The Role of Anglo-American Financiers - Valentin
Katasonov - This article was
originally published in 2015 by Strategic Culture Foundation and also
reproduced by TML Weekly at that time. TML
Weekly is republishing it today to enlighten readers on the
role played by international financiers in World War II and debunk the
Anglo-American falsification which blames the Soviet Union for that
tragedy so as to exonerate themselves.
The article also clearly examines the origins of the
international financial institutions at a time the Trudeau government
and provincial governments are once again indebting the country to
private interests to unprecedented levels based on the fraudulent claim
that this is how to achieve economic recovery. Not only that, the
Trudeau government likes to claim that Canada's adherence to these
international financial institutions makes it democratic and provides
proof of its multilateralism. The material in this article provides
ample information which shows that there are obviously various kinds of
multilateralism with various kinds of aims and not all of them serve
Canada. This the Trudeau and other governments in Canada do not want
discussed. Part One The
war was not unleashed by a frenzied
Führer who happened to be ruling Germany at the time. World
War II was a project created by the world oligarchy or Anglo-American
financiers. Using such instruments as the U.S. Federal Reserve System
and the Bank of England they started to prepare for the next global
conflict right after World War I. The USSR was the target.
The Dawes and Young Plans; the
creation of the Bank for International Settlements; Germany's
suspension of reparations payments it had to pay according to the Paris
Peace Treaty and the acquiescence of Russia's former allies in this
decision; large-scale foreign investments in the economy of the Third
Reich; the militarization of the German economy and the breaches of the
Paris Treaty provisions -- these all were important milestones on the
way to preparing the war. There were key figures
behind the plot: the Rockefellers, the Morgans, Lord Montagu Norman
(the Governor of the Bank of England) and Hjalmar Schacht (President of
the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics in Hitler's government). The
strategic plan of the Rockefellers and Morgans was to subjugate Europe
economically, saturate Germany with foreign investment and credits and
make it deliver a crushing blow against Soviet Russia so that it would
return to the world capitalist system as a colony. Montagu
Norman (1871-1950) played an important role of go-between to keep up a
dialogue between American financial circles and Germany's business
leaders. Hjalmar Schacht organized the revival of Germany's defence
sector. This operation conducted by the Anglo-American financiers was
covered up by politicians such as Franklin Roosevelt, Neville
Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. In Germany the plans were carried
out by Hitler and Hjalmar Schacht. Some historians say Hjalmar Schacht
played a more important role than Hitler, but Schacht simply kept out
of the spotlight. The Dawes Plan was an attempt
following World War I for the Triple Entente to compromise and collect
war reparations from Germany. The Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes
Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was an attempt in 1924 to solve
the reparations problem, which had bedeviled international politics
following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles (France was
reluctant to accept it got over 50 per cent of reparations). In
1924-1929 Germany received $2.5 billion from the United States and $1.5
billion from Great Britain, according to the Dawes Plan. In today's
currency it is a huge sum, equal to U.S.$1 trillion. Hjalmar Schacht
played an active role in the implementation of the Dawes Plan. In 1929
he summed up the results, saying that in five years Germany got more
foreign loans than the United States in the 40 years preceding World
War I. As a result, by 1929 Germany had become the world's second
largest industrial nation leaving Great Britain behind. In
the 1930s, the process of feeding Germany with investments and credits
continued. The Young Plan was a program for settling German reparation
debts after World War I, written in 1929 and formally adopted in 1930.
It was presented by the committee headed (1929-30) by American
industrialist Owen D. Young, founder and former first chairman of the
Radio Corporation of America (RCA). At the time, Young also served
concurrently on the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation,
and also had been one of the representatives involved in the previous
war reparations restructuring arrangement -- the Dawes Plan of 1924.
According to the plan, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was
created in 1930 to make Germany pay reparations to the victors. In
reality the flow of money went in quite a different direction -- from
the United States and Great Britain to Germany. The majority of
strategically important German companies belonged to American capital
or were partly under its control. Some of them belonged to British
investors. German oil refining and coal liquefaction sectors of the
economy belonged to Standard Oil (the Rockefellers). The major chemical
company I.G. Farbenindustrie AG was put under the control of the Morgan
Group. Forty per cent of the telephone network and 30 per cent of
aircraft manufacturer Focke Wulf shares belonged to American company
ITT Corporation. Major industrial concerns Radio and AEG, Siemens and
Osram were put under the control of General Electric. ITT and General
Electric were part of the Morgan empire. One hundred per cent of
Volkswagen shares belonged to the Ford Motor Company. By the time
Hitler came to power, U.S. finance capital practically controlled all
the strategically important sectors of German industry: oil refining,
synthetic fuel production, chemical production, auto production,
aviation, electrical engineering, the radio industry, and a large part
of the machine manufacturing sector (a total of 278 companies). The
leading German banks -- Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Donat Bank and
some others -- were also under U.S. control. ***
On January 30, 1933 Hitler was named
the Chancellor of Germany. Before that his candidacy had been
thoroughly studied by American bankers. Hjalmar Schacht went to the
United States in the autumn of 1930 to discuss the nomination with
American colleagues. Hitler's appointment was finally approved at a
secret meeting of financiers in the United States. Hjalmar Schacht
spent all of 1932 trying to convince the German bankers that Hitler was
the right person for the position. He achieved the goal. In
mid-November 1932, 17 of Germany's biggest bankers and industrialists
sent a letter to President Hindenburg expressing their demand to make
Hitler the Chancellor of Germany. The last working meeting of the
German financiers before the election was held on January 4, 1933 in
Kölnat, the home of banker Kurt von Schröder. After
that the National Socialist Party came to power. As a result, Germany's
financial and economic ties with the Anglo-Americans were elevated to a
higher level. Hitler
immediately made an announcement that he refused to pay the post-war
reparations. It put into doubt the ability of England and France to pay
off World War I debts to the United States. Washington did not object
to
Hitler's announcement. In May 1933 Hjalmar Schacht paid another visit
to the United States. There he met with President Franklin Roosevelt
and big bankers to reach a $1 billion credit deal. In June the same
year Hjalmar Schacht visited London to hold talks with Montagu Norman.
It all went down smoothly. The British agreed to grant a $2 billion
loan. The British offered no objections related to Germany's decision
to suspend debt payments. Some historians say that
the American and British bankers were accommodating because by 1932 the
Soviet Union had fulfilled its five-year economic development plan to
achieve new heights as an industrial power. A few thousand enterprises
had been built, especially in the field of heavy industry. The USSR's
dependence on imported mechanical engineering expertise was greatly
reduced. The chances of strangling the Soviet Union economically were
practically reduced to zero. They decided to rely on war and launched
the runaway militarization of Germany. It was easy
for Germany to get American credits. By and large, Hitler came to power
in his country at the same time as Franklin Roosevelt took office in
the United States. The very same bankers who supported Hitler in 1931
supported Roosevelt in the presidential election. The newly elected
President could not but endorse large credits to Germany. By the way,
many noticed that there was a big similarity between Roosevelt's "New
Deal Policy" and the economic policy of the German Third Reich. No
wonder. The very same people worked out both policies and consulted
with both governments at the time. They mainly represented U.S.
financial circles. Roosevelt's New Deal soon
started to stumble. In 1937 America plunged into the quagmire of
economic crisis. In 1939 the U.S. economy operated at 33 per cent of
its industrial capacity (it was 19 per cent at the worst of the
1929-1933 crisis). Rexford G. Tugwell, an economist
who became part of Franklin Roosevelt's first "Brain Trust," a group of
Columbia University academics who helped develop policy recommendations
leading up to Roosevelt's New Deal, wrote that in 1939 the government
failed to achieve any success. There was an open sea until the day
Hitler invaded Poland. Only the mighty wind of war could dissipate the
fog. Any other measures Roosevelt could take were doomed to failure.[1] Only a world war
could save U.S. capitalism. In 1939 the financiers used all the
leverage at their disposal to put pressure on Hitler to make him
unleash a big war in the east. Part Two
The BIS played an important role during World War II.
It was created as an outpost of American interests in Europe
and a link between Anglo-American and German businesses, a kind of
offshore zone for cosmopolitan capital, providing shelter from
political processes, wars, sanctions and other things. The BIS was
created as a public commercial entity, its immunity from government
interference and such things as taxation was guaranteed by an
international agreement signed in the Hague in 1930. The
bankers of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York were close to the
Morgans, and the Governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman, as
well as the German financiers: Hjalmar Schacht (President of the
Reichsbank and Minister of Economics in the Hitler government), Walther
Funk (who later replaced Hjalmar Schacht as President of the
Reichsbank) and Emil Puhl. All of them played an important role in the
efforts to establish the BIS. The central banks of Great Britain,
France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium and some private banks were among
the founders of the BIS. The Federal Bank of New York did its best to
establish the BIS, but it was not listed as a founder. The U.S. was
represented by the private First National Bank of New York, J.P. Morgan
and Company, and the First National Bank of Chicago -- all parts of the
Morgan empire. Japan was also represented by private banks. In
1931-1932, 19 European central banks joined the BIS. Gates W. McGarrah,
a banker of Rockefeller's clan, was the first BIS chairman of the
board. He was replaced by Leon Fraser, who represented the Morgans.
U.S. citizen Thomas Huntington McKittrick was President of the BIS
during the war years. A lot has already been
written about the BIS' activities serving the interests of the Third
Reich. The bank was involved in deals with different countries,
including those Germany was at war with. Ever since Pearl Harbour, the
BIS has been a correspondent bank for the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York. Despite the bank being under Nazi control during the war years,
the American McKittrick was the bank's President. Soldiers were dying
on the battlefields while the BIS leadership held meetings in Basel
with the bankers of Germany, Japan, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain and
the United States. There, in the Swiss offshore zone, all was peaceful;
the representatives of the belligerents quietly worked in the
atmosphere of mutual understanding. Switzerland
became the place where gold seized by Germany in different corners of
Europe was transported to for storage. In March 1938 when Hitler
captured Vienna, part of Austria's gold was transferred to the BIS
vaults. The same thing happened with the gold from the Czech National
Bank (U.S.$48 million). As the war started, gold poured into the BIS.
Germany obtained it from concentration camps and by plundering the
occupied countries (including civilian property: jewels, gold crowns,
cigarette cases, utensils). It was called the Nazi Gold. The metal was
processed into ingots to be stored in the BIS, Switzerland or outside
of Europe. Charles Higham in his book Trading With The Enemy: An
Exposé of The Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949
wrote that during the war, the Nazis transferred $378 million into BIS
accounts. A few words about the Czech gold, about
which details surfaced after the Bank of England's archives were
declassified in 2012.[2]
In March 1939, Germany captured Prague. The Nazis demanded U.S.$48
million from Czechoslovakia's national gold reserves. They were told
that the sum had already been transferred to the BIS. It later became
known that the gold was transferred from Basel to the Bank of England.
At the command from Berlin, the gold was transferred to the
Reichsbank's BIS account. Then the Bank of England was involved in
transactions done on the orders of the Reichsbank given to the BIS. The
commands were retransmitted to London. There was collusion between
Germany's Reichsbank, the BIS and the Bank of England. In 1939 a
scandal broke out in Great Britain because the Bank of England executed
the transfer of Czech gold on the commands from Berlin and Basel, not
the Czech government. For instance, in June 1939, three months before
the war between Great Britain and Germany started, the Bank of England
helped the Germans stuff their accounts with 440,000 pounds sterling
worth of gold and transfer some gold to New York (Germany was sure that
in the case of a German intervention in Poland, the United States would
not declare war). The illegal transactions with
Czech gold were implemented with tacit approval of the government of
Great Britain which was aware of what was going on. Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon and
other top officials did their best to hide the truth, including telling
outright lies (that the gold had been returned to its lawful owners or
had never been transferred to the Reichsbank). Recently declassified
materials from the Bank of England reveal the truth that the government
officials lied to provide cover for themselves and the activities of
the Bank of England and the BIS. It was easy to coordinate the joint
criminal activities because Montagu Norman, the head of the Bank of
England, served as the chairman of the board of the BIS. He never made
a secret of his sympathy for the fascists. The
Bretton Woods Conference, formally known as the United Nations Monetary
and Financial Conference, was a gathering of 730 delegates from all 44
allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, to regulate the international monetary and financial order
after the conclusion of World War II. The conference was held from July
1 to 22, 1944. Suddenly the issue of the BIS hit the agenda. It was
reported that the bank had collaborated with fascist Germany. Leaving
many details aside, it was with great difficulty that the delegates
reached an agreement to close the BIS (some U.S. delegates opposed the
motion). The decision of the international conference has never been
enacted. All the discreditable information related to the BIS' wartime
activities was classified. Today it helps to falsify the history of
World War II.
Finally, a few words about
Hjalmar Schacht (1877-1970). He was a key figure controlling the
economic machine of the Third Reich, an extraordinary and
plenipotentiary ambassador representing Anglo-American capital in
Germany. In 1945, Schacht was tried at Nuremberg and was acquitted on
October 1, 1946. He got away with murder. [...] For some unexplained
reasons he was not on the 1945 leading wartime criminals list.
Moreover, Schacht returned to his profession as if nothing had happened
and founded Schacht GmbH in Düsseldorf. This detail may go
unnoticed, though it serves as further testimony to the fact that
Anglo-American financiers and their plenipotentiary representatives in
Germany prepared and, to some extent, influenced the outcome of World
War II. The financiers want to rewrite the history of the war and
change its results. Notes 1. P. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt, A
Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, New York, 1957, p. 477.
2.
See here.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 31 - August 22, 2020
Article Link:
The Role of Anglo-American Financiers - Valentin
Katasonov
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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