***GM sued US Gov't for bombing its Nazi controlled plants in WWII***

[Carl Brennan]

And they WON!!

http://www.globalpolicy.org/wtc/terrorism/1009hitler.htm
Now you might think that what's good for corporations is good for the U.S. In fact, when Charles Wilson, former CEO of General Motors, was being considered for the position of Secretary of Defense in the Eisenhower administration, he was asked by Congress whether he could make a decision for the good of the country that was against the interests of General Motors. His famous reply was: "Yes sir, I could. I cannot conceive of one, because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference does not exist."

Now THAT was a strange remark for Charles Wilson to make. And the reason it is strange is that during World War II GM made trucks, tanks, and armored vehicles for the Nazis at the same time that they made trucks for the United States. In fact, GM sued the United States for bombing one of their German factories during World War II, and in 1967 they collected from the U.S. government $33 million in damages, out of our tax dollars. Ford also made vehicles for Germany, and to a lesser extent so did Chrysler. IBM developed a punch card system for cataloguing the Jews in Germany. Standard Oil attempted to keep the U.S. from obtaining synthetic rubber because of an agreement it had with a German chemical company. In short, American companies, if there really are such a thing, made a lot of money arming Hitler, for ten years before World War II and even during World War II (Trading with the Enemy, Charles Higham, Delacorte Press, 1983).

There are two lessons to be learned from these facts: the first is that contrary to what most people think about Hitler, he might have been stopped without the use of violence. He might have been stopped by not allowing U.S. corporations to build his tanks and airplanes. (Incidentally, he might have been stopped by not negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, but that's another discussion altogether.) The second is that so-called American corporations decidedly do not have American interests at heart at all, and yet you and I and our fellow citizens before us have paid dearly for this for a century."

[Solon]

1. Yep and the Dulles brothers arranged it so that....

American companies can help rearm Germany during the negotiations for the Versaille Treaty. Pretty atrocious, don't you think. Nother fun fact, Mussolini's personal banker also was head of Bank of America, and helped found it, pretty fucked up, isn't it? The worst part is that all these companies and people countinued to arm Germany, even after Pearl Harbor, traitors of the worst sort, all of them.

[Carl Brennan]

3. Speaking of Mussolini check this little tidbit out

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/1930sp4.html>

Silver Shirts
Mussolini's Mistress Margarita Sarfahhti wrote for FDR hater and Limbaugh of the 30's Fulton Lewis's Mutual Network...
Randolph Hearst liked Mussolini>
......The 1930s media was overtly pro-fascist, especially the major chains of newspapers. Hearst admired Mussolini and even paid him to write articles for his upstart United Press wire services. Mussolini was paid $1,750 per article an amount that would be the equivalent of about $17,000 today. The articles were poorly written by Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini's mistress.....

.......Hearst also sought out Hitler to write for him. According to the US ambassador to Germany, Dodd Hearst met with Hanfstangel and Rosenberg, two of Hitler’s most trusted propagandists in September 1934 at Baden Baden. After leaving Baden Baden, Hearst traveled to Berlin where he met personally with Hitler. A deal was sealed between Hearst and Gobbels worth $400,000. After receiving the money, Hearst promptly ordered all of his writers for his International News Service to present all events in Germany in a friendly manner. Following the agreement Hearst papers printed uncensored propaganda from the Nazis throughout the 1930s.84 The Hearst press consisted of 25 daily newspapers, 24 weekly newspapers, 12 radio stations and 2 world news services.....

[Solon]

8. Oh yes...

the Silver Shirts, remember hearing about them, ever heard of the Black Robes? They were a GM owned outfit whose sole purpose was to break up unions and sow racial disharmony among GM plant workers, they recuited from the KKK, and were basically sister organizations. Also look up the American Legion and Smedley Butler, and the attempted coup by Standard Oil, Dupont, JP Morgan, and other industrialists against FDR.

[oneighty]

17. Smedley Butler (war is a racket)

"You know very well that it (The American Legion) is nothing but a strike breaking outfit used by capital for that purpose."

There is more. Quite a guy old Smedley!

180

[bobthedrummer]

2. How ironic. Ford Motor Company quietly settled an action against their

use of slaves to build armored vehicles for the Nazis at their German subsidiary during WWII, that settlement was in 1998, if memory serves me right.

[Union Thug]

4. Oh come on, you doubting thomas's...Just ask the libertarians and

other 'greed is good' philosophers...the market always works for the common good! What's wrong with you guys? You think that a government should regulate the behavior of corporations? HRMMMPHHH! Market fundamentalists know that if a corporation kills, maims, supports dictators, it's just the oh so mysterious goodness of the invisible hand working its benevolent magic upon the world.

Personally, I would have liked it better if those corporations would have been made examples of and had their charters revoked and were taken down, dismantled, with all on the board, upper mgmt, etc. thrown into a federal penitentiary for the rest of their lives. The invisible hand needs a dull, rusted railroad spike hammered through it.

Oh well.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Contrary to ahistorical belief, there were many US businesses that

profited with the Third Reich-or worse (IBM).
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/waryearsp5.html

IBM & Auschwitz
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0241/black.php

[seemslikeadream]

6. HEIR TO THE HOLOCAUST

EXCERPT...

But while President Bush publicly embraced the community of holocaust survivors in Washington last spring, he and his family have been keeping a secret from them for over 50 years about Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather. According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, President George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, President Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the holocaust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.

Throughout the Bush family's decades of public life, the American press has gone out of its way to overlook one historical fact - that through Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Prescott Bush, and his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, along with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf Hitler before and during World War II. It was first reported in 1994 by John Loftus and Mark Aarons in The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People.

The US government had known that many American companies were aiding Hitler, like Standard Oil, General Motors and Chase Bank, all of which was sanctioned after Pearl Harbor. But as The New York Times reporter Charles Higham later discovered, and published in his 1983 groundbreaking book, Trading With The Enemy; The Nazi American Money Plot 1933-1949, "the government smothered everything during and even after the war."

Why? According to Higham, the US government believed "a public scandal ... would have drastically affected public morale, caused widespread strikes and perhaps provoked mutinies in the armed services." Higham claims the government thought "their trial and imprisonment would have made it impossible for the corporate boards to help the American war effort." However, Prescott Bush's banks were not just financing Hitler as previously reported. In fact, there was a distinct business link much deeper than Mr. Higham or Mr. Loftus knew at the time their books were published. A classified Dutch intelligence file which was leaked by a courageous Dutch intelligence officer, along with newly surfaced information from U.S. government archives, "confirms absolutely," John Loftus says, the direct links between Bush, Thyssen and genocide profits from Auschwitz.

CONTINUED...

http://www.john-loftus.com/Thyssen.asp

[Prodemsouth]

7. The first of his two "lessons" is complete bull shit. It is like you

are listening to a lecturer explaining the origins of the universe, it all sounds good, and then WHAMM! he says the world is not round it is shaped like a burrito. I don't buy the claim that we could have resolved Hitler peacefully. It is a shame he makes this claim- because his arguments about "American" corporations are so solid. I encourage anyone reading to goggle General Smedley Butler and you will see that our own government was nearly overthrown by business men with strong ties to the European Fascist.

[Solon]

9. Actually not really...

If the Versaille Treaty was more equitable, and Our corporations were not allowed to run roughshod over and through it in the first place. Hitler would have probably never have rose to power, plus, if he did, then he wouldn't have had the investment neccessary to build his war machine. You think it was a miracle that he was able to make a soundly defeated nation, one that had little to no military power, to get out of depression, and make it second to none in the world, practically overnight? It took a shitload of money, and he found it across the atlantic.

[Prodemsouth]

10. We are talking about Germany - the bombing and destruction of

infrastructure was not nearly as bad as in WW 2. So a good bit of the industrial infrastructure was intact after WW1. We are talking about Germany here- how much do you know about the Germany of post WW1. "Hitler would have never rose to power" -sorry but you are let me be polite here.. out of my league. I edited and added to my post I want to make it clear, however, that I don't think American Corporations were saints prior to WW2- re-read my post and also goggle General Smedley Butler and you will find that our own government was nearly overthrow by some of the players this guy mentions.

[Solon]

11. did you see my post #8?

And look at my sig too. I'm not talking about the infrastructure or things of that nature, but the people of Germany were punished by the treaty after WW2, because of that, many turned to fringe elements to restore their honor. Why do you think some historians call WW1 and WW2 the same conflict, just with a cease-fire inbetween? WW2 was avoidable at the source, but if Germany didn't have the support of American Corporations, then maybe he would have had a harder time of it.

[Prodemsouth]

12. Got ya, your right there- but I think forces in Germany were there for

Hitler's rise regardless of the treaty and American corporations (and yes they played a role in Germany). A Depression. Regardless of an unfair treaty Germany was still a defeated nation. The nation was looking for someone to blame, a scape goat and Hitler was good at finding scape goats. Germany faced choices - there were other routes that were clearly available to Germany, they chose Hitler.

[Solon]

13. True they were...

but even then, barely 33% of Germans voted for the Nazi party. It was only when the cult of personality developed around Hitler that his rise was guaranteed. Also, if the treaty that ended WW1 was not so punitive, then Germany would not have had as bad an inflation problem as it did, and proactive steps by the allies after the war could have prevented radical elements from taking over that country. Then again, it could have just as easily guaranteed a Communist Germany, instead of Nazi Germany, and a different WW2 would have taken place. Who knows.

[Carl Brennan]

19. I'd like to add that the Reichstag fire followed quickly

by the Enabling Acts gave him alot of political power he hadn't had previously. I'm still checking on this but I am almost sure Hitler did not get a clear victory in 1932, it was a very close election.

[Octafish]

14. The Constitution starts "We the People" for a damn good reason.

In fact the only damn business mentioned in the whole thing is the press. The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Now why would a republic need a free press?

[Karenina]

15. Hmmmmm....

errrraaa.... :freak: Is that a trick question? :freak:

[bobthedrummer]

16. President Clinton's administration prosecuted Nazis

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/hr071498/holtzman.html

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/hr071498/maloney.html

They didn't play with Nazis or admire them.

[lateo]

18. Check out the documentary...."Banking with Hitler"

http://library.digiguide.com/lib/episode/228587

[Carl Brennan]

20. Thanks for that.

:toast: