Skip to content or view screen version

The Fascist Fraternity

Gary Sudborough | 07.10.2003 02:15 | Anti-militarism | World

A history of the collaboration of German and American capitalists during World War 2 to not only profit from war, but to spread fascism as well.

In his book Trading With The Enemy, Charles Higham designates as The Fraternity that group of American and German capitalists who were very supportive of the Nazi ideology and developed intimate financial and patent connections between their corporations. Corporations belonging to The Fraternity were ITT, General Motors, Ford, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Texaco, SKF and German corporations like I.G. Farben, Krupp and others. These corporations were so supportive of the Nazis that they built many of their weapons and supplied them with oil, while the American people suffered from oil rationing during World War 2. Individual capitalists belonging to The Fraternity were the Rockefellers, Fords, DuPonts, Morgans and the Bush family through Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker being on the board of Brown Brothers Harriman, which invested heavily in Nazi Germany.

One of the American subsidiaries of I.G. Farben called General Aniline and Film did extensive spying operations for the Nazis in the US and was very successful at it. General Aniline itself produced the khaki and blue dyes for army, air force and navy uniforms, giving its salesmen access to many US military bases. In addition, General Aniline owned Agfa and Ansco films and Ozalid, a blueprint corporation. Its salesmen persuaded the US military to use their film and have it developed in their laboratories. Consequently, photos of secret US military installations went straight into Nazi hands, as did the blueprints of American military plans through the Ozalid company.

Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey was so flagrant in violating the Trading with the Enemy Act that it was called before two Senate committees, the Truman Committee and the Bone Committee. Standard Oil of New Jersey was in partnership with I.G. Farben, the company which used slave labor at Auschwitz, and supplied the Germans with synthetic rubber and tetraethyl lead for aviation gasoline. Standard Oil was also guilty of using German crews on its tankers and refueling Nazi submarines at Teneriffe in the Canary Islands, as well as shipping oil to Nazi Germany through Spain and Switzerland. Nothing came of these Senate hearings as Standard Oil essentially blackmailed the US government by stating that they could stop US oil shipments in a time of war.

The German and American capitalists of The Fraternity liked fascism, but they didn't like Hitler after they discovered the deranged nature of his mind. What they wanted was a united front of fascist countries aligned against the common foe, the Soviet Union. In other words, they would have liked to depose President Roosevelt and convert the US to a fascist power and likewise bring fascism to England. The DuPonts and Morgans actually approached Major General Smedley Butler through an intermediary to determine if a military coup could be organized to oust Roosevelt. Major General Butler was deeply offended and reported the plot to Roosevelt. Irenee du Pont was very fascistic and organized both the American Liberty League and the Black Legion. The American Liberty League taught hatred of blacks, Jews, Roosevelt and communism. The Black Legion was a group of antiunion thugs, who would go through DuPont's General Motors plants and terrorize workers and disrupt union organizing. The Fords and DuPonts also made use of the expertise of another member of The Fraternity, Charles Bedaux. He was a so-called efficiency expert, whose thoughts revolved around extracting the maximum amount of labor out of a worker in the minimum amount of time. This resulted in speedups on the assembly lines of Ford and General Motors and more accidents among workers.

Since the capitalists in The Fraternity considered Hitler deranged and a loose cannon, they attempted frequently to do two things. They wanted to arrange a peace agreement between Nazi Germany and the western allies, the United States and England. This would enable all German forces to be transferred to the Russian front. Failing this objective, they wanted to assassinate Hitler and immediately negotiate peace with the western allies. The most spectacular effort to negotiate peace was when Rudolph Hess flew to Scotland to pursue a peace negotiation with the Duke of Hamilton, who had Nazi sympathies, as did much of England's nobility, including the former king, the Duke of Windsor. Other peace negotiations occurred in Sweden with Jacob Wallenberg (another member of The Fraternity through Enskilda Bank and SKF, the important ball bearings firm) and near the end of the war with Allen Dulles in Switzerland. Allen Dulles was a corporate lawyer, who was deeply involved with The Fraternity, having written many of the patents and corporate agreements during his tenure at the firm Sullivan and Cromwell.

There were a group of German generals, intellectuals, politicians and former diplomats who hated Hitler and Nazism. The generals did so mostly because of military defeats and Hitler's tendency to micromanage military strategy and the others because they hated the repression and savagery of Hitler's regime. They had conspired against Hitler since before the annexation of Czechoslovakia, and these plots grew progressively more serious as the war continued. The Fraternity was behind the scenes, backing these plots. Walter Schellenberg was the head of SD, the intelligence branch of the SS, and he was also on the board of ITT and helped protect many prominent conspirators. The banker Hjalmar Schacht, a powerful Fraternity member, wanted to depose Hitler. Admiral Canaris and other members of the Abwehr or Army Intelligence were against Hitler. However, only after the disastrous defeat of the German army at Stalingrad in 1942 did these plots start to involve bombings. A bomb was placed on Hitler's airplane by conspirators Schlabrendorff and General von Tresckow, but the detonator failed to fire on Hitler's flight from Smolensk in Russia to his bunker at Rastenburg in Prussia. Next Colonel Gersdorff tried to assassinate Hitler by getting near to him with a bomb strapped to his chest during a celebration in Berlin. The bomb had a ten minute fuse and Hitler changed his plans and wanted to spend only eight minutes there and so the plan was scrapped. Hitler wanted a new army overcoat modeled, and there were two more attempts with bombs in the overcoat, but Hitler kept changing his schedule and both attempts failed. Finally, there was an attempt that nearly succeeded, when Count von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a briefcase under the table at a military meeting in Rastenburg and then flew to Berlin to organize a military takeover. The bomb exploded killing and wounding several military men, but Hitler survived and took savage revenge on the conspirators by having some of the conspirators hung by piano wire from meathooks and their families sent to concentration camps. A couple of the conspirators, who were members of The Fraternity, were so directly involved that for his personal safety Schellenberg could not prevent their execution. Generals Fellgiebel and Thiele, both directors of ITT in Germany, were executed. General Fellgiebel had cut the communication lines from Rastenburg to Berlin. Hitler had a suspicion that more members of The Fraternity were involved because Karl Lindeman of Standard Oil was arrested as was Hjalmar Schacht. Some generals on the western front, who were in on the plot, like Rommel and von Kluge were given the choice to commit suicide rather than risk retribution to their families and they did so.

After the fall of the Third Reich, the capitalists of The Fraternity largely escaped any punishment or consequences for their actions in support of fascism. The American capitalists not only went unpunished, but received compensation from the taxpayers for damage to their factories in Germany and France. Most of the German capitalists were not prosecuted, or if they were, received relatively light sentences and had their capital property returned to them on their release from prison. Alfried Krupp, who was guilty of using slave labor from concentration camps and brutally treating those slaves, was sentenced to twelve years, but served only three and was pardoned in the general amnesty US High Commissioner John McCloy issued in 1951. Krupp received all his capital property back. I.G. Farben continued its operations and only in the Russian zone was a serious attempt made to dismantle the corporation.

Does this Fascist Fraternity still exist and try to spread fascism and corporate domination of the Earth? Judging from the actions of the IMF and World Bank in demanding privatization, deregulation and structural adjustments in Third World countries for the benefit of corporations much to the detriment of workers, peasants and small businesses and President George W. Bush's wars for control of the Earth's oil reserves, I would have to have to say definitely yes.

One very important lesson in this long article is that even while capitalist powers are at war, they consider socialism to be an even greater threat than the victory of opposing ruling classes. This is logical because with the victory of the armies of an opposing ruling class, they may lose some wealth in war reparations or damage to property, but they usually don't lose everything as they do when a socialist government nationalizes their capital property. The Fraternity was very worried by the rapid advance of the Red Army across Europe, and the Vatican was very disturbed by much of Catholic Eastern Europe going to godless communism, as they perceived the situation. Hence, the frantic efforts to negotiate a peace on the western front and have forces transferred to fight the Russians.

There are other examples of this collaboration of ruling classes of different nationalities in the face of the socialist threat. The Paris Commune, where the workers of Paris took over the city in 1871 and set up their own government, occurred during the Franco-Prussian war, when the French army was quickly defeated and the Prussians surrounded Paris. The rich left Paris and established a counterrevolutionary government at Versailles. The Prussians were so worried by the example of the Paris Commune that they released French prisoners of war and allowed the French counterrevolutionary army through their lines to attack Paris. The London Times wrote editorials against the Paris Commune, the Czar of Russia asked the Prussians to overthrow it and Bismarck himself said that if the French government at Versailles didn't act quickly enough, the Prussian army itself would destroy the Paris Commune. Of course, another example is when the ruling classes of all capitalist nations sent armies into Russia to destroy the Bolshevik revolution and its possible threat to their wealth and power.

The information in this article comes largely from three books: Trading With The Enemy by Charles Higham, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer and a a chapter called The Pirates of Wall Street in the book The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons.

Gary Sudborough
- e-mail: IconoclastGS@aol.com
- Homepage: http://www.theblackflag.org

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

America was very anti-fasicst during World War II.

07.10.2003 12:18

America was very anti-fascist during World war II. The liberation of France in 1944 on D day simply wouldn't have been possible without American support. To suggest that America collaberated with the Nazis is absurd. Britain was losing World War II before America joined the war and the thousands of American GIs that were stationed in Britain were given a hero's welcome by locals who thanked them for coming to Britain aid in its hour of need. After the war America helped to set up the war crimes tribunal in Nuremburg that brought many leading Nazis to trial for crimes against humanity. American money in the form of the Marshall Plan also helped to rebuild western Europe after the war.

Rockwell


lookee here

07.10.2003 13:08

Apart from the fact the US had its own popular fascist movement, which has been hushed up even more effectively than the story of Mosely's crew, your don't need to look much further than Dubya's family, and this comes from a non politically motivated educational site:

 http://www.bartcop.com/421102.htm

sqoo


Who do you work for, Rockwell?

07.10.2003 15:39

Rockwell

I've come across a number of your plainly ill-informed, cosy right-wing posts on this site on successive days and am forced to ask, "Why do you bother?"

I am anxious to point out that I welcome the views of any poster, and feel that for Indymedia to retain its health and vitality all views, from whatever wing of the human political spectrum, should be included in order to encourage and inform useful debate.

What I do feel suspicious about, however, is why someone with such obviously mainstream, pro-US, whiteist, rightist views such as yourself should spend such an inordinate amount of time trawling posts on a website such as this in order to issue such a bulk of tepid rebuttals, queries and, let's be honest, good ol' American hot air. Is it a) that you are secretly seduced by the opinions and ideals your find espoused here? b) that you have nothing better to do than mildly irritate leftists and social activists, or c) that someone is paying you to post here?

Share your thoughts, do.

Ben


Re: Ben's observations

07.10.2003 22:31

Whatever the case Rocwell is a pioneer.

Even if c) was true a) is clearly the reason.

The good result is that the IMC-UK escapism for most part time activists to the modern day groucho-marx characters who are clearly ruling the roost currently as the IMC-UK rots, grinds to a welcome halt, as soon as reality checks like Rockwell appear.
I am not sure of his:her tactics in survival amongst this hostile folk.

(Having to survive here myself I do understand a bit of Rockwell.)

ram


Intelligent debate

08.10.2003 12:03

Looks like the level of intelligence the CIA have, look at thier history of trying to destabalise foreign anti-American activities, exploding cigars, extra large condoms?

'Having to survive here myself I do understand a bit of Rockwell' - what does he mean *having* to survive here, debate is good but these two do not debate, so why are they here $$$ ?

Let them post, it serves the pro-American viewpoint really badly, its good to show up their ill informed views, how the 'free world' have been fed and fed lies untill they can't see anything other than their propaganda, even when as in this case there is large quantities of evidence to back it up. I dont even think we need to comment on them :)

On the other hand, they may be left-wing trolls having some fun, this would explain quite a lot!

summertime


summertime mkae up your mind

08.10.2003 19:29

You open up few ifs and leave.

You are free to from any opinion you wish about me or Rockwell being CIA pigscum or leftwing trolls.

But how can you encourage the censure of quite normally found views (my view is the vast global human population's view ..... the UK is full of pigs and is ruled by pigscum: Rockwell view is the vast majority of UK pigs' view)?

I am not even accusing the IMC-UK censor team of being hijacked by the CIA instead by the commonly found UK middleclass pigscum!

If you do not have anything to constructive to comment about I suggest you stop making baseless accusations.

ram


To Ram

08.10.2003 19:58

"I am not even accusing the IMC-UK censor team of being hijacked by the CIA instead by the commonly found UK middleclass pigscum!"

"If you do not have anything to constructive to comment about I suggest you stop making baseless accusations"

Errrr......no self-contradiction inherent here then. Should we declare all out war on 'middle class pigscum' then Ram? Excellent. Meet you in Chiswick in half an hour mate. Bring a pickaxe handle.

A by-the-by to Rockwell too. On the subject of the GIs who came to the aid of a needy Britain during the war and their well documented 'anti-Fascist' intent. Did this include the segregated and despised black soldiers who were basically kept in containment camps under the 'supervision' of white officers and strictly denied contact with any Brits, and who were only 'let out' to go and die on the beaches of Normandy? Funny how fear of miscegenation can effect even the most ardent anti-Fascists too, innit?

America's joining the war naturally had nothing to do with the fact that victory would ensure their absolute global hegemony, and a thousand-year Reich that even our Adolf would have been envious of.

Did it?

Ben