How American corporations helped Hitler.

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During the Nuremberg trials, former President of the Imperial Bank, Hjalmar Schacht, said in an interview with an American lawyer: “If you want to indict industrialists who helped rearm Germany, you must indict yourself. You will be required to indict the Americans. The Opel automobile plant, for example, did not produce anything other than military products. Your General Motors owned this plant. Almost until the end of the war, with a special permission to trade with Germany, Italy, Japan, the American telecommunications company ITT conducted its business. Ford did not stop production in France after the German occupation by the Germans, while German Goering, who headed the Reichswerk German Goering industrial concern, personally provided special protection to the activities of Ford. What can I say, even if the Coca-Cola company, far from military affairs, has launched production of the Fanta drink in Germany!

The Standard Oil war did not prevent the conclusion through the British intermediaries of a contract with the German chemical concern I.G. Farbenidustri for the production of aviation gasoline in Germany. During the Second World War, not a single Standard Oil tanker was sunk by German submarines.

As you know, the Nuremberg Tribunal found Schacht not guilty

Let's take a closer look at this issue

Having entered the world stage after participating in the First World War, the United States paid great attention to the situation in Europe and especially to events in Germany. Back in 1921–1922 Captain Truman Smith, the assistant to the American military attache in Berlin, drew attention to the emotional and harsh speeches in Munich of the politician Adolf Hitler, who was still little-known in the country, who had led the German National Socialist Workers Party (NSDAP) since 1921. In 1922, an American diplomat met him.

From 1923 to 1926 Hitler and his party were financed through Swiss and Swedish banks. Since 1926, the Nazis began financing directly through banks and industrial concerns in Germany. In the fall of 1930, the head of the Reichsbank, Yalmar Schacht, visited the United States, who directly negotiated with representatives of American business. In private negotiations, he told them about the scenarios of A. Hitler coming to power in Germany and his concept of developing the country, the strategy to fight Bolshevism ... Soon, the attache of the American embassy in Berlin D. Gordon told the US Secretary of State G. Stimson in a diplomatic dispatch: '... Hitler Received significant financial support from certain circles of industrialists. Just today a rumor came to me from a source usually well informed that the various American financial circles represented here are very active in the same direction. ”

In May 1933, the president of the imperial bank, Yalmar Schacht, again visited America, where he met with President F. Roosevelt and major American financiers. Soon, Berlin receives investments in German industry and loans from the United States totaling over a billion dollars. A month later, in June, at an international conference in London, Hialmar Schacht also holds a series of meetings and negotiations with the head of the British bank, N. Montague. As then, during the Nuremberg trials, said J. Schacht, the UK provided loans to Germany in the amount of over a billion pounds, which amounted to two billion dollars in dollar terms.

After Germany experienced the economic crisis in the 1920s, which was aggravated by the payment of reparations to the winning countries, American industrial corporations and banks, taking advantage of the situation, bought up the assets of many key enterprises in the country. For example, belonging to the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil gained control of the German corporation I. G. Ferbenindustry ”, which actively financed the election campaign of A. Hitler in 1930. Over the Opel from 1929 to this day, its control is exercised by the American automobile corporation General Motors, belonging to the Dupont family (in general, you can write a separate Dupont The story of how he was a supporter of Hitler’s ideas created nationalist parties in the United States and ideologically helped fascist Germany). It was at the factories of this corporation in Germany that the famous Blitz trucks were made for the German army. ITT, an American telephone company, acquired 40% of German telephone networks.

The fact that the United States would not be lost or confused in the course of the war that broke out in Europe was clear even before the first shots. And indeed, not for the same American businessmen and government agencies for a long time bought up the German economy “wholesale and retail”, so that because of some kind of military operations there to give up profit ...

On the eve of World War II, US corporations and banks invested $ 800 million in the country's industry and financial system. The amount at that time is huge. Of these, the leading four from America invested about $ 200 million in the militarized German economy: Standard Oil - 120 million, General Motors - 35 million, ITT investments amounted to 30 million, and Ford - $ 17.5 million .

The fact that even after the United States entered World War II on December 11, 1941, American corporations continued to actively fulfill orders of firms of enemy countries, supported the activities of their branches in Germany, Italy and even Japan, is shocking. To do this, it was only necessary to apply for special permission to carry out economic activities with companies controlled by the Nazis or their allies. The presidential decree of December 13, 1941 allowed such transactions, doing business with enemy companies, if there was no special ban from the Treasury of America. Very often, American corporations without problems received permits to work with enemy firms and supplied them with the necessary steel, engines, aviation fuel, rubber, radio components ... So the power of the military industry of Germany and its allies was supported by the economic activities of the United States, whose companies received superprofits for their transactions With the enemy. Verily, to whom is war, and to whom is mother dear ...

Thus, the powerful Standard Oil regularly supplied the Hitler army with various fuels, and supplied the industry with synthetic rubber and various raw materials. Deliveries also went to Italy and Austria. Moreover, in the United States during the war there were serious problems with the supply of synthetic rubber for American industry. The Standard Oil war did not stop using British intermediaries to sign a contract with I. G. Ferbinidustri ', which allowed the production of aviation gasoline in Germany. So the Luftwaffe planes that bombed the peaceful cities of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, killed British and American soldiers, received gasoline created by the American corporation. During the Second World War, not a single Standard Oil tanker was sunk by German submarines. This is understandable - no one cuts the branch on which he sits.

Almost until the end of the war, with special permission to trade with Germany, Italy, Japan, the American ITT conducted its business. After the German occupation, the Ford concern did not stop production in France. Particular patronage of the concern's activities in Europe was provided personally by Hermann Goering, who headed the Reichswerk Hermann Goering industrial concern. Even the Coca-Cola company, far from military supplies, started production of the Fanta drink in Germany. And these are far from all examples of cooperation between big business in the USA and Nazi Germany during the war. Subsequently, Yalomir Schacht, in an interview with American doctor Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials, will say: “If you want to indict industrialists who helped rearm Germany, then you must indict yourself. The Opel automobile plant, for example, did not produce anything other than military products. Your General Motors owned this plant ... As you know, the Nuremberg Tribunal found J. Mine innocent.

General Electric (GE)

1946: This is not the first or not the last time that the giant General Electric (GE) company has appeared in a federal court on charges of violating antitrust law. The US government has accused GE and one of its partners of conspiring to monopolize the market, raise prices and crowd out competitors.

But it was an extraordinary antitrust affair. In the first post-war year, GE was brought to trial on charges of secret conspiracy with the main German arms manufacturing company Krupp. Their partnership artificially raised the value of US defense preparations. At the same time, it helped Hitler subsidize the rearmament of Germany. Cooperation between them continued even after the Nazi tanks invaded Poland.

GE was not alone in the world of big business in the United States in concluding cordial and profitable agreements with the corporations of Nazi Germany. Kodak, Dupont, and Shell Oil are also known for their friendly business relations with Germany. Thanks to recent reparations, such activities by General Motors (GM) and Ford are most widely known. And these cases are instructive.

When war broke out in 1939, GM and Ford, with the help of subsidiaries, controlled 70% of the German car market. Those companies 'quickly re-equipped production in order to become suppliers of military equipment for the German army,' writes M. Dobbs in the Washington Post.

“When American soldiers invaded Europe in June 1944 with jeeps, trucks and tanks produced by the Big Three as a result of one of the largest military programs ever implemented,” said Dobbs, “they were unpleasantly surprised that That the adversary also travels on Ford and Opel trucks manufactured at 100 percent subsidiaries owned by GM and flies on planes built by Opel.

Major US car manufacturers (including Chrysler) established multinational operations in the 1920s and 1930s, with factories in Germany, Eastern Europe and Japan.

The notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford created a kind of society of mutual admiration with Adolf Hitler. The German dictator enthusiastically applauded the American serial production. “I see Henry Ford as my inspiration,” said Hitler, who always kept a full-size portrait of this American industrialist above his desk. In 1938, Ford accepted the highest award that Nazi Germany could award to a foreigner, the Great Cross of the German Eagle.

Ford played a role in building up the military power of Nazi Germany before the war. US Army Intelligence reported that the 'real goal' of the truck assembly plant, opened in Berlin in 1938, was the production of 'military vehicles for the Wehrmacht.'

One senior GM official also received a medal from Hitler, apparently for granted and future services. GM's retraction into Germany began in 1935, after the opening of a truck factory near Berlin. In a few years, the trucks produced at this plant will become part of the German army convoys, which will rumble through Poland, France and the Soviet Union.

After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, GM chairman A.P. Sloan said the Nazi behavior 'should not be seen as the business of the managers of General Motors.' The GM factory in Germany was very profitable. “We have no right to stop working at this enterprise,” Sloan said.

GM and Ford were vital components of Nazi war effort. The German Ford was the second largest producer of trucks for the Nazi military. GM factories built thousands of bombers and jet boost systems for Luftwaffe fighters. At the same time, they were enriched by the production of aircraft engines for the US Army Air Corps.

“The sudden start of the war in September 1939 led to the complete switchover of GM and Ford plants in the axis countries to the production of aircraft and trucks,” the report of the US Senate Legal Committee in 1974 noted. “In total, GM and Ford ”built approximately 90% of the armored 3-ton semi-trucks and more than 70% of medium and large Reich trucks. These vehicles, in accordance with the reports of the American intelligence, served as 'the basis of the transport system of the German army.'

General Motors was much more important to the Nazi war machine than Switzerland, says researcher B. Snell. - Switzerland was only a storehouse for looted funds, while GM was an integral part of Germany’s military efforts. The Nazis could invade Poland and Russia without Switzerland. But they could not have done it without GM. ”

Company officials claimed that Hitler’s government took over the management of their German plants and that they “lost control” of the situation. But documents found in the German and American archives show that in some cases, American managers like Ford and GM continued to transfer those factories to military production.

“When American soldiers freed Ford’s factories” in Cologne and Berlin, they found poor foreign workers behind barbed wire and company documents praising ‘Führer’s genius’, M. Dobbs writes.

After the war, both GM and Ford brazenly demanded damages from the US government for damage to their factories in Germany caused by Allied aircraft bombing. In 1967, GM received compensation in the amount of $ 33 million from the US government for the bombing of the Russelheim plant.

Compared to Ford and GM, pulling GE into collaboration with Nazi Germany seems less outspoken and vast than these automakers. But, nevertheless, it is instructive, as it shows the complex relationship of GE with the Third Reich.

Back in 1904, GE began to join forces with major foreign 'competitors' to divide the global markets for critical goods and technologies. In the same year, GE entered into an agreement with AEG. The following year, GE established a relationship with Tokyo Electric. GE's early alliance with German firms was only temporarily broken by World War I. GE acquired a 16% stake in AEG and introduced 4 of its representatives on the AEG board. GE also gained a stake in Siemens, another large electrical company.

GE's patent agreements and its minority interest in German and Japanese corporations protected GE’s domestic market and at the same time opened up access to foreign markets.

It was the collusion of GE with the German steel company Krupp that influenced the US military efforts and brought it to a New York court.

Both GE and Krupp have been granted patents for tungsten carbide, a solid metal compound that is highly regarded for its use in cutting dies and in metal cutting. No company patent was sufficient to establish a monopoly. But together they could influence the world market.

Negotiations between GE and Krupp began in April 1928. A GE spokesman said that his company's willingness to enter a new business depends on 'to what extent they can overcome the competition.' After 8 months, they entered into an agreement giving GE the right to fix prices. GE has established a subsidiary, Karboloy, to manage this business.

Immediately, the price of tungsten carbide rose from $ 48 to $ 453 per pound.

GE used this agreement to harm or buy back a share of internal competitors. When the head of American Cutting Elloys asked GE to keep it in business, a GE spokesperson told him: “It seems obvious to me that the situation in the US market will be better when it has five carbide suppliers than six.”

GE, in its agreement with Krupp, agreed to sell tungsten carbide (also known as carbole) only in the western hemisphere and pay Krupp royalties. The owner of this company, Gustav Krupp, was the main corporate supporter of Adolf Hitler. Both before and after Hitler came to power, GE royalties indirectly subsidized the Nazis.

In 1935, when the US government began defense preparations, tungsten carbide (at GE prices) was found to be too expensive.

On December 11, 1939 (9 weeks after Hitler’s attack on Poland), a representative of GE International from Berlin telegraphed Dr. Z. Jeffries, official GE official, “Our friends at Osram [German lighting company associated with GE ] informed me yesterday that Krupp would be interested in capitalizing the royalties now received from Karbola ... In this regard, Dr. Luis (Krupp official representative) wants to meet with me in Zurich, where we should both be at Next week. They are very interested that Krupp’s name is not used in correspondence, especially in telegrams that may fall into unnecessary hands, and therefore, I should contact them in the future either as a European licensor in accordance with the Karbola contract, or simply As to Dr. Louis ... ”

'' Wrong hands 'could be either the US government or the governments of Europe attacked by Hitler,' the UE NEWS newspaper reported in 1948 in an article entitled 'GE agreed to defend the Nazis.'

“In 1940, when American defensive efforts were in full swing, GE was still telling the Nazi representatives who moved to Zurich in Switzerland how much tungsten carbide was used in the US. GE paid royalties to the Nazis for every pound used here. It was money for the Nazi war chest. ”

In other words, Hitler received 12 pounds of tungsten carbide for the same price that the US government paid for 1 pound. For every pound of material sold in the United States, Hitler, with the help of Krupp, received royalties that went to the purchase of military equipment.

In 1940, when Europe was at war, Krupp agreed to receive royalties from GE through a Swiss intermediary.

In August 1940, about a year after Hitler attacked Poland, GE sought to renew its monopoly agreement with Krupp. But the GE-Krupp deal came to an end as a result of the lawsuit and embargo imposed by the US government on the transportation of money to the Nazis.

Fers Sterling Steel, which sought to sell turning parts for US Army artillery shells, came into conflict with GE over the price level and filed a complaint with the US Department of Justice.

In September 1940, UE News reported that two federal antitrust indictments were instituted against GE and Krupp. They were accused of a conspiracy to maintain a worldwide monopoly in the production and sale of tungsten carbide. However, the US entry into World War II interrupted this business.

Of great importance for the arming of Germany and the creation of its military machine were direct investments of American capital in German industry. According to official figures, direct American investment in German industry in 1930 amounted to 216.5 million dollars. In Germany, there were up to 60 branches of American concerns. Senator Kilgore said in 1943: 'Huge amounts of American money went abroad to build factories, which are now a disaster for our existence and a constant obstacle to our military efforts.' Kilgore had every reason to make such a statement, since the Senate commission, headed by him, determined the amount of US investment in Germany at $ 1 billion. The Kilgore Commission also found that only a part of American companies owned such a large share of the share capital that allowed them to control 278 German joint-stock companies. This shows how over the years of Hitler's dictatorship the ties between the American and German monopolists have strengthened and how great the role of US capital was not only in the reconstruction, but also in the further development of the military-industrial potential of fascist Germany.

American investments were directed primarily to the engineering, automotive, electrical, aviation, oil, chemical and other military industries. US monopolies did not help Germany unselfishly. Their investment yielded big profits ....

Major US car manufacturers (including Chrysler) established multinational operations in the 1920s and 1930s, with factories in Germany, Eastern Europe and Japan.

In 1929, an agreement was signed between the American oil trust Standard Oil and the German chemical concern IG Farbenindustri, which played an important role in preparing Nazi Germany for the world war. Concern IG Farbenindustri received over $ 60 million from Standard Oil to develop industrial-scale synthetic fuel production technology. With the advent of the Nazis to power, the ties between the monopolies of the USA and Germany became even closer.

With the active assistance of American firms, the German imperialists organized on a large scale the import of weapons from abroad. In only eight months of 1934, the American aircraft company Aircraft Corporation increased its exports to Germany compared to 1933 by 6.4 times. In addition to Aircraft Corporation, other American firms also supplied aircraft. United Aircraft Transport imported parts for the construction of aircraft; Sperry Gyroscope Company imported aviation radio equipment. On a large scale, their products were sent to Germany - mainly engines and aircraft - the American companies Curtiss Wright, American Aircraft and others.

Of particular importance to Germany was the granting by it of American firms of patents for the latest inventions in the field of aviation. Pratt & Whitney has entered into an agreement with the German company Bayerisch Motverke to transfer a patent to Germany for air-cooled aircraft engines. Its patents for military aircraft were transferred to the German company by the American company United Aircraft Export. The largest American company Douglas sold a patent for a new aircraft to Germany.

In February 1933, the Dupont American Chemical Trust entered into an agreement with IG Farbenindustri for the sale of explosives and ammunition that were sent to Germany through the Netherlands.

Already in 1934, arms deliveries from the United States to Germany took on such proportions that the Senate Commission for the Investigation of the Activities of Military Enterprises became interested in them. The Commission found that between US and German firms there are many secret agreements on mutual information and the exchange of patents in the field of weapons. Commissioner Senator Clark said: “If Germany had shown activity in the military sense tomorrow, it would have been more powerful thanks to patents and technical experience transferred to it by American firms.”

In 1940, US Secretary of State Frank Knox admitted that 'in 1934 and 1935. Hitler was supplied with hundreds of first-class aircraft engines manufactured in the USA, and the Senate Commission in the same 1940 concluded that 'American industrialists, with the consent of the US government, freely sold patents and rights to the construction of engines to the German government ...'.

Standard Oil took over the financing of the construction of new synthetic fuel plants in Germany. The scope of financing can be judged by the statement of the American commercial attache in Berlin, who in an official conversation in December 1935 noted that “after two years, Germany will produce oil and gas from coal in an amount sufficient for a long war. Standard Oil provided millions of dollars for this. ”

Trust Standard Oil not only actively helped establish the production of synthetic gasoline, but also spent large sums on the exploration and organization of oil production in Germany. The trust owned more than half of the capital of the oil company, which owned more than a third of all gas stations. The German-American oil company owned refineries, mineral oil plants. When the world war began, coal hydrogenation plants were in Germany and Japan. But they were not in the USA.

In 1935, shortly after Hitler broke the military articles of the Treaty of Versailles and the introduction of universal military service in Germany, the American company Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, with the permission of the American government, transferred the patent, which it owned exclusively, to the production of tetraethyl lead - an anti-knock additive in gasoline. In one of the secret documents that became known after the war, IG Farbenindustri experts evaluated the value of the assistance of an American company as follows: “There is no need to emphasize that without tetraethyl lead a modern war is unthinkable. From the beginning of the war, we were able to produce tetraethyl lead solely because shortly before that, the Americans had built a plant for us, prepared it for operation, and passed on the necessary experience to us. ” Equally great was the help of American capital in the development of methods for the production of synthetic rubber.

The laboratories of Jasko and its pilot plant in Baton Rouge (Louisiana) developed the technology for the mass production of rubber 'Buna'. The ownership of this patent passed to the German trust. Standard Oil has developed a method for producing and manufacturing technology for a new type of rubber - butyl, higher in quality than Buna.

The American monopolies helped fascist Germany also produce aluminum, magnesium, nickel, tungsten carbide, beryllium and other strategic materials.

In 1935, the German production of light and non-ferrous metals already exceeded the French and Canadian four times, the British and Norwegian - six times, 16 thousand tons higher than the American output.

For the successful preparation of the war, the Nazis considered it imperative to weaken Germany's dependence on the import of iron ore. In Germany, there were several iron ore deposits with 20–25 percent iron content. The development of such poor ores was considered unprofitable. Nevertheless, on the basis of these deposits, construction of three plants with an annual steel production of 6 million tons began, which amounted to one third of all steel production in Germany. Officially, the works were carried out by Hermann Goering, but in reality they were carried out by the specially created American firm R. Brassert. ' “This company,” writes the English economist N. Mühlen, “until then, almost unknown in Germany ... turned out to be closely connected with the Reich’s autarchy in the field of supplying it with iron ore - one of the main elements of economic independence in arms production.” Firm “R. Brassert ”was the only affiliate of a major Chicago-based Brassert firm that partnered with the Morgan American Trust.

Under the terms of cartel agreements, American firms had to inform their German partners of all the technical innovations of interest to them. So, the Bauschand Lomb company willingly provided Zeiss with US military secrets and only asked to keep all information secret.

After the war, when Standard Oil was disbanded, oil giants such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP appeared.

ITT

The close ties of Morgan's banking house with the German fascists were established through the ITT, the international telephone and telegraph corporation, which was under its full control.

Shortly after the fascist coup in Germany, the chairman of the ITT board was received by Hitler. As a result of the conversation, at the head of all three German firms owned by ITT, Ribbentrop agent G. Westrick was appointed, who appointed senior leaders on the boards of companies and enterprises of the SS leaders and other prominent Nazis.

If through ITT Morgan’s house established control over many enterprises producing telegraph and telephone equipment, as well as over the German radio industry and extended its tentacles to aircraft construction, then through another large American company, General Electric, he had close ties with the German electric industry.

Over the years of the fascist dictatorship, General Electric has gained full control over Algemein Electric Gesellschaft (AEG), the largest German electrical engineering concern with a capital of 120 million marks. Through the AEG, General Electric acquired indirect control over a significant part of Germany’s electrical industry, including Siemens’s well-known electro-concern, Osram electric lamp company, etc.

So, despite the fact that fascism within the United States was defeated, part of the American monopolies adhered to a policy of promoting the armament of Nazi Germany. They bear a large share of responsibility for the development of events that led to the world war.