can't stand Bush, but give me a freaking break. Who cares. This
means nothing about baby Bush. NOTHING. Hell, it doesn't even prove
anything about grandpa Bush.
On 29 Sep 2004 22:08:13 GMT, someone@somewhere.why wrote:
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=9f3848869250f0c2&cat=c08dd24c
ec417021
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war
machine have
circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions
of
events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act
are
still being felt by today's president Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan
Campbell in Washington Saturday September 25, 2004
The Guardian
George Bush's 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
company's 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
senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving
aid
and comfort to the enemy. The debate over Prescott Bush's 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 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. Remarkably,
little of Bush's 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 Bush's 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 Thyssen's 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 Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the
two
world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate
web,
UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled
bank in
the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's 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
Thyssen's
American assets were seized in 1942. Three sets of archives spell out
Prescott Bush's 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. The first set of files, the Harriman papers
in the
Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and
shareholder
of a number of companies involved with Thyssen. The second set of
papers,
which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order
number
248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files
show
is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the
assets
of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone
through the
books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates,
the
Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment
Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of
Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized. The third set of
documents,
also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG
Farben, who
was prosecuted for war crimes. A report issued by the Office of Alien
Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939,
these
(steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have
been
operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of
considerable
assistance to that country's war effort". Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in
charmer
with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political
dynasty
and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself.
Like
his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he
was,
again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential
Skull
and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first
world
war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert
Walker, in
1921. In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment
banker,
helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the
wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had
gone into
banking. One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC.
Bush was
a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which
list
him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth
$125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a
US
bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August
Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to
Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons
Fritz
and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so
their
assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again. By
the time
Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's
economic
