disclosed today in a story in the New York Journal-American.
The story added:
Whether the money is for Thyssen personally, or, perhaps, for some of his high-placed Nazi friends in the event of an "emergency" compelling them to leave Germany, no one knew.
However, it will do neither Thyssen nor any of his Nazi friends any good now, as it has been "frozen" along with the $4,500,000,000 Axis assets now held in this country.
The money exists in funds of the Union Banking Corporation, an investment company incorporated and licensed under New York state laws in August, 1924.
Also a director is H. D. Pennington, Brown Brothers Harriman and Co. manager.
On Jan. 14, 1941, Knight Wooley, another partner in the Harriman company, wrote to State Banking Superintendent William R. White in behalf of Harriman, Morris, Bush and Pennington:
"Should the United States enter the war, they fell [sic] they might be under some embarrassment because of their connection with the bank, even though we have no financial interest in the Union Banking Corporation, nor do we participate in its earnings."
Published by The Zanesville Signal[Zanesville, OH]
Bush, the Nazis and America
by David Neiwert, freelance journalist
Excerpt: ... it is clear that Harriman's enterprises, with Prescott Bush playing at least a significant role, was an important player in providing the capital that produced the Nazi war machine during the 1930s, and its activities had also played a role in facilitating the violent eliminationist politics that were being practiced by the fascists throughout Europe
Note: In Mr. Neiwert's series of articles, he quotes a few sentences from an earlier version this page:
"Were Bush's great-grandfather and grandfather Nazis? ... While there are no recorded incidents of them goose stepping or giving the 'Heil Hitler' salute, the short answer to the question is yes...."
Those words did appear here, and our earlier layout of this page made it confusingly easy to assume that was Unknown News talking, but it was actually a brief excerpt and link to this article by David E. Romm.
(Harriman also had major dealings with Italy's Benito Mussolini).
... It must be said that none of [the Bush family's] business dealings build any kind of case for the contention that either Prescott Bush or George Herbert Walker, the president's forebears, had anything more than a superficial ideological affinity for the Nazis. It is clear that from the majority of these actions that they primarily saw Nazi Germany as an excellent investment opportunity and had not the least hesitation about either doing business with Hitler, nor did they seem to consider the consequences of doing so very grave -- if anything, they were advantageous to their worldview.
This is grossly amoral, of course, but it is on a different plane than the enthusiastic and grotesque support for the Nazi ideology that was trumpeted by other American industrialists, including Henry Ford. ...
Excerpt: A portion of the slave labor force in Poland was "managed by Prescott Bush," according to a Dutch intelligence agent...
Six days after Pearl Harbor and the US declaration of war at the end of 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and US Attorney General Francis Biddle signed the Trading With the Enemy Act, which banned any business interests with US enemies of war. Prescott Bush continued with business as usual, aiding the Nazi invasion of Europe and supplying resources for weaponry that would eventually be turned on American solders in combat against Germany. ...
Bush grandfather was director of bank linked to Nazis
by Jonathan D. Salant, Associated Press
Oct. 19, 2003
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp., a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by the Associated Press.
Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, and Thyssen thought Hitler's Nazi party was preferable to communism. The documents do not show any evidence that Bush directly aided that effort. His position with Union Banking never was a political issue for Bush, who was elected to the Senate from Connecticut in 1952.
Reports of Bush's involvement with the seized bank have been circulating on the Internet for years and have been reported by some mainstream media. The newly declassified documents provide additional details about the Union Banking-Thyssen connection.
Trent Duffy, a spokesman for President Bush, declined to comment.
Union Banking was owned by a Dutch bank, Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaardt N.V., which was "closely affiliated" with the German conglomerate United Steel Works, according to an Oct. 5, 1942, report from the federal Office of Alien Property Custodian. The Dutch bank and the steel firm were part of the business and financial empire of Thyssen and his brother, Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, the report said.
The 4,000 Union Banking shares owned by the Dutch bank were registered in the names of the seven U.S. directors, according a document signed by Homer Jones, chief of the division of investigation and research of the Office of Alien Property Custodian, a World War II-era agency that no longer exists.
E. Roland Harriman, the bank chairman and brother of former New York Gov. W. Averell Harriman, held 3,991 shares. Bush had one share.
Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel that were confiscated by the U.S. government during World War II.
Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. No charges were brought against Union Banking's American directors. The federal government was too busy trying to fight the war, said Donald Goldstein, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
Fritz Thyssen broke with the Nazis in 1938 over their persecution of Catholics and Jews, and fled to Switzerland. He later was arrested and spent 1941 to 1945 in a Nazi prison. His brother lived in Switzerland from 1932 to 1947 but continued to operate businesses in Germany.
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
by Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell, The Guardian [London, UK]
September 25, 2004
Excerpt: The debate over Prescott Bush's behavior has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty. ...
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