Sunday, October 18, 2015

How Hitler Gamed Capitalists Into Assisting With The Holocaust

Many may not realize or appreciate it, but history is a fragile subject- unlike the hard objectivity of physics where I can define a wavelength of light precisely by its spectral line. Or determine a star's surface temperature from its emission lines.

  In the case of history, we who have studied it at length (often as intensely as we've mastered physics) know we are always faced with revisionists who would change it to their own beliefs and liking - never mind they are manufacturing fantasies. The sad and inescapable fact? At the same time the first historians appeared so did the first history revisionists who had little or no tolerance for facts.

This  revisionism can cover such diverse arenas as the history of Nazi Germany - including Hitler's political background, ideology and associations as well as the assassination of John F. Kennedy - done by the national security state. We've already seen such bollocks from the likes of Larry Schweikart, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/08/48-liberal-lies-how-about-50-tea-party.html

As well as the efforts of the Right to revise AP American history to render it more palatable and positive, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/09/bravo-to-protesting-students-teachers.html

In this post I want to show how and why Hitler gamed German capitalists and the Right to assist him in his abominable aim to build the Third Reich and also to slaughter over 6 million Jews.  We already know there are revisionists out there - not only to do with the origin of the Holocaust, but also Hitler's own political associations. We can especially see in the last case how history has been twisted and defiled to make the totally gullible believe it was "the Left" behind the Nazi experiment (because the Nazi Party was cynically termed the "National Socialists" - ensuring the future lazy -minded would take it literally), when historical facts point to the fascist Right. And this is where we pick it up.

Historian Ian Kershaw in his masterpiece ‘Hitler Nemesis’, observed,  (p. xxxiii):

“Leaders of big business, though often harboring private concerns about current difficulties and looming future problems for the economy, for their part were grateful to Hitler for the destruction of the left-wing parties and trade unions. They were again ‘masters in the house’ in their dealings with their work force”

He added (ibid.):

The oppositional forces on the Left, such as the Communists and Socialists were crushed, cowed and powerless

This was in reference to Hitler dispatching his S.A. thugs in the early 1930s (and later S.S. after "the night of the long knives" in 1934)  to beat and kill Socialists (the REAL ones, not the fake named "National Socialists") as well as communists and labor leaders.  Big German business, much like its current American counterpart  - preferred not to be driven to pay high wages or benefits because unions made them. They wanted instead leverage or political muscle to use against the unions (and socialists which supported them) and Hitler provided it in spades.

This vicious and predatory campaign against socialists and unions was in addition to his reign of terror against Jews which saw them first labeled using yellow stars (sewn on to their clothing) with the word 'Jude', then deprived of their businesses (having them seized), then their homes - as they were dispatched to the concentration camps. (Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Mauthausen, etc.). The monies collected from this appropriation then ended up in Swiss banks.

Kershaw also documents how the pre-Reich Weimar Republic constituted a weak democracy which had little or no control over the most radical Rightists, especially Hitler’s gang (actually, originally Ernst Röhm's) NSDAP party. They would regularly - as Kershaw writes- : beat Marxists, socialists, and any leftists on the streets while holding up signs that read: “Tot dem Marxem!” (Death to Marxists!)

Kind of a damned funny way to show kinship with REAL Left Socialists!  Now, if these "geniuses" who insist Hitler "wasn't of the Right" are correct, then WHY beat up on Marxists, Socialists and Commies of the LEFT? Huh? Can these illustrious nabobs answer that? Of course not, because the facts of history contradict their absurd reconstructions.

Unlike too many Americans who've never set foot in Germany, I've been there four times and been able to actually discuss that nation's history with those who lived it - including three former Werhmacht soldiers (Dieter, Werner and Hans)  in 1985, as well as a former Hitler Youth (Kurt., below) who for over 30 years had amassed an archival collection of films on the Third Reich. (Kurt's mother had been threatened with rape when he was 12, unless he joined. He was found by Russian soldiers near Berlin one month later, and sent back home.) Kurt's films from his archives also showed the Reichstag fire, scenes from Kristallnacht and the S.S. thugs stomping pitilessly on trade unionists and real socialists - not the faux Nazi bunch who merely called themselves by the name.

Kurt - former Hitler Youth - showing archival  film of 1938 Nazi (S.S.) terror tactics - seen on my first visit to Germany (Frankfurt-am-Main) in  1978.

Watching Kurt's archival films in July of 1978 included early 1930s footage of hundreds of gangster S.A. (enlisted by Hitler) swooping in on a crowd of union workers really brought home to me what later books I read merely referenced in the abstract. It was also fairly sickening with some of the films showing Socialists and Marxists  beaten  half to death by the Nazi thugs.

THIS was HISTORY, ACTUALLY DOCUMENTED! If the American Right doesn't wish to be associated with this or rejects it as reflecting on their own ideology, I fully understand. But to try to revise history because they abhor the Rightist link to racism and Nazis is both pigheaded, and disingenuous. Take ownership, then move on!

THIS is also why the German capitalists, such as Krupp, Volkswagen, I.G. Farben (infamous for later manufacturing the Zyklon B gas used in the gas chambers) etc. threw their lot behind Hitler and provided the political ballast, without which he could never have become 'Der Fuehrer'.  They even helped design the gas chambers for maximum efficiency. Other capitalist businesses made use of the hair shaved off of Jews headed for the gas chambers, at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen etc. - to manufacture carpets. In addition, they used Jews enslaved at the camps as slave labor for their munitions factories etc. Thus, the bodies shown below at Mauthausen concentration camp - taken by liberating Russian troops in May, 1945, had already been shorn ouf the hair and relieved of all gold fillings.


As Dieter, a  former Wehrmacht soldier put it, when I met him and two other former Wehrmacht in May, 1985:

"It was disgusting how far the big businessmen went to support Hitler! Had it not been for them I doubt he'd ever have been Chancellor or even gotten 15% of the vote in the 1932 elections.

Hans, another former Wehrmacht soldier (who had pinned American troops down in the Teuotoburger in  March, 1945 but didn't press the advantage) was more colorful:

"The Big Businessmen just kissed Hitler's ass! They wanted him in power more than a drunken sailor wanted a whore in shore leave!"

Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, saw a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany in November 1938.The attacks were carried out by Sturmabteilung  in concert with S.S. forces and non-Jewish civilians and were ignored. In all,  91 Jews were killed and around 30,000 were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.

In most of Hitler's writings he asserts "Marxists are Jews"  (thereby explaining his hatred of real socialists) based on the fact Karl Marx, author of Das Kapital, was a Jew.   In one of his worst tirades, a radio speech on October 15, 1933 (quoted from Konrad Heiden's book, 'The Fuhrer') Hitler bellowed:

"These ruinous and inferior characters have succeeded in arousing a world psychosis!"

This was  also tied to those he perceived as "Jews" in the American press, working in league with communists and Socialists in Europe to spread rumors about Hitler and demonize him. What happened is that the Jews - like ALL Socialists, Communists, and Marxists- were dispossessed of their worldly goods and bank accounts. By 1936 virtually no German Jew (just as no German Socialist, or Marxist) could own a business, or even own a personal bank account. Once this happened most Jews realized their only hope of saving themselves was to try to leave Germany.

All Jewish gun ownership effectively ended on Nov. 11, 1938, when a new law was declared, prohibiting Jews from owning weapons of any kind, including swords, which many Jewish army veterans had kept as mementos from World War I.  Despite numbskull Ben Carson's claims, however, even if the remaining Jews had weapons -guns they'd not have been able to defend themselves against the Nazis. (Also, it is lame to try to tie deprivation of guns to exclusively to "Nazi" governance, when the key and critical distinction was the terrorizing of (real) socialists, trade unions, Jews and communists-  and the establishment of concentration camps for them.)

The failure of Jews to mount an effective defense against the Waffen-SS in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 provides a good example of what happened when ordinary citizens with small arms went up against a well-equipped force. The uprising in the ghetto possesses enduring symbolic significance, as an instance of Jews’ determination to resist their oppression. But the uprising saved few Jewish lives and had little to no impact on the course of either World War II or the Holocaust.

Most estimates put German industry profits at more than $1 billion thanks to the holocaust and its ancillary slavery, more over it wasn't just German capitalists who profited.  Major US corporations also had operations in Nazi Germany included Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil (now Exxon), IBM, ITT, Du Pont, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, General Electric, Gillette, Goodrich, Singer, Eastman Kodak, Coca-Cola, Alcoa (Aluminum Corporation of America) and Dow Chemical.

As noted by author Henry C. Sutton in his 'Wall Street  and the Rise of Hitler', American law firms, investment companies and banks were also eager to share in the profits to be made in a country where the working class was terrorized. The other capitalist connections included the Chase Manhattan Bank, J. P. Morgan as well as Dillon, Read and Company, and the Union Bank of New York, owned by Brown Brothers & Harriman (together with German capitalists.)  It has been estimated that as of 7 December 1941, capital invested in Nazi Germany by US corporations amounted to approximately USD 475 million, which is about USD 6.7 billion in today’s money. Sadly, most of the American media, and American historians in general don't even want to 'go there', though Kurt showed me several films of bigshot American capitalists, including Henry Ford, praising Hitler and contributing to his war machine.

But the perverse relations of U.S. capitalists to Nazis didn't end there.

 Let us also recall the tie -in of U.S. intelligence to U.S. banking operations (as revealed in Donald Gibson's book, 'Battling Wall Street - The Kennedy Presidency'.  As he observes (p. 72):

"by the early 1960s the Council of Foreign Relations, Morgan and Rockefeller interests and the intelligence community were so extensively inbred as to be virtually a single entity."

Gibson also notes (ibid.) that William Donovan, the original OSS head had long links to Morgan financial and banking interests. Indeed, Donovan "began his intelligence career working as a private operator for J.P. Morgan, Jr."

And one of the most critical findings is (ibid.):

"The global interests of the Morgan and Rockefeller groups (which also had oil interests, e.g. in Standard Oil) led to a natural involvement in the formation and development of the Central Intelligence Agency".

Given all this, it was not a stretch that the banking- underpinned intelligence establishment would soon wish to find a place for ex-Nazi intelligence agents in its structures. As noted by investigative author Christopher Simpson in his book ' 'Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis, and its disastrous effect on our domestic and foreign policy' for which readers can obtain an excerpted segment here: Ratlines-Blowback   the selection of former Nazis for intelligence use (especially via "Operation Sunrise" among others) wasn't coincidental. We already know that the Nazis had as one of their priorities the disposal of socialists and communists. This appealed to Donovan and the O.S.S. as it later did to CIA chief Allen Dulles because both believed Russia and communism (and by extension, socialism) was the biggest threat to American interests going forward - so engineered the recruitment of Nazi thugs to serve in spy capacities.

Much of this is documented in Simpson's book but even more can be found in Russ Baker's 'Family of Secrets' including the ties of Prescott Bush - George W's grand father- to the Nazi war machine. Readers can also find more information on the Nazi- CIA ties here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html

Excerpt:

In 1968, Mr. Hoover authorized the F.B.I. to wiretap a left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about Nazis in America, internal records show. Mr. Hoover declared the journalist, Charles Allen, a potential threat to national security.


Capitalists, as a matter of historical fact, had much to do with not only greasing Hitler's war machine but also seeing that the Holocaust was expeditiously carried out and maximal use made of the human resources, including hair, teeth, bones etc, extracted from Jewish bodies before being gassed and cremated.

Don't let any Right winger try to tell you otherwise, or that the Nazis were "socialists" (just by virtue of the name "National Socialist Party") or "leftists".  If they assert any such nonsense you know immediately they are history revisionists - and you need to examine their agenda!

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