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FTR #370 Dutch Treat: More about the Thyssen/Bush Banking Connection

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1. This pro­gram sup­ple­ments pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the Bush fam­i­ly’s Nazi finan­cial her­itage. Specif­i­cal­ly, the pro­gram revis­its the Bush/Thyssen-Borne­misza con­nec­tion. Like Al Taqwa/Nada man­age­ment and the over­lap­ping Ban­co del Got­thar­do, the Thyssen-Borne­misza oper­a­tions are based in Lugano Switzer­land. This pro­gram pos­es the ques­tion of whether the Thyssen-Borne­misza and Al Taqwa milieu may be linked, and whether the Nada/Banco del Got­thar­do is part of the Bor­mann nexus.

2. Var­i­ous Al Taqwa sub­sidiaries were recent­ly placed on a list of indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions viewed by the Jus­tice Depart­ment as sup­port­ive of ter­ror­ism.

“Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft asked the State Depart­ment on Mon­day to list nine for­eign groups and com­pa­nies as ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. The list­ing would pro­hib­it any nonci­t­i­zen mem­bers from enter­ing the Unit­ed States. . . . The groups pro­posed for by Ashcroft for list­ing: Al Taqwa Trade Prop­er­ty and Indus­try Co. Ltd.; Bank Al Taqwa Ltd; Nada Man­age­ment Orga­ni­za­tion; Youssef M. Nada & Co. Gesell­shaft . . .”

(“Oth­er Devel­op­ments: ... Ter­ror Groups” [Chron­i­cle News Ser­vices]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 7/23/2002; p. A4.)

3. The pro­gram reviews the sig­nif­i­cance of Lugano for the Nada oper­a­tions.

“While estab­lish­ing its head­quar­ters in a tax haven, the Broth­ers’ bank opened a branch, Al Taqwa Man­age­ment Orga­ni­za­tion S.A., in Ital­ian Switzer­land, in Lugano. Lugano, a dis­creet fron­tier bank­ing locale, is a stone’s throw from Milan, a major finan­cial cen­ter, and above all the Islamist groups’ entry point to Europe.”

(Dol­lars for Ter­ror: The Unit­ed States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; pp. 139–140.)

4. Nada has been less than forth­com­ing about the true nature of his orga­ni­za­tion. It should be not­ed in this con­text that the Under­ground Reich/Bormann Orga­ni­za­tion also main­tains a rig­or­ous, and secre­tive infra­struc­ture.

“Al Taqwa is sit­u­at­ed on the top floor of a small glass build­ing, right in the cen­ter of Lugano, in the bank­ing dis­trict, a dis­trict where over­ly curi­ous jour­nal­ists are imme­di­ate­ly denounced to the police who then con­duct Amer­i­can-style iden­ti­ty checks in the mid­dle of the street . . . In Lugano, bank secre­cy is no laugh­ing mat­ter. Sev­er­al times we tried to meet Mr. Nada, who even­tu­al­ly respond­ed by mail, ‘We allow nei­ther you nor any oth­er jour­nal­ist, nor pub­li­ca­tion, to speak about us-pos­i­tive­ly or neg­a­tive­ly-with­out our writ­ten per­mis­sion.’ Signed, Yussef Nada.”

(Ibid.; p. 140)

5. One of the ques­tions con­cern­ing Nada’s pos­si­ble affil­i­a­tions with the Under­ground Reich derives from his past. Nada him­self is alleged to have been an agent of the Abwehr, the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Third Reich

“But Yussef Nada is even bet­ter-known to the Egypt­ian [intel­li­gence] ser­vices, who have evi­dence of his mem­ber­ship in the armed branch of the fra­ter­ni­ty of the Mus­lim Broth­ers in the 1940’s. At that time, accord­ing to the same sources, he was work­ing for the Abwehr under Admi­ral Canaris and took part in a plot against King Farouk. This was not the first time that the path of the Mus­lim Broth­ers crossed that of the ser­vants of the Third Reich. The founder of the Fra­ter­ni­ty him­self, Hasan al-Ban­na, served as an inter­me­di­ary between those who went on to become the ‘free offi­cers’ (in par­tic­u­lar Anwar al-Sadat) and the agents of Nazi Ger­many.”

(Ibid.; pp. 140–141.) Al Ban­na is list­ed as a direc­tor of Al Taqwa (see FTR#‘s 359, 369.)

6. As dis­cussed in past pro­grams, Lugano, Switzer­land is the cen­ter of oper­a­tions for the Thyssen-Borne­misza fam­i­ly. (The Thyssens, in turn, are long-stand­ing inti­mates of Mar­tin Bor­mann and the Under­ground Reich.)

“Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza runs his pri­vate Dutch-based invest­ment group from Lugano, Switzer­land, and his cousin Count Fed­eri­co Zichy-Thyssen, grand­son of old Fritz Thyssen, exer­cis­es con­trol over Thyssen A.G. from his base in Buenos Aires.”

(Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 237.)

7. Much of the pro­gram con­sists of a read­ing of impor­tant arti­cle on the Thyssen-Borne­misza­/Bush con­nec­tion. (“How the Bush Fam­i­ly Made its For­tune from the Nazis” by John Lof­tus; accessed at www.john-loftus.com/Thyssen.htm .)

8. This arti­cle doc­u­ments the fact that a Dutch bank served as a piv­ot-point for the Thyssen indus­tri­al inter­ests and that, through this Dutch con­nec­tion, the Thyssen-Borne­misza branch of the fam­i­ly held the reins of eco­nom­ic pow­er that (ulti­mate­ly) guid­ed the Bush fam­i­ly’s for­tune.

9.

“For the Bush fam­i­ly, it is a lin­ger­ing night­mare. For their Nazi clients, the Dutch con­nec­tion was the moth­er of all mon­ey laun­der­ing schemes. . . .Thyssen did not need any for­eign bank accounts because his fam­i­ly secret­ly owned an entire chain of banks. He did not have to trans­fer his Nazi assets at the end of World War II, all he had to do was trans­fer the own­er­ship doc­u­ments-stocks, bonds, deeds and trusts-from his bank in Berlin through his bank in Hol­land to his Amer­i­can friends in New York City: Prescott Bush and Her­bert Walk­er. Thyssen’s part­ners in crime were the father and father-in-law of a future Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.”

(Ibid.; p. 1)

10.

“It was a secret that would lead for­mer U.S. Intel­li­gence agent William Gowen, now push­ing 80, to the very doorstep of the Dutch roy­al fam­i­ly.”

(Idem.)

11.

“Under the rules of the Allied occu­pa­tion of Ger­many, all prop­er­ty owned by cit­i­zens of a neu­tral nation which had been seized by the Nazis had to be returned to the neu­tral cit­i­zens upon prop­er pre­sen­ta­tion of doc­u­ments show­ing proof of own­er­ship. Sud­den­ly, all sorts of neu­tral par­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Hol­land, were claim­ing own­er­ship of var­i­ous pieces of the Thyssen empire.”

(Ibid.; p. 2)

12. Allied inves­ti­ga­tors focused on the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, the Dutch finan­cial insti­tu­tion that served as the piv­ot-point for the Thyssen-Borne­misza­/Bush fam­i­ly deal­ings at the cen­ter of the dis­cus­sion.

“Their sus­pi­cions focused on one Dutch Bank in par­tic­u­lar, the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, in Roter­dam. This bank did a lot of busi­ness with the Thyssens over the years. In 1923, as a favor to him, the Rot­ter­dam bank loaned the mon­ey to build the very first Nazi par­ty head­quar­ters in Munich. But some­how the allied inves­ti­ga­tions kept going nowhere, the intel­li­gence leads all seemed to dry up.”

(Idem.)

13. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the role of Allen Dulles in help­ing to stage-man­age the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Dutch/Thyssen con­nec­tions.

“If the inves­ti­ga­tors real­ized that the U.S. intel­li­gence chief in post­war Ger­many, Allen Dulles, was also the Rot­ter­dam Bank’s lawyer, they might have asked some very inter­est­ing ques­tions. They did not know that Thyssen was Dulles’ client as well. Nor did they ever real­ize that it was Allen Dulles’s oth­er client, Baron Kurt Von Schroed­er, who was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen com­pa­nies which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch. The Rot­ter­dam Bank was at the heart of Dulles’ cloak­ing scheme, and he guard­ed its secrets jeal­ous­ly.”

(Idem.)

14. Although he dis­tances him­self from the Mar­tin Bor­mann aspect of Paul Man­ning’s inves­ti­ga­tion, Lof­tus goes on to devel­op the rel­e­vance of the Man­ning obser­va­tions con­cern­ing the Thyssen-Borne­misza branch of the fam­i­ly and its oper­a­tions on behalf of the Third Reich.

“Sev­er­al decades after the war, inves­tiga­tive reporter Paul Man­ning, Edward R. Mur­row’s col­league, stum­bled across the Thyssen inter­ro­ga­tions in the U.S. Nation­al Archives. Man­ning intend­ed to write a book about Nazi mon­ey laun­der­ing. Man­ning’s man­u­script was a dag­ger at Allen Dulles’ throat: his book specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart by name, albeit in pass­ing.”

(Idem.)

15. With­out cast­ing asper­sions on either Lof­tus or Man­ning (Mr. Emory views them both as heroes whose work is invalu­able), the pro­gram digress­es briefly to review an aspect of Man­ning’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Bor­mann, per se. When Man­ning reviewed the FBI’s file on Mar­tin Bor­mann, it found some inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion.

“When the [FBI] file (now in my pos­ses­sion) was received at FBI head­quar­ters, it revealed that the Reich­sleit­er had indeed been tracked for years. One report cov­ered his where­abouts from 1948 to 1961, in Argenti­na, Paraguay, Brazil and Chile. The file revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name from his office in Ger­many in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argen­tinean dic­ta­tor Juan Per­on, and on August 4, 5, and 14, 1967, had writ­ten checks on demand accounts in First Nation­al City bank (Over­seas Divi­sion) of New York, The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, and Man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche bank of Buenos Aires.”

(Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; P. 205.)

16. As Lof­tus points out, both he and Man­ning had uncov­ered dif­fer­ent ends of the Thyssen-Borne­misza­/Bush con­nec­tion.

“Amer­i­can inves­ti­ga­tors had to be sent any­where but Hol­land. And so the Dutch con­nec­tion remained unex­plored until 1994, when I pub­lished the book The Secret War Against the Jews. As a mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty, I men­tioned that Fritz Thyssen (and, indi­rect­ly, the Nazi Par­ty) had obtained their ear­ly financ­ing from Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man, and its affil­i­ate, the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. Union Bank, in turn, was the Bush fam­i­ly’s hold­ing com­pa­ny for a num­ber of oth­er enti­ties, includ­ing the ‘Hol­land Amer­i­can Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.’ ”

(“How the Bush Fam­i­ly made its For­tune from the Nazis” by John Lof­tus; p. 2–3.)

17.

“It was a mat­ter of pub­lic record that the Bush hold­ings were seized by the U.S. gov­ern­ment after the Nazis over­ran Hol­land. In 1951, the Bush­es reclaimed Union Bank from the U.S. Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an, along with their ‘neu­tral’ Dutch assets. I did not real­ize it, but I had stum­bled across a very large piece of the miss­ing Dutch con­nec­tion. Bush’s own­er­ship of the Hol­land-Amer­i­can invest­ment com­pa­ny was the miss­ing link to Man­ning’s ear­li­er research in the Thyssen inves­tiga­tive files. In 1981, Man­ning had writ­ten: ‘Thyssen’s first step in a long dance of tax and cur­ren­cy frauds began [in the late 1930’s] when he dis­posed of his shares in the Dutch Hol­lan­dis­che-Amerikanis­che Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion to be cred­it­ed to the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, N.V., Rot­ter­dam, the bank found­ed in 1916 by August Thyssen, Sr.’ ”

(Ibid.; p. 3)

18.

“In this one obscure para­graph, in a lit­tle known book, Man­ning had unwit­ting­ly doc­u­ment­ed two intrigu­ing points: 1) The Bush­es’ Union Bank had appar­ent­ly bought the same cor­po­rate stock that the Thyssens were sell­ing as part of their Nazi mon­ey laun­der­ing, and 2) the Rot­ter­dam bank [had bought them]. Far from hind­sight, Man­ning and I had uncov­ered dif­fer­ent ends of the Dutch con­nec­tion. After read­ing the excerpt in my book about the Bush­es’ own­er­ship of the Hol­land-Amer­i­can trad­ing Com­pa­ny, retired U.S. intel­li­gence agent William Gowen began to put the pieces of the puz­zle togeth­er.”

(Idem.)

19.

“In 1999, Mr. Gowen trav­eled to Europe, at his own expense, to meet a for­mer mem­ber of Dutch intel­li­gence who had detailed inside infor­ma­tion about the Rot­ter­dam bank. The scrupu­lous Gowen took a writ­ten state­ment and then had his source read and cor­rect it for error. Here, in sum­ma­ry form, is how the Nazis hid their mon­ey in Amer­i­ca.”

(Idem.)

20. After estab­lish­ing the Rot­ter­dam bank to mask his assets from the Allies in World War I, August Thyssen deter­mined that it would nev­er hap­pen again.

“One of his sons would join the Nazis; the oth­er would be neu­tral. No mat­ter who won the next war, the Thyssen fam­i­ly would sur­vive with their indus­tri­al empire intact. Fritz Thyssen joined the Nazis in 1923; his younger broth­er mar­ried into Hun­gar­i­an nobil­i­ty and changed his name to Baron Thyssen-Borne­misza. The Baron lat­er claimed Hun­gar­i­an as well as Dutch cit­i­zen­ship. In pub­lic, he pre­tend­ed to detest his Nazi broth­er, but in pri­vate they met at secret board meet­ings in Ger­many to coor­di­nate their oper­a­tions. If one broth­er were threat­ened with loss of prop­er­ty, he would trans­fer his hold­ings to the oth­er.”

(Idem.)

21.

“To aid his sons in their shell game, August Thyssen had estab­lished three dif­fer­ent banks dur­ing the 1920’s-The August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart in Rot­ter­dam, and the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York City. To pro­tect their cor­po­rate hold­ings, all the broth­ers had to do was move the cor­po­rate paper­work from one bank to the oth­er. This they did with some reg­u­lar­i­ty. When Fritz Thyssen ‘sold’ the Hol­land-Amer­i­can Trad­ing Com­pa­ny for a tax loss, the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York bought the stock. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Bush fam­i­ly invest­ed the dis­guised Nazi prof­its in Amer­i­can steel and man­u­fac­tur­ing cor­po­ra­tions that became part of the secret Thyssen empire.”

(Ibid.; pp. 3–4)

22.

“As soon as Berlin fell to the allies, it was time to ship the doc­u­ments back to Rot­ter­dam so that the ‘neu­tral’ bank could claim own­er­ship under the friend­ly super­vi­sion of Allen Dulles, who, as the OSS intel­li­gence chief in 1945 Berlin, was well placed to han­dle any trou­ble­some inves­ti­ga­tions.”

(Ibid.; p. 4)

23. When the man­ag­er of the Dutch bank attempt­ed to alert the allies about the truth of the Thyssen affairs, he died.

“In 1945, the for­mer Dutch man­ag­er of the Rot­ter­dam bank resumed con­trol only to dis­cov­er that he was sit­ting on a huge pile of hid­den Nazi assets. In 1947, the man­ag­er threat­ened to inform Dutch author­i­ties, and was imme­di­ate­ly fired by the Thyssens. The some­what naïve bank man­ag­er then fled to New York City where he intend­ed to talk to Union Bank direc­tor Prescott Bush. As Gowen’s Dutch source recalled, the man­ag­er intend­ed ‘to reveal [to Prescott Bush] the truth about Baron Hein­rich and the Rot­ter­dam Bank, [in order that] some or all of the Thyssen inter­ests in the Thyssen Group might be seized and con­fis­cat­ed as Ger­man ene­my prop­er­ty. ‘The man­ager’s body was found in New York two weeks lat­er.”

(Idem.)

24. A Dutch jour­nal­ist also expe­ri­enced a sud­den bout of mor­tal­i­ty when he attempt­ed to unearth the truth about the Thyssen-Borne­misza empire, near­ly fifty years after the death of the Dutch bank man­ag­er.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, in 1996, a Dutch jour­nal­ist Eddy Roev­er went to Lon­don to inter­view the Baron, who was neigh­bors with Mar­garet Thatch­er. Roev­er’s body was dis­cov­ered two days lat­er. Per­haps, Gowen remarked dry­ly, it was only a coin­ci­dence that both healthy men had died of heart attacks imme­di­ate­ly after try­ing to uncov­er the truth about the Thyssens.”

(Idem.)

25.

“Nei­ther Gowen nor his Dutch source knew about the cor­rob­o­rat­ing evi­dence in the Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an archives or in the OMGUS archives. Togeth­er, the two sep­a­rate sets of U.S. files over­lap each oth­er and direct­ly cor­rob­o­rate Gowen’s source. The first set of archives con­firms absolute­ly that the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York was owned by the Rot­ter­dam Bank. The sec­ond set (quot­ed by Man­ning) con­firms that the Rot­ter­dam Bank in turn was owned by the Thyssens.”

(Ibid.; pp. 4–5)

26.

“He [Man­ning] was very close to uncov­er­ing the fact that the Bush’s bank in New York City was secret­ly owned by the Nazis, before dur­ing and after WWII. Once Thyssen own­er­ship of the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion is proven, it makes out a pri­ma facie case of trea­son against the Dulles and Bush fam­i­lies for giv­ing aid and com­fort to the ene­my in time of war.”

(Ibid.; p. 5)

27. Lof­tus goes on to demon­strate, from Thyssen-Borne­misza com­pa­ny records, that the Nether­lands bank was the key to the Bush/Thyssen mon­ey-laun­der­ing con­nec­tion.

“In 1979, the present Baron Thyssen-Borne­misza (Fritz Thyssen’s nephew) pre­pared a writ­ten fam­i­ly his­to­ry to be shared with his top man­age­ment. A copy of this thir­ty-page tome enti­tled The His­to­ry of the Thyssen Fam­i­ly and Their Activ­i­ties was pro­vid­ed by Gowen’s source.”

(Idem.)

28.

“Thus, at the begin­ning of World War II the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart had become the hold­ing of my father’s companies‑a Dutch firm whose only share­hold­er was a Hun­gar­i­an cit­i­zen. . . Pri­or to 1929, it held the shares of the August Thyssen Bank, and also Amer­i­can sub­sidiaries and the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, New York. The shares of all the affil­i­ates were [in 1945] with the August Thyssen Bank in the East Sec­tor of Berlin, from where I was able to have them trans­ferred into the West at the last moment. After the war the Dutch gov­ern­ment ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion into the sta­tus of the hold­ing com­pa­ny and, pend­ing the result, appoint­ed a Dutch for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of my father who turned against our fam­i­ly. . . In that same year, 1947, I returned to Ger­many for the first time after the war, dis­guised as a Dutch dri­ver in mil­i­tary uni­form, to estab­lish con­tact with our Ger­man direc­tors.’ ”

(Idem.)

29.

“‘The sit­u­a­tion of the Group grad­u­al­ly began to be resolved but it was not until 1955 that the Ger­man com­pa­nies were freed from Allied con­trol and sub­se­quent­ly dis­en­tan­gled. For­tu­nate­ly, the com­pa­nies in the group suf­fered lit­tle from dis­man­tling. At last we were in a posi­tion to con­cen­trate on pure­ly eco­nom­ic prob­lems-the recon­struc­tion and exten­sion of the com­pa­nies and the expan­sion of the orga­ni­za­tion. The bank­ing depart­ment of the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, which also func­tioned as the Group’s hold­ing com­pa­ny, merged in 1970 with Ned­er­landse Credi­et­bank N.V. which increased its cap­i­tal. The Group received 25 per­cent. The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank holds 31%. The name Thyssen-Borne­misza Group was select­ed for the new hold­ing com­pa­ny.’ Thus the twin U.S. Archives, Gowen’s Dutch source, and the Thyssen fam­i­ly his­to­ry all inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm that Pres­i­dent Bush’s father and grand­fa­ther served on the board of a bank that was secret­ly owned by the lead­ing Nazi indus­tri­al­ists. The Bush con­nec­tion to these Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions is a mat­ter of pub­lic record. What no one knew, until Gowen’s bril­liant research opened the door, was that the Thyssens were the secret employ­ers of the Bush fam­i­ly.”

(Idem.)

30. The Lof­tus arti­cle deals with the Bush fam­i­ly’s aware­ness of the Thyssen-Borne­misza con­nec­tion and its impli­ca­tions.

“But what did the Bush fam­i­ly know about their Nazi con­nec­tion and when did they know it? As senior man­agers of Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man, they had to have known that their Amer­i­can clients, such as the Rock­e­fellers, were invest­ing heav­i­ly in Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Thyssen’s giant Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke. As not­ed his­to­ri­an Christo­pher Simp­son repeat­ed­ly doc­u­ments, it is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Brown Broth­er’s invest­ments in Nazi Ger­many took place under the Bush fam­i­ly stew­ard­ship.”

(Ibid.; p. 6)

31.

“If Union Bank was not the con­duit for laun­der­ing the Rock­e­feller’s Nazi invest­ments back to Amer­i­ca, then how could the Rock­e­feller-con­trolled Chase Man­hat­tan Bank end up own­ing 31% of the Thysssen group after the war? It should be not­ed that the Thyssen group (TBG) is now the largest indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate in Ger­many, and with a net worth of more than $50 bil­lion dol­lars, one of the wealth­i­est cor­po­ra­tions in the world. TBG is so rich it even bought out the Krupp fam­i­ly, famous arms mak­ers for Hitler, leav­ing the Thyssens as the undis­put­ed cham­pi­on sur­vivors of the Third Reich. Where did the Thyssens get the start-up mon­ey to rebuild their empire with such speed after World War II? The enor­mous sums of mon­ey deposit­ed into the Union Bank pri­or to 1942 is the best evi­dence that Prescott Bush know­ing­ly served as a mon­ey laun­der­er for the Nazis.”

(Idem.)

32.

“A for­tune this size could only have come from the Thyssen prof­its made from rearm­ing the Third Reich, and then hid­den, first from the Nazi tax audi­tors, and then from the Allies. The Bush­es knew per­fect­ly well that Brown Broth­ers was the Amer­i­can mon­ey chan­nel into Nazi Ger­many, and that Union Bank was the secret pipeline to bring the Nazi mon­ey back to Amer­i­ca from Hol­land. The Bush­es had to have known how the secret mon­ey cir­cuit worked because they were on the board of direc­tors in both direc­tions: Brown Broth­ers out, Union Bank in. More­over, the size of their com­pen­sa­tion is com­men­su­rate with their risk as Nazi mon­ey laun­der­ers. In 1951, Prescott Bush and his father-in-law each received one share of Union Bank stock, worth $750,000 each. One and a half mil­lion dol­lars was a lot of mon­ey in 1951.”

(Idem.)

33. Fur­ther devel­op­ing the sub­ject of the dis­po­si­tion of the post­war dis­po­si­tion of the Bush/Nazi assets, the pro­gram high­lights the plac­ing of the Bush/Third Reich assets in a blind trust for George H.W. Bush’s heirs, includ­ing the cur­rent pres­i­dent.

“Accord­ing to clas­si­fied doc­u­ments from Dutch intel­li­gence and U.S. gov­ern­ment archives, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s grand­fa­ther, Prescott Bush made con­sid­er­able prof­its off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, Pres­i­dent Bush him­self is an heir to these prof­its from the holo­caust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, for­mer pres­i­dent George Her­bert Walk­er Bush.” (“Heir to the Holo­caust” by Toby Rogers [Clam­or Mag­a­zine]; accessed at www.john-loftus.com/Thyssen.htm .)

34. Much of the con­clu­sion of the pro­gram focus­es on the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Sile­sian Steel Com­pa­ny, in turn con­trolled by the Bush/ Har­ri­man ven­ture called The Har­ri­man 15 Cor­po­ra­tion. (For more about this pro­gram, see, among oth­er broad­casts, FTR#361.)

“Averell Har­ri­man and Prescott Bush reestab­lished a hold­ing com­pa­ny called The Har­ri­man 15 Cor­po­ra­tion. One of the com­pa­nies Har­ri­man had held stock in was the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Sile­sian Steel Cor­po­ra­tion. . . On March 19, 1934, Prescott Bush hand­ed Averell Har­ri­man a copy of that day’s New York.”

(Ibid.; p. 6)

35. Because of its prox­im­i­ty to Auschwitz, the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Sile­sian Steel Cor­po­ra­tion was one of the firms that uti­lized the cam­p’s slave labor capa­bil­i­ties. Prescott Bush alleged­ly helped to man­age some of the Auschwitz labor force.

“Con­sol­i­dat­ed Sile­sian Steel Cor­po­ra­tion was locat­ed near the Pol­ish town of Oswiec­im, one of Poland’s rich­est min­er­al regions. That was where Hitler set up the Auschwitz con­cen­tra­tion camp. . . The pris­on­ers of Auschwitz who were able to work were shipped to 30 dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies. One of the com­pa­nies was the vast Con­sol­i­dat­ed Sile­sian Steel Cor­po­ra­tion. ‘Nobody’s made the con­nec­tion before between Con­sol­i­dat­ed Sile­sian Steel Cor­po­ra­tion, Auschwitz and Prescott Bush,’ John Lof­tus told Clam­or. ‘That was the rea­son why Auschwitz was built there. The coal deposits could be processed into either coal or addi­tives for avi­a­tion gaso­line. . . A por­tion of the slave labor force in Poland was ‘man­aged by Prescott Bush,’ accord­ing to a Dutch intel­li­gence agent.”

(Ibid.; p. 7)

36. The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the con­nec­tion between the liq­ui­da­tion of UBC and the gen­e­sis of George H.W. Bush’s busi­ness ven­tures.

“That mon­ey enabled Bush to help his son, George Her­bert Walk­er Bush, to set up his first roy­al­ty firm, Over­by Devel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, that same year. It was also help­ful when Prescott Bush left the busi­ness world to enter the pub­lic are­na in 1952 with a suc­cess­ful sen­a­to­r­i­al cam­paign in Con­necti­cut. On Octo­ber 8th, 1972, Prescott Bush died of can­cer and his will was enact­ed soon after. In 1980, when George H.W. Bush was elect­ed vice pres­i­dent, he placed his father’s fam­i­ly inher­i­tance in a blind trust. The trust was man­aged by his old friend and quail hunt­ing part­ner, William ‘Stamps’ Far­ish III. Bush’s choice of Far­ish to man­age the fam­i­ly wealth is quite reveal­ing in that it demon­strates that the for­mer pres­i­dent might know exact­ly were some of his inher­i­tance orig­i­nat­ed. Far­ish’s Grand­fa­ther, William Far­ish Jr., on March 25th 1942, plead­ed ‘no con­test’ to con­spir­ing with Nazi Ger­many while pres­i­dent of Stan­dard Oil in New Jer­sey. He was described by Sen­a­tor Har­ry Tru­man in pub­lic of approach­ing ‘trea­son’ for prof­it­ing off the Nazi war machine. Stan­dard Oil invest­ed mil­lions in IG Far­ben, who opened a gaso­line fac­to­ry with­in Auschwitz in 1940.”

(Ibid.; pp.8–9)

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #370 Dutch Treat: More about the Thyssen/Bush Banking Connection”

  1. RE: “In 1951, Prescott Bush and his father-in-law each received one share of Union Bank stock, worth $750,000 each. One and a half mil­lion dol­lars was a lot of mon­ey in 1951.”

    — Could this actu­al­ly have been the return, after a suc­cess­ful law­suit, of the UBS shares that were con­fis­cat­ed by the Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an in 1942?

    Posted by Newton Newman | November 17, 2012, 9:42 am
  2. More points upon rereading....article con­flates Thyssen with Nazis (calls him a “Nazi indus­tri­al­ist”), but notes that Thyssen hid assets from Nazis and sug­gests Thyssen Jr.‘s Nazism was a busi­ness­man­’s accom­mo­da­tion to polit­i­cal real­i­ty (grant­ed, a polit­i­cal real­i­ty he helped cre­ate).

    Har­ri­man was cer­tain­ly no ide­o­logue: while he did busi­ness with and for Nazis, he also sup­port­ed (per Antony Sut­ton) Lenin’s rev­o­lu­tion in Rus­sia. (Was Bol­she­vism mere­ly a cov­er for a Wall Street oper­a­tion to seize con­trol of the Baku oil fields from the Roth­schilds?)

    Arti­cle seems to claim Prescott Bush “man­aged” work­ers at Auschwitz, but the con­text implies his “man­age­ment” was in a pure­ly for­mal sense, i.e., he was on the board of direc­tors of the hold­ing com­pa­ny, there­fore tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing a man­ag­er, but there’s no evi­dence he actu­al­ly knew what was going on in Poland nor could he have vis­it­ed Auschwitz per­son­al­ly to find out. Was he real­ly the black heart the arti­cle por­trays him as, or is the truth about Prescott Bush much more banal?

    At the end of the day, it’s very dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish between the know­ing per­for­mance of evil and the sim­ple per­for­mance of one’s fidu­cia­ry duty.

    btw, the john-loftus.com web­site appar­ent­ly has been hijacked.

    Posted by newton newman | November 18, 2012, 7:28 am

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