Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler: Chapter 1

The Way is Paved

The Dawes Plan, adopted in August 1924, fitted perfectly into the plans of the German General Staffs military economists. (Testimony before United States Senate, Committee on Military Affairs, 1946.)

The Kilgore Committee, which was just glossed over in school, dealt with investigating the mobilization of the military in World War II. The committee, also known as Subcommittee on War Mobilization found that:

 ...when the Nazis came to power in 1933, they found that long strides had been made since 1918 in preparing Germany for war from an economic and industrial point of view.¹

Recall what we learned about in our last study about FDR and how Wall Street ran into a financially ruined Germany in the 1920s and began picking the meat off the bones, buying family estates out for pennies on the dollar. In the process, financial relationships were made between German businessmen and all the cartel families you've come to know and despise from America. Any "official" who recognizes of this fact that yeah, American money did build up bad governments  dismisses it as accidental or short-sighted. Similar to what happened when these same cabals built up the Soviet Union. Oops, sorry ya'll, we didn't mean to create a murderous system while financially conquering the largest by area country in the world and sucking out her sweet, sweet resources with gulag labor.  Or did they?? Getting back to our subject Germany, our host Dr. Sutton gives us the numbers:

The contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations before 1940 can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities. For instance, in 1934 Germany produced domestically only 300,000 tons of natural petroleum products and less than 800,000 tons of synthetic gasoline; the balance was imported. Yet, ten years later in World War II, after transfer of the Standard Oil of New Jersey hydrogenation patents and technology to I. G. Farben (used to produce synthetic gasoline from coal), Germany produced about 6 1/2 million tons of oil — of which 85 percent (5 1/2 million tons) was synthetic oil using the Standard Oil hydrogenation process. Moreover, the control of synthetic oil output in Germany was held by the I. G. Farben subsidiary, Braunkohle-Benzin A. G., and this Farben cartel itself was created in 1926 with Wall Street financial assistance.

 Germany couldn't have done much without a source of fuel. Of course the Kilgore Committee explained it thusly:

The United States accidentally played an important role in the technical arming of Germany. Although the German military planners had ordered and persuaded manufacturing corporations to install modern equipment for mass production, neither the military economists nor the corporations seem to have realized to the full extent what that meant. Their eyes were opened when two of the chief American automobile companies built plants in Germany in order to sell in the European market, without the handicap of ocean freight charges and high German tariffs. Germans were brought to Detroit to learn the techniques of specialized production of components, and of straight-line assembly. What they saw caused further reorganization and refitting of other key German war plants. The techniques learned in Detroit were eventually used to construct the dive-bombing Stukas .... At a later period I. G. Farben representatives in this country enabled a stream of German engineers to visit not only plane plants but others of military importance, in which they learned a great deal that was eventually used against the United States.²

Dr. Sutton also points out that Gabriel Kolko, writing in The Western Political Quarterly, dualistically says that the big businesses described above were not pro-nazi and yet aware that Germany's 1930s was based on the war business as quoted here:

The business press [in the United States] was aware, from 1935 on, that German prosperity was based on war preparations. More important, it was conscious of the fact that German industry was under the control of the Nazis and was being directed to serve Germany's rearmament, and the firm mentioned most frequently in this context was the giant chemical empire, I. G. Farben.⁴

We are going to prove that the "aw shucks, we didn't know that  Germany was prepping for war and had a murderous genocidal plan" excuse ain't going to fly.

Dawes Plan - 1924

You may vaguely remember this as the punishment the Allies of WW1 foisted upon Germany, but what you weren't told were the details. hat you would conclude that they were concocted for a specific purpose. As you may have guessed, this plan was devised by international banksters for international banksters by committee not appointed by the US government, but "ok-ed" by it. When Germany couldn't pay up the annual fee of 132 billion gold marks (fiat money wouldn't cut it), Banker Charles G Dawes was appointed to come up with a system Germany could work with. 

Charles Dawes

The resulting Dawes Plan was, according to Georgetown University Professor of International Relations Carroll Quigley, "largely a J.P. Morgan production."⁵ The Dawes Plan arranged a series of foreign loans totaling $800 million with their proceeds flowing to Germany. These loans are important for our story because the proceeds, raised for the greater part in the United States from dollar investors, were utilized in the mid-1920s to create and consolidate the gigantic chemical and steel combinations of I. G. Farben and Vereinigte Stahlwerke, respectively. These cartels not only helped Hitler to power in 1933; they also produced the bulk of key German war materials used in World War II.

 The borrower is slave to  the lender is a universal truth that the international banksters applied to Germany. The Germans paid their reparations with borrowed money:

Between 1924 and 1931, under the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, Germany paid out to the Allies about 86 billion marks in reparations. At the same time Germany borrowed abroad, mainly in the U.S., about 138 billion marks — thus making a net German payment of only three billion marks for reparations. Consequently, the burden of German monetary reparations to the Allies was actually carried by foreign subscribers to German bonds issued by Wall Street financial houses — at significant profits for themselves, of course.

This cast of characters had no shame becoming "statesmen" and acting like the heros that would "solve the problem of reparations".  Let's name some names!

The 1924 Dawes Plan experts from the United States were banker Charles Dawes and 

Thomas Lamont

Morgan representative Owen Young, who was president of the General Electric Company. Dawes was chairman of the Allied Committee of Experts in 1924. In 1929 Owen Young became chairman of the Committee of Experts, supported by J.P. Morgan himself, with alternates T. W. Lamont, a Morgan partner, and T. N. Perkins, a banker with Morgan associations. In other words, the U.S. delegations were purely and simply, as Quigley has pointed out, J. P. Morgan delegations using the authority and seal of the United States to promote financial plans for their own pecuniary advantage. As a result, as Quigley puts it, the "international bankers sat in heaven, under a rain of fees and commissions."⁷

The German side features a name we've seen before, Hjalmar Schacht, when discussing this same topic from the FDR - Wall Street series.

The German members of the Committee of Experts were equally interesting. In 1924 Hjalmar Schacht was president of the Reichsbank and had taken a prominent role in organization work for the Dawes Plan; so did German banker Carl Melchior. One of the 1928 German delegates was A. Voegler of the German steel cartel Stahlwerke Vereinigte. In brief, the two significant countries involved — the United States and Germany —were represented by the Morgan bankers on one side and Schacht and Voegler on the other, both of whom were key characters in the rise of Hitler's Germany and subsequent German rearmament.

These folks were directors of the German Cartels that fueled the German War Machine. Isn't it ironic that the reparations were supposed to handicap Germany so that it could not mount another war effort. But we'll see that the money that Germany paid in reparations went directly back into war preparation. War is the most profitable business in the history of man, just so we're clear on the motives. Also, having complete control of nations in the aftermath of war is very intoxicating.

   
1928: The Young Plan

Owen Young

According to Hitler's financial genie, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, and Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, it was the 1928 Young Plan (the successor to the Dawes Plan), formulated by Morgan agent Owen D. Young, that brought Hitler to power in 1933.Fritz Thyssen claims that,

I turned to the National Socialist Party only after I became convinced that the fight against the Young Plan was unavoidable if complete collapse of Germany was to be prevented.⁸

"In my judgment [wrote Thyssen] the financial debt thus created was bound to disrupt the entire economy of the Reich."

Debt used as a weapon to collapse a nation's economy and make it putty in the hands of special interests? No, they wouldn't do that, would they?? You also need to keep in mind that Thyssen would have been considered the equivalent of a conservative today. He was in big German business and tried to work with the system. He went so far as to firing Jews, something he didn't feel good about, but that was business. His breaking point came in 1938 with The Night of the Broken Glass, the violent campaign against Jews. He resigned from his position in the Council of State. He tried to flee, but was captured in Vichy France, and wound up in a concentration camp. There's a moral to this story. Any of you Pollyanna conservatives out there thinking that going along to get along is going to get you anything, remember the tale of Fritz Thyssen.

Getting back to our subject, bankster cartels, they covered their tracks with temporary ownership via foreign firms. the German General Electric was sold to a French holding company and totally evaded the Young Plan rules. Boy does this sound familiar, doesn't it, what with all our extremely wealthy moving everything overseas to avoid the regulations that are crushing Jo Blo American entrepreneur.

Check out this U.S. Government Intelligence report relating the interrogation of Dr. Fritz Thyssen in September, 1945:

The acceptance of the Young Plan and its financial principles increased unemployment more and more, until about one million were unemployed. People were desperate. Hitler said he would do away with unemployment. The government in power at that time was very bad, and the situation of the people was getting worse. That really was the reason of the enormous success Hitler had in the election. When the last election came, he got about 40%.⁹

History repeats itself because those in charge of the money supply have a tried and true method of control. Make people desparate, make them stupid, make them dependent. I have to note that Germany was Ground Zero for compulsory education and for experimental psychology. So much of what is wrong in America was imported from Germany. Our education system is Prussian in form and function. Our medical system is allopathic, meaning surgery and patented medicine are the only forms of treatment.  But I'm digressing again, let's talk about the big enchilada of banking, the BIS:

According to Dr. Sutton it was Hjalamar "Horace Greely" Schacht who came up with the idea of the Bank of International Settlements - the Borg Mothership of central banking. Let's name some more names!

The actual details were worked out at a conference presided over by Jackson Reynolds, "one of the leading New York bankers," together with Melvin Taylor of the First National Bank of Chicago, Sir Charles Addis, formerly of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and various French and German bankers.¹⁰ 

From Hjalamar's own book:

"A bank of this kind will demand financial co-operation be, tween vanquished and victors that will lead to community of interests which in turn will give rise to mutual confidence and understanding and thus promote and ensure peace."

I can still vividly recall the setting in which this conversation took place. Owen Young was seated in his armchair puffing away at his pipe, his legs outstretched, his keen eyes fixed unswervingly on me. As is my habit when propounding such arguments I was doing a quiet steady "quarter-deck" up and down the room. When I had finished there was a brief pause. Then his whole face lighted up and his resolve found utterance in the words:

"Dr. Schacht, you gave me a wonderful idea and I am going to sell it to the world.¹¹

Recall that their definition of peace and your definition of peace ain't the same thing. Remember that Carroll Quigley, the famous historian of these one-worlders said that the BIS was to be "... nothing less than to create a world system of financial control, in private hands, able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole."¹²

Isn't that special? The feudal system has been repackaged by central banking to create a world-wide network of control. Dr. Sutton explains how central banking can reward or punish a nation through its central bank:

 More direct influence was realized by supplying political funds to, or withdrawing support from, politicians and political parties. In the United States, for example, President Herbert Hoover blamed his 1932 defeat on withdrawal of support by Wall Street and the switch of Wall Street finance and influence to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

These people use carrots and sticks to get what they want. Just take your average high school student. If they write an essay full of politically correct speech they get an "A". If they write something not "correct",  they get an "F". This has personally happened to me. To get rewarded by the system, you have to write what they want you to write to prove that you've gotten their point. The teacher has been taught that these are the "right" ideas, with the same system. Zoom this principle out to the level of geopolitical politics, and you see it operating out in the open.

Henry Schloss writing in 1958 said of the BIS -  a chummy bunch working while soldiers are dying:

The fact that the Bank possessed a truly international staff did, of course, present a highly anomalous situation in time of war. An American President was transacting the daily business of the Bank through a French General Manager, who had a German Assistant General Manager, while the Secretary-General was an Italian subject. Other nationals occupied other posts. These men were, of course, in daily personal contact with each other. Except for Mr. McKittrick [see infra] theft were of course situated permanently in Switzerland during this period and were not supposed to be subject to orders of their government at any time. However, the directors of the Bank remained, of course, in their respective countries and had no direct contact with the personnel of the Bank. It is alleged, however, that H. Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, kept a personal representative in Basle during most of this time.¹³

Let's go check out how a cartel is built. You'll not see this on How It's Made!

Dr Sutton gives us the names and numbers of how American money was poured into German Cartels:

German Cartel	Wall Street Syndicate	Amount Issued
Allgemeine Elektrizitats- Gesellschaft (A.E.G.) (German General Electric)	National City Co.	$35,000,000
Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United Steelworks)	Dillon, Read & Co.	$70,225,000
American I.G. Chemical (I.G. Farben)	National City Co.	$30,000,000

"Three houses — Dillon, Read Co.; Harris, Forbes & Co.; and National City Company — issued almost three-quarters of the total face amount of the loans and reaped most of the profits"

Wall Street Syndicate Manager	Participation in German industrial  issues in U.S. capital market	Profits on German loans*	Percent of total
Dillon, Read & Co.	$241,325,000	$2.7 million	29.2
Harris, Forbes & Co.	186,500,000	1.4 million	22.6
National City Co.	173,000,000	5.0 million	20.9
Speyer & Co.	59,500,000	0.6 million	7.2
Lee, Higginson & Co.	53,000,000	n.a	6.4
Guaranty Co. of N.Y.	41,575,000	0.2 million	5.0
Kuhn, Loeb & Co.	37,500,000	0.2 million	4.5
Equitable Trust Co.	34,000,000	0.3 million	4.1
	___________	___________	_________
TOTAL	$826,400,000	$10.4 million	99.9

Source:*Robert R. Kuczynski, Bankers Profits from German Loans
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1932), p. 127.

After the Dawes Plan was put in, two huge cartels emerged, Vereinigte Stahlwerke and I. G. Farben. These two were interlocked and look at all the stuff they made:

Vereinigte Stahlwerke products	Percent of German total production in 1938
Pig iron	50.8
Pipes and tubes	45.5
Heavy plate	36.0
Explosives	35.0
Coal tar	33.3
Bar steel	37.1

I.G. Farben	Percent of German total production in 1937
Synthetic methanol	100.0
Magnesium	100.0
Chemical nitrogen	70.0
Explosives	60.0
Synthetic gasoline (high octane)	46.0 (1945)
Brown coal	20.0

Once again, Dr. Sutton has their number and dials it hard:

Under this system of mutual collaboration and inter-dependence, the two cartels, I.G. Farben and Vereinigte Stahlwerke, produced 95 percent of German .explosives in 1957-8 on the eve of World War II. This production was from capacity built by American loans and to some extent by American technology.The I. G. Farben-Standard Oil cooperation for production of synthetic oil from coal gave the I. G. Farben cartel a monopoly of German gasoline production during World War II. Just under one half of German high octane gasoline in 1945 was produced directly by I. G. Farben and most of the balance by its affiliated companies.In brief, in synthetic gasoline and explosives (two of the very basic elements of modern warfare), the control of German World War II output was in the hands of two German combines created by Wall Street loans under the Dawes Plan.

But wait, that's not all. Sutton also lists some other companies you might recognize that did some substantial business in Nazi Germany. The largest tank manufacturers were Opel, a subsidiary totally owned by GM, a JP Morgan firm and Ford A.G.  Guess who got a tax-exempt status from the Nazis? Opel did in 1936. Henry Ford was formerly decorated by the Nazis for his service to their cause. Isn't that great! Aloca and Dow transferred a good bit of American know-how to Germany. Bendix Aviation, majorly owned by JP Morgan/GM handed over to Siemens tech on automatic piloting and advanced aircraft instrumentation. Dr. Sutton goes on to differentiate the difference between the vast majority of patriotic American industrialists and this cabal. All of these companies engaging in pumping up the Nazi war machine were all controlled by a few elite - the usual suspects: JP Morgan, Rockefellers, the Warburgs. The more things change, the more they stay the same has never been a truer statement.

Just out of curiosity, I wondered, where are these companies now?
(Honeywell bought Bendix Aviation)
(Dillon Read is actually apart of UBS, a Swiss Bank today)
(IG Farben was liquidated after WW2 as punishment, especially for the gas chamber gas it produced)

link

Yep, they're still there doing a fine business. But the question is, for whom?

Footnotes for this chapter:

¹United States Congress. Senate. Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Military Affairs. Elimination of German Resources for War. Report pursuant to S. Res. 107 and 146, July 2, 1945, Part 7, (78th Congress and 79th Congress), (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1945), hereafter cited as Elimination of German Resources.

²Elimination of German Resources, p. 174.

³Gabriel Kolko, "American Business and Germany, 1930-1941," The Western Political Quarterly, Volume XV, 1962.

⁴Ibid, p. 715.

⁵Carroll Quigley, op. cit.

⁶Ibid, p. 308. 

⁷Carroll Quigley, op. cit., p. 309.

⁸Fritz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler, (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., n.d.), p. 88.

⁹U.S. Group Control Council (Germany), Office of the Director of Intelligence, Intelligence Report No. EF/ME/1, 4 September 1945. Also see Hjalmar Schacht, Confessions of "the old Wizard", (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956)

¹⁰Hjalmar Schacht, op cit., p. 18. Fritz Thyssen adds, "Even at the time Mr, Dillon, a New York Banker of Jewish origin whom I much admire told me 'In your place I would not sign the plan.'"

¹¹Ibid, p. 282.

¹²Carroll Quigley, op. cit., p. 324.

¹³Henry H. Schloss, The Bank for International Settlements (Amsterdam,: North Holland Publishing Company, 1958)

¹⁴John Hargrave, Montagu Norman, (New York: The Greystone Press, n.d.). p. 108.

¹⁵James Stewart Martin, op. cit., p. 70.

¹⁶See Chapter Seven for more details of Wall Street loans to German industry.

¹⁷See Gabriel Kolko, op. cit., for numerous examples.

¹⁸In 1956 the Chase and Manhattan banks merged to become Chase Manhattan.

Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler is available in its entirety at Reformed Theology.