How Bushs grandfather helped Hitlers rise to power - George Bushs grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued until his companys assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy. The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senators action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The debate over Prescott Bushs behaviour 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 Hitlers 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. Remarkably, little of Bushs dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bushs business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election. While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssens US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war. Tantalising Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world. Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitlers efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssens international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bushs links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssens American assets were seized in 1942. Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bushs involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland. Books 2 READ : I PAID HITLER By: Fritz Thyssen / Wall Street & The Raise of Hitler How Bushs grandfather helped Hitlers rise to power - THE BREAK DOWN IN LAYMEN TERMS guardian.co.uk/world/2004/... Seldes talks about Thyssens financial support of Hitler youtube/watch?v=Q7l_hO... https://youtube/watch?v=TnHnjmCYjy4
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 08:59:43 +0000
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