RUSSIAN PEACE THREAT: Pentagon on Alert!
Chapter Eight
U.S. Capital Plans Fascist FDR Coup; Finances Hitler-Mussolini
[April 2, 2018]

Henry Ford received the highest medal Nazi Germany could award a foreigner: the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, July 30, 1938. “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," declared Hitler.

IBM founder Thomas John Watson received the Order of the German Eagle (2nd class), June 1937.

General Motor’s chief executive for overseas operations James Mooney was awarded the Order of the German Eagle (1st class) by Adolf Hitler, in 1938.

J.P. Morgan agent Grayson Murphy was decorated by Mussolini with the “Order of the Crown of Italy,” Commander Class, for his role in syndicating Morgan loans to fascist Italy.

Henry Ford receiving Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler’s U.S. consuls. The occasion was Ford’s 75th birthday, July 30, 1938, in Dearborn, Michigan where his auto plants were, and where his museum is today.

Nearly a year after Russia and Germany signed the armistice, December 15, 1917, the remaining Allied Powers agreed with the Central Powers to an armistice, on November 11, 1918. Half a year later, June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles put an end to the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. The other Central Powers made separate treaties.

Article 231 was the most difficult and controversial of many provisions. It became known as the War Guilt clause, because it required “Germany [to] accept the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage” during the war. The other Central Powers treaties contained similar articles. The total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks. (Then $31.4 billion, roughly equivalent to US $442 billion, in 2017).

The treaty also forced Germany to disarm much of its arsenal and troops, and make substantial territorial concessions. Problems of payment would lead to the Locarno Treaties, followed by Dawes and Young re-negotiations, which improved relations between Germany and other European powers. Indefinite postponement of reparations was agreed at the 1932 Lausanne Conference.

The original treaty stripped Germany of 65,000 km2 of territory and 7 million people. It also required Germany to give up the gains made via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and grant independence to the protectorates that had been established.

Germany had to recognize the independence of Czechoslovakia and cede parts of the province of Upper Silesia. Germany also had to recognize the independence of Poland.
The provisions were intended to make the Reichswehr (military forces) incapable of offensive action and to encourage international disarmament. Germany was to demobilize soldiers by March 21, 1920, leaving an army of no more than 100,000 men.

Germany was prohibited from the arms trade; limits were imposed on the type and quantity of weapons; and it was prohibited from the manufacture or stockpile of chemical weapons, armored cars, tanks and military aircraft.
Germany was also required to join the League of Nations. This inter-governmental organization started on January 10, 1920. The main goal was to prevent future wars, while relying on collective security and disarmament.
The United States Senate refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles as it opposed joining the League of Nations. There was much too much money to be made in armament. Without the U.S. the organization never became effective.

Instead, the senate agreed to a separate document, on August 25, 1921, the United States-German Peace Treaty.

Article 1 obliged the German government to grant to the U.S. government all rights and privileges enjoyed by the other allied powers which had ratified the Versailles peace treaty. The provisions limiting Germany’s militarization and prohibiting arms trade should also apply. This treaty laid the foundations for a U.S.-German cooperation, which otherwise would have been more limited under the supervision of the League of Nations. The U.S. government could more easily assist the new Weimar Republic ease the burden of war reparations imposed in the Treaty of Versailles.

Weimar Republic was an unofficial, historical designation for the German state between 1919 and 1933. The name derives from the city of Weimar, where its constitutional assembly first took place. Weimar Germany fulfilled most of the requirements of the Treaty of Versailles although it never met its disarmament requirements, and eventually paid only a small portion of reparations. Even this payment placed a significant burden on its economy, which disquieted the majority.

Adolf Hitler

Like many Germans of the period, Adolf Hitler believed that the treaty was a betrayal. He said his country had been “ by its own government and by Marxists”.

Hitler joined the Nazi party (National Socialist German Worker’s Party/NSDAP) in 1920, a year after its founding in a Munich hotel. Nazism stood for the collective good of the “Aryan Master Race”, which required suppression of many individual rights. Its basis was German nationalism with “Lebensraum”/international expansion as a goal. Inferior peoples, first and foremost Jews, but also Gypsies and handicapped people, were to be suppressed and/or eliminated. (1)

In 1921, Hitler’s bellicose oratorical style appealed so much to Nazi members that they made him their leader. On November 8, 1923, Hitler led 2000 members in Munich to seize state power. The Beer Hall Putsch resulted in the death of 16 Nazis and four police officers. He was sentenced to five years in prison for treason but was released after only nine months. Authorities feared his rising popularity. While in prison, the relatively easy conditions allowed him to write Mein Kampf, an imperialist, racist and anti-Semitic diatribe.

Nazis, Social Democrats (SPD) and Communist (KPD) engaged in heated conflicts during the 1920s. Nazis were brutal, beating to death many Jews and Communists.

Black Tuesday—October 29, 1929—the Wall Street Crash heralded worldwide economic disaster. As a result, Nazis and Communists (KPD) made great gains during the September 1930 election. The NSDAP leapt forward from 2.6%, in May 1928 (gaining only 12 seats), to 18% for 107 seats. The KPD got 13% for 77 seats, an increase of 23 seats. The SPD took 24.5% of the vote for 143 seats, a loss of ten, but it was still the largest party.

The conservative-rightest Paul von Hindenburg government imposed emergency powers to back his three Chancellors Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen and General Kurt von Schleicher. The Great Depression, exacerbated by Brüning’s policy of deflation, doubled unemployment to 30%.

In July 1932 elections, a majority of voters placed their mark on the Nazis. They doubled their percentage (37%) and took 230 seats. Again the SPD fell back, losing ten more seats to 123, while the KPD made a modest advance winning 89 seats with 14% votes.

With widespread dissatisfaction, greater unemployment and poverty, and more violence, President Hindenburg felt obliged to appoint Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor, on January 31, 1933. Von Papen as Vice Chancellor was intended to be the “éminence grise”, who should keep Hitler under control. But four days later, Hitler announced his aggressive foreign policy, Lebenstraum for the German master race, and damn the Treaty of Versailles.

Quite conveniently for Hitler, an angry Dutchman, perhaps a communist, set fire to the government Reichstag gutting several buildings, on February 27. The next day, Hitler-Hindenburg made the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State. Popularly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, the regulations suspended the right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other constitutional protections, including all restraints on police investigations.

Neither the KPD, nor the Comintern, as was claimed, had anything to do with the fire. Nevertheless, Communists were prohibited from voting and sitting in the Parliament, on the pretext that they were planning an uprising to overthrow the state.

Hitler took full plenary powers, on March 24, with his Enabling Act. In less than two months, Hitler had come into a democratic government as chancellor and become a legal dictator. His seizure of power (Machtergreifung) permitted government-by-decree. These events brought the republic effectively to an end.

Germany Violates Treaty of Versailles

¤ At the time of signing in 1919, the dissolution of the army General Staff (Heer), according to Article 160, appeared to happen, however its core was reestablished and hidden in the Truppenamt (Troop Office). The cover organization functioned until March 1935 when the general staff was re-created. Hitler also violated part V of the Treaty of Versailles by introducing compulsory military conscription and rebuilding the armed forces.

¤ March 7, 1936, Germany violated article 43 of the treaty by reoccupying the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland. The remilitarization of the Rhineland changed the balance of power in Europe from France towards Germany, and made it possible for the latter to pursue a policy of aggression in Eastern Europe. Even so two-time former Labour Party Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald said he was pleased that the Treaty of Versailles was vanishing.

¤ March 1938, Germany violated article 80 of the treaty by annexing Austria in the Anschluss.
This idea of a united Austria-Germany that would form a “Greater Germany” stems from 1871.

As the tepid reaction to the German Anschluss with Austria had shown, the governments of France, the United Kingdom and Czechoslovakia were set on avoiding war at any cost. The French government did not wish to face Germany alone and took its lead from the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. When Hitler threatened to intervene in Sudeten, Chamberlain contended that Sudeten German grievances were justified and believed that Hitler's intentions were limited. Most inhabitants in Sudeten were of German descent but had been incorporated into Czechoslovakia as part of the treaties ending WWI.

On September 28, 1938, Chamberlain appealed to Hitler for a conference. They met in Munich with the government leaders of France and Italy. The Czechoslovak government was neither invited nor consulted. On September 29, the Munich Agreement was signed by Germany, Italy, France, and Britain. The agreement allowed Hitler to annex what became known as Sudetenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where most industry and banks were located and borders as well.

The Czechoslovak government capitulated the next day. The incorporation of the Sudetenland into Germany began on October 1, 1938. This weakened Czechoslovakia, and it became powerless to resist subsequent occupation. On October 5, Edvard Beneš resigned as President of Czechoslovakia and went into exile.

On March 15, 1939, the German Wehrmacht took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, and Hitler proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Italian Fascism

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was a journalist before he became a politician and leader of the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista; PNF). He ruled the country as prime minister from 1922 to 1943. Mussolini ruled constitutionally from 1922 to 1925 when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship.

Known as Il Duce (“The Leader”), Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism, in 1915. Known simply as Fascism (fascismo), it is the original Fascist ideology, s rooted in nationalism, national syndicalism, and the desire to restore and expand Italian territories, deemed necessary to assert national superiority, and to avoid succumbing into decay.

Mussolini and Hitler were not united when the Spanish Civil War broke out but Franco made separate deals with them. So Germany and Italy fought separately and together for Franco, and to prepare for the greater European war. (See chapter nine)

In September 1937, Mussolini visited Germany. Hitler put on a big display of military power for Mussolini, which convinced Il Duce that Germany was the power he should ally with. In May 1939, Germans and Italians cemented their alliance with the Pact of Steel. This committed both countries to support the other if one of them became involved in a war.

Given the “neutrality” of the West towards Hitler’s aggression, until his entering Poland, and the illegal rearmament of his military with Western aid, Soviet leaders thought it best to make a neutrality pact with Hitler. Joseph Stalin hoped either that Hitler would not invade their huge country or, at least, give it time to prepare for war. In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty in Moscow known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. A protocol outlined dividing the eastern European border states between their respective “spheres of influence”. The Soviet Union and Germany would partition Poland in the event of an invasion by Germany, and the Soviets would be allowed to overrun the Baltic States and Finland.

On August 23, 1939, the rest of the world learned of this pact but were unaware of the Poland provisions. World leaders were caught by surprise, because of Germany and Soviet mutual hostility and conflicting ideologies. Communist parties throughout the world had been following the Moscow line and were preparing for war against Nazi Germany. They suddenly had to change their tune, which cost them members and general sympathy.
Hitler was an impatient man. One week later, on September 1, Germany invaded Poland, triggering the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The Soviet Union quickly annexed the eastern part of the country. The two governments maintained reasonably strong diplomatic relations for two years. They made a trade pact in 1940 by which the Soviets received German military equipment and trade goods in exchange for oil and wheat, thereby helping Germany to circumvent a British blockade.

Mussolini considered that the non-aggression pact somehow meant that involved Italy, but he had not been advised about it nor did he sign the treaty.

Britain and French leaders finally woke up to the true Lebenstraum plan. They declared war two days after Germany invaded Poland. The first war casualty was the British ocean liner, Athenia, which was sunk by a German submarine. Of the 1,100 passengers on board, 112 lost their lives. Of those, 28 were Americans, but President Franklin Roosevelt declared there would be no talk of “America sending its armies to European fields.” The United States would remain neutral.

Germany opened The Battle of France alone on May 10. Italy joined in on June 10 in southern France. It took but six weeks to defeat France, conquering Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands along the way. A much smaller German force had occupied Denmark the month before, April 9, in three hours, and went on to Norway. It took the Nazis two months to beat a determined resistance. Norway surrendered on June 10.

Vidkun Quisling founded Norway’s fascist party, in 1933. He was made prime minister under the Nazis, 1942-5. Quisling was tried for high treason and murder after the war and executed on October 24, 1945. His surname is synonymous with collaborator and traitor.

Western Front fascist troops and war materials matched the strength of the combined allied forces—France, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, and the unoccupied parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia, but in this short period the allies suffered far greater casualties: 2.2 million killed and wounded compared to 163,000 Germans and Italians.

On June 22, the Second Armistice was signed by France and Germany, which resulted in a division of France. The anti-Semitic Vichy government, led by Marshal Philippe Pétain, was allowed to control a small zone in the south known as zone libre. Germany occupied the north and west. Italy took a small zone in the south-east. The de facto Vichy client state ended the Third Republic.

Such a quick victory over so much European territory encouraged Hitler to focus on bombing London, and the ensuing Blitzkrieg against several cities—July 1, 1940-May 1941.

Wall Street Coup Attempt: out with FDR, in with Franco, Mussolini and Hitler
President Herbert Hoover lost his re-election bid on November 8, 1932. His government had not recuperated from Black Tuesday. Unemployment at the time of the crash stood at 3%. By 1932, it had risen to 24% (12 million of the 51 million labor force; total population 91 million).

Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt won 57% of the vote. He took office on March 4, 1933, just as Hitler was consolidating his Nazi regime. Roosevelt quickly launched his New Deal program to provide state-supported jobs and greater social welfare. Roosevelt also had to face poor war veterans demanding bonuses promised them.

Hoover’s administration had been confronted by 43,000 Bonus marchers during July 1932—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups. They camped out in Washington, D.C.. Many had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates but they could not redeem them until 1945.

On July 28, 1932 U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance. Two veterans were shot and later died. Hoover then ordered the army to clear the veterans’ campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.

A second, smaller Bonus March took place in May 1933. The new president’s wife Eleanor Roosevelt met with them cordially on May 18. There was no money for bonuses but the Civilian Conservation Corps offered them jobs, which most accepted. Those who chose not to work for the CCC were given transportation home. (Congress overrode President Roosevelt’s veto in 1936, and paid the bonuses nine years early.)

Most capitalists hated Roosevelt for his New Deal, and for providing jobs, social and cultural benefits for all people regardless of color. Major businessmen were racists and favored fascist solutions. They thought they could use unemployed white war veterans to their advantage.

The Business Plot (aka The White House Coup Plot) was a political conspiracy in 1933-4. Retired General Smedley Darlington Butler was approached by Gerald MacGuire, representing the wealthiest businessmen seeking to use the popular general in a coup d’état to overthrow President Roosevelt. Smedley Butler was a Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized then. When he died (June 21, 1940), he was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.

Butler pretended to go along with the idea before revealing its insidious nature. When he went public, he explained what he had done during his military career:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China, in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

When the plotters approached Butler, they did not know he had changed his mind about business.

“In the summer of 1934, Gerald MacGuire, a lawyer in the Morgan brokerage office of Grayson M. -P. Murphy and an official of the American Legion, visited General Smedley Butler at his home in Newton Square, Pennsylvania. [Butler’s military career had ended three years earlier] amid a storm of diplomatic protest over his public description of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as ‘a mad dog about to break loose in Europe.’” wrote Gerard Colby, “The MacGuire Affair”, an excerpt from DuPont Dynasty (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, Inc.), pp. 324-330.
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/dupont-by_colby.html

“The General had stubbornly rejected Hoover's demand for a retraction and had retired from the service a proud but bitter man. But he was also probably the most popular soldier in America. As such, he was an attractive prize for any movement, and it was for this reason that MacGuire, mistakenly banking on the General’s personal bitterness and the then frequent brandings of Roosevelt as a ‘dictator,’ paid the old soldier a call.”

MacGuire was himself rich and he represented the elite of the elite. Here is a glimpse of his Big Capital America. The brokerage firm he worked for, Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, led N.Y. trading in stocks and international bonds. MacGuire was also a director of Morgan’s Guaranty Trust and New York Trust banks, and worked with several Morgan-connected corporations, including: Du Pont, Bethlehem Steel Corp., U.S. Steel Corp., together with copper, oil, electric appliances, locomotive, telephone and telegraph interests (AT&T). These were tied to other great banks: National City, Corn Exchange, Chase National.

Murphy’s boss also controlled General Motors, General Electric and New York Central Railroad.

These were tied to other great banks: National City, Corn Exchange, Chase National. The House of Morgan catered to the Astors, DuPonts, Guggenheims, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. He gave preferential shipping rates to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, cementing their markets. The Morgan Group dominated United States arms industry. (See, H.C. Engelbrect’s Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Arms Industry, Dodd, Mead &Co., 1934)

Grayson Murphy played an important role in syndicating Morgan loans to fascist Italy, for which he was decorated by Mussolini. [The “Order of the Crown of Italy,” Commander class.] He met with Mussolini on assignment from Morgan.

Grayson Murphy was the first treasurer of the American Liberty League just launched by rich magnates to “combat radicalism, to teach…respect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free private enterprise.” It was designated to organize the fascist coup. (2)
One of the League’s founders was Senator Prescott Bush, a partner in the Brown Brothers Harriman bank, which General Butler had fought for in Nicaragua. He had business ties with Hitler.

Prescott Bush fathered two future presidents. He was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corporation, an investment bank that operated as a clearing house for assets and enterprises held by German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. In October 1942, the U.S. seized the fascist war-profiteering bank under the Trading with the Enemy Act, but only held its assets until the war ended.

Bush’s American Liberty League buddy, Murphy, had been one of 20 elite U.S. military intelligence officers (Office of Strategic Services, precursor to CIA), who met with other businessmen in Paris to found the American Legion. In the 1920s and 1930s, these super patriots were a reactionary outfit that used baseball bats to break up strikers and civil rights demonstrations. Colonel William F. Easterwood, national vice-commander of the Legion, pinned a Legion button on Mussolini, in 1935, making him an “honorary member.”

Many of America’s rich and famous were directly involved in fascism and murder:

Besides J.P. Morgan, jr. other FDR coup conspirators included: Irenee du Pont, American Liberty League and Black Legion founder; William Doyle, former state commander of the American Legion; John Davis, former Democratic presidential candidate and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan; Al Smith, Roosevelt’s bitter political foe, a former governor of New York and a co-director of the American Liberty League; Robert Clark, one of Wall Street’s richest bankers and stockbrokers; John J. Raskob, a high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party. Later, Raskob would become a “Knight of Malta,” a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John McCone.

In 2012, the A&E Television Networks released the series, “The Men Who Built America”. The “entertainment media company” chose Henry Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt as THE builders. http://www.history.com

The documentary blurb invites viewers to: “Meet the titans who forged the
foundation of modern America and created the American Dream.”

Well, at least two of these titans, Morgan and Rockefeller, conspired to overthrow, even murder President Roosevelt. They, along with Henry Ford, gladly financed Hitler and Mussolini’s rise to power, and thus encouraged them to murder fellow American citizens while endeavoring to rule the world with fascism’s might.

“Along with friends of the Morgan Bank and General Motors,” wrote Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An exposé of the Nazi American Money Plot 1933-1949 (Delacorte Press, 1983), “Du Pont backers financed a coup d’état that would overthrow the President with the aid of a $3 million-funded army of terrorists”. They would force Roosevelt “to take orders from businessmen as part of a fascist government or face the alternative of imprisonment and execution”.

If these “American Dreamers” had had their way the dream would have embraced fascism. Historian James Truslow Adams was the first to publicly define the “American Dream” in his 1931book, Epic of America. “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

General Butler and the Fascist American Dream

America, Gerald MacGuire told Butler that 1934 summer, was in great danger from a “communist menace,” and needed a complete change of government. MacGuire explained that a, “militantly patriotic” veterans’ organization, like the fascist Croix de Feu operating in France, was the only kind of organization that could force a change in Washington. He suggested that Butler lead such an organization in “a march on Washington.” “We have three million dollars to start with on the line,” he told Butler, “and we can get three million more if we need it.” (3)

Butler was amazed at this plan, and played along to uncover details. “Is there anything stirring yet?” he asked MacGuire.

“Yes, you watch,” the broker replied. “In two or three weeks, you will see it come out in the papers. There will be big fellows in it. This is to be the background of it.”

Exactly two weeks later, on August 23, the American Liberty League publicly announced its existence with MacGuire’s employer, Grayson M. P. Murphy, as its treasurer.

Butler knew that MacGuire worked for Morgan and Murphy. In a second meeting, MacGuire told Butler that nine very wealthy men were doing the financial backing, one being Murphy.

“I work for him,” MacGuire assured the General, “I'm in his office.”

Appalled by MacGuire's proposal, Butler contacted a crusading reporter for the Philadelphia Record, Paul Comly French. “The whole affair smacked of treason to me”, Butler remarked. On September 13, 1934 French visited Gerald MacGuire at the brokerage firm of Grayson M.-P. Murphy Company and, posing as a sympathizer trusted by Butler, won MacGuire's confidence.
“The whole movement is patriotic because the Communists will wreck the nation unless the soldiers save it through fascism,” MacGuire reportedly told French. “All General Butler would have to do to get a million men would be to announce the formation of the organization and tell them it would cost a dollar a year to join.”

On November 20, 1934, General Butler revealed the whole scheme by testifying before a private session of the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities. He suggested that if the Committee wanted to get to the bottom of this, they question the biggest interests involved: Grayson M. -P. Murphy, General Douglas MacArthur, Hanford MacNider—ex National Commander of the American Legion—and leaders of the American Liberty League.

News media at first reported earnestly on the plot, then quickly changed course and dismissed it. The “New York Times” newsroom, for instance, gave the plot front page coverage until an editorial characterized it as a “gigantic hoax”. But the fact that much of the Congressional records of the hearings were destroyed is good evidence that powerful people did not want the truth known.

“It was four years,” wrote Charles Higham, “before the committee dared to publish its report in a white paper that was marked for ‘restricted circulation’. They were forced to admit that ‘certain persons made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country . . . [The] committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler.’ This admission that the entire plan was deadly in intent was not accompanied by the imprisonment of anybody. Further investigations disclosed that over a million people had been guaranteed to join the scheme and that the arms and munitions necessary would have been supplied by Remington, a Du Pont subsidiary.”

“FDR’s main interest was getting the New Deal passed, and so he struck a deal in which it was agreed that the plotters would walk free if Wall Street would back off of their opposition to the New Deal and let FDR do what he wanted”.

Had the plotters been tried for the treason they committed, they could have been executed. Instead they continued to rule America.

The "New York Times" headline, November 21, 1934:
Major General Smedley D. Butler, U.S.M.C., retired, caused a sensation here today [Nov. 20] by testifying before the House committee investigating un-American activities... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/opinion/21iht-oldnov21.html?mcubz=1

In 1935, Butler wrote a little book, War Is a Racket, in which he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars. It is The anti-war classic, especially since it is written by the most decorated U.S. Marine. Excerpts:

“War is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made…That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.”

“Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
1. We must take the profit out of war.
2. We must permit the youth…who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.”

United States Business Arms and Finances Mussolini and Hitler

Many of the plotters exposed by General Butler had been boosting their fortunes by investing in the fascist movements of Mussolini and Hitler. Some of them amassed great fortunes by arming fascists before and during WWII.
William Dodd, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, wrote to his president, Roosevelt, about this:

“’A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.... A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there. Propagandists for fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare. We should be aware of the symptoms. When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions.’”
http://coat.ncf.ca/our¬_magazine/links/53/53-index.html

J.P. Morgan funded the rise of Italian Fascism. His company was Mussolini’s main overseas bank. “In 1926, Morgan partner, Thomas Lamont, who was later the chair of J.P. Morgan Co., secured a $100 million loan for Mussolini. As Noam Chomsky put it, Morgan’s man described himself as ‘something like a missionary’ for Italian Fascism, expressing his admiration for Il Duce, ‘a very upstanding chap’ who had ‘done a great job in Italy’ and for the ‘sound ideas’ that guide him in governing the country.” (Deterring Democracy, 1991).
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/morgan.html and http://coat.ncf.ca/

As for Morgan’s own bank, it kept a branch open for business in Nazi-occupied France to serve German interests throughout the war. As we were told about Wall Street by the Barak Obama government in 2008-9, these capitalists are too big to fall. Morgan was too big to be held accountable to the Trading with the Enemy Act. Instead of being executed for treason he got richer.

Irish journalist Finian Cunningham writings about the West’s rearming Hitler and Mussolini is quoted extensively by Jay Jason in his article, “Buried History: 27 million died in Russia because Wall Street built up Hitler’s Wehrmacht to knock out Soviet Union”. http://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/08/08/buried-history-27-million-died-in-russia-because-wall-street-built-up-hitlers-wehrmacht-to-knock-out-soviet-union/

“The Western public, inculcated with decades of brainwashing versions of history, have a particular disadvantage in coming to a proper understanding of the world wars…European fascism headed up by Nazi Germany, along with Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal, was not some aberrant force that sprang from nowhere during the 1920s-1930s. The movement was a deliberate cultivation by the rulers of Anglo-American capitalism. European fascism may have been labeled ‘national socialism’ but its root ideology was very much one opposed to overturning the fundamental capitalist order. It was an authoritarian drive to safeguard the capitalist order, which viewed genuine worker-based socialism as an enemy to be ruthlessly crushed.”

“This is what made European fascism so appealing to the Western capitalist ruling class in those times. In particular, Nazi Germany was viewed by the Western elite as a bulwark against possible socialist revolution inspired by the Russian revolution of 1917.”

Edwin Black’s, IBM and the Holocaust (Crown Books, 2001), shows how IBM helped the genocide of Jews. “The major software company IBM was the company which provided Hitler with the technical means to catalogue Jews population and organize the ‘Final Solution’, i.e. the killing of millions of people.” http://news.cnet.com/2009-1082-269157.html .

“Why Allies claimed complete ignorance on what happened to the millions of Jews in Europe during the War, or why they were ‘astounded’ to discover the death camps after the war was over is a ‘mystery’ never to be solved.”

GM and Ford automobile companies had subsidiaries and conducted business with the Third Reich. GM supplied the Wehrmact with Opel “Blitz” trucks from its Brandenburg complex. For these and other contributions to wartime preparations, James Mooney, GM’s chief executive for overseas operations was awarded the Order of the German Eagle (first class), in 1938, by Adolf Hitler.

Texaco’s CEO Torkild Rieber was a friend of Francisco Franco (chapter nine), and once his forces defeated the democratic Spanish Republic, Rieber offered his aid to Hitler.

“After the Spanish war ended, Texaco continued to make its own foreign policy. Even after Germany went to war with Britain and France in September 1939, Rieber made no secret of his enthusiasm for Hitler. He sometimes joked with friends that the Führer’s anti-Semitism might be a touch excessive, but he was just the sort of strong, anti-communist leader with whom one could do business. This Rieber did, with gusto, selling Texaco oil to the Nazis, ordering tankers built in Hamburg shipyards, and traveling to Germany after the Polish Blitzkrieg so that Hermann Göring could take him on a tour by air of key industrial sites. On that trip he spent a weekend at the Luftwaffe commander’s country estate, Carinhall, soon to be extravagantly decorated with art treasures looted from across Europe,” wrote Adam Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016].

Rieber’s rival, John Rockeller’s Standard Oil of Jersey was also a fan of fascism. He transferred hydrogenation patents and technology to I.G. Farben chemical industry enabling it to produce 6.5 million tons of oil for war aircraft. This was 20 times what it had been producing using only its own natural petroleum products.

“GM and Standard Oil of New Jersey formed a joint subsidiary with the giant Nazi chemical cartel, I.G. Farben, named Ethyl G.m.b.H. [now Ethyl, Inc.] which provided the mechanized German armies with synthetic tetraethyl fuel [leaded gas]. During 1936-39, at the urgent request of Nazi officials who realized that Germany’s scarce petroleum reserves would not satisfy war demands, GM and Exxon joined with German chemical interests in the erection of the lead-tetraethyl plants. According to captured German records, these facilities contributed substantially to the German war effort:
‘The fact that since the beginning of the war we could produce lead-tetraethyl is entirely due to the circumstances that, shortly before, the Americans [Du Pont, GM, Standard Oil] had presented us with the production plants complete with experimental knowledge. Without lead-tetraethyl the present method of warfare would be unthinkable,” wrote George Seldes, Facts and Fascism, 1943.

I.G.’s industrial complex built at Auschwitz to exploit the supply of death camp labor for the production of synthetic rubber and oil was so enormous that the complex used as much electricity as the city of Berlin. I.G. also made money from the sale of Zyklon B used in the gas chambers.
The Nuremberg trial of industrial war criminals held by the United States (May 1947 to May 1948) indicted 24 I.G. Farben executives, and charged them with five counts including “slavery and mass murder”. They received sentences “light enough to please a chicken thief”, decried dissenting Judge Paul Herbert. Half of them were let off. The other 12 got 18 months to eight years imprisonment for crimes of slavery, mass murder, torture, and what amounted to genocide.

While a few German capitalists were convicted, none of their American partners served any time.

Irenee du Pont, for instance, was “the most imposing and powerful member of the clan,” according to biographer and historian Charles Higham. He “was obsessed with Hitler's principles. He supported the superman race ‘theory’.”

“The Du Ponts’ fascistic behavior was seen in 1936, when Irenee du Pont used General Motors money to finance the notorious Black Legion. This terrorist organization had as its purpose the prevention of automobile workers from unionizing. The members wore hoods and black robes, with skulls and crossbones. They fire-bombed union meetings, murdered union organizers, often by beating them to death, and dedicated their lives to destroying Jews and communists. They linked to the Ku Klux Klan. . . at least fifty people, many of them blacks, had been butchered by the Legion.”

“Between 1932 and 1939, bosses of General Motors poured $30 million into I.G. Farben plants.” Furthermore, Charles Higham wrote, by “the mid-1930s, General Motors was committed to full-scale production of trucks, armored cars, and tanks in Nazi Germany.”

Seldes wrote, “Most notorious of all [capitalists] was Alcoa, the Mellon-Davis-Duke monopoly, which is largely responsible for the fact America did not have the aluminum with which to build airplanes before and after Pearl Harbor, while Germany had an unlimited supply.”

Alcoa sabotage of American war production had already cost the U.S., “10,000 fighters or 1,665 bombers,” according to Congressman Pierce of Oregon, speaking in May 1941, because of “the effort to protect Alcoa’s monopolistic position. . .” “If America loses this war,” said Secretary of the Interior [Harold] Ickes, June 26, 1941, “it can thank the Aluminum Corporation of America”.

“By its cartel agreement with I.G. Farben, controlled by Hitler,” Seldes wrote, “Alcoa sabotaged the aluminum program of the U.S. air force. The Truman Committee [on National Defense, chaired by then-Senator Harry S. Truman in 1942] heard testimony that Alcoa’s representative, A.H. Bunker, $1-a-year head of the aluminum section of O.P.M., prevented work on our $600,000,000 aluminum expansion program.”

The Truman Committee must have known that American capitalists had at least $475 million investments in Nazi Germany at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Higham wrote:

“Standard Oil of New Jersey had $120 million invested there; General Motors had $35 million; ITT had $30 million; and Ford had $17.5 million. Though it would have been more patriotic to have allowed Nazi Germany to confiscate these companies for the duration—to nationalize them or to absorb them into Hermann Göring's industrial empire—it was clearly more practical to insure them protection from seizure by allowing them to remain in special holding companies, the money accumulating until war’s end. It is interesting that whereas there is no evidence of any serious attempt by Roosevelt to impeach the guilty in the United States, there is evidence that Hitler strove to punish certain German Fraternity associates on the grounds of treason to the Nazi state. Indeed, in the case of ITT, perhaps the most flagrant of the corporations in its outright dealings with the enemy, Hitler and his postmaster general, the venerable Wilhelm Ohnesorge, strove to impound the German end of the business. But even they were powerless in such a situation: the Gestapo leader of counterintelligence, Walter Schellenberg, was a prominent director and shareholder of ITT by arrangement with New York—and even Hitler dared not cross the Gestapo.”
Capitalism, though, isn’t all strictly business. Henry Ford, a notorious anti-Semite, formed a mutual admiration society with Adolf Hitler. The German dictator enthusiastically applauded American mass-production techniques.

Hitler regarded Ford as his inspiration and kept a life-size portrait of the industrialist next to his desk. Ford was awarded the highest medal that Nazi Germany could award a foreigner when his truck assembly opened in Berlin, in 1938. This was a great aid for Nazi Germany’s military buildup, a U.S. Army Intelligence reported.
http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_nastybiz.html

In 1940, with Europe at war, the Krupp AG 400-year old family firm, Europe’s largest armament firm, arranged to have its royalties from General Electric collected by a Swiss go-between.

In September 1940, the UE NEWS , a medium of the independent union of electrical workers, reported that two federal anti-trust indictments had been returned against GE and the Krupp company charging them with conspiring to maintain a world monopoly in the production and sale of tungsten carbide. U.S. entry into World War II interrupted the proceedings, however.

“In the meantime, a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs took an understandably dim view of how international cartels had hindered the anti-fascist war effort. The Senate subcommittee charged that the GE-Krupp arrangement had created a bottleneck in production of tungsten carbide. ‘In contrast with the situation in Germany, the present drastic shortage of this essential material in this country is notorious,’ stated John Henry Lewin, special assistant to the Attorney General. ‘The need to produce it, to retool our manufacturing plants with it, and to instruct workmen in the use of such tools, has constituted one of the principal bottlenecks in our production program,’" wrote UE NEWS.

In a New York anti-trust trial against General Electric, 1946-7, GE and subsidiaries, with named company officials were found guilty on five counts of criminal conspiracy with Friedrich Krupp A.G. of Essen, Germany—not for murder or genocide but for violating a law against monopolizing a market, for raising prices by driving competitors out of the business of mass murder.

Summing up his opinion on one count, Judge John C. Knox declared, “Competitors were excluded by purchase and by boycott; prices on unpatented products were fixed, future patent rights were forced into the pool, world markets were divided, and on occasion prices were fixed beyond the scope of any asserted patent protection…Defendants did unlawfully monopolize.”

No jail time. Defendants were fined between $2,500 and $20,000. Profits GE made through Krupp’s murder of millions of Jews and other human beings amounted to millions of dollars. And the mass media didn’t even report on the trial or buried information inside the press.

Of the many important “bits” of information that this trial did not take up was the involvement in the Dulles brothers in Krupp company crimes against humanity. Dulles fascist connection did not bother General Dwight Eisenhower, because he appointed him Secretary of State when he became president, and Eisenhower appointed brother Allen head of the CIA.

Stephen Kinzer, former “N.Y. Times” foreign correspondent, wrote, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and their secret World War (Times Books, 2013).

A NewYork Times review summarized John Foster Dulles friendship with Hjalmar Schacht, the Reichsbank president and Hitler’s minister of economics. John and Allen Foster were partners in the international law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. The New York-based firm floated bonds for Krupp A. G., the arms manufacturer, and also worked for I. G. Farben.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/books/review/the-brothers-by-stephen-kinzer.html

Kinzer lists what he calls the “six monsters” that the Dulles brothers believed had to be brought down when they were in government: Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Sukarno in Indonesia, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and Fidel Castro in Cuba. The Dulles’ succeeded in bringing down Mossadegh, Arbenz and Lumumba.

As dedicated civil servants for “American Philanthropists”, the Dulles extolled “American Exceptionalism”, which President Roosevelt wrote about to his confidant, Colonel Edward House, on November 22, 1933.
“As you and I know, this government has been owned by a financial element in the centers of power since the days of Andrew Jackson” (president 1829-37). (4)

“It is to be regretted,” Jackson said, “that the rich and powerful bend the acts of the government to their own purposes.” He said the Bank of the United States was dangerous to the liberty of the people; that the bank could build up or pull down political parties through loans to politicians.

Most of the U.S. companies mentioned in this chapter continue flourishing as they were, under different names or as part of greater corporation groups: Krupp is now part of ThyssenKrupp, Standard Oil is Exxon; Du Pont, GM, Ford, Alcoa and IBM have the same names.

Notes:
1. The Holocaust caused the murder of approximately six million Jews and five million other targeted groups, such as gypsies and handicapped people of various nationalities, including Aryans. There were about nine million Jews in pre-war Europe.

2. American Liberty Legion attacked government funding for poverty relief and social services and opposed all “burdensome taxes imposed upon industry for unemployment insurance and old age pension.” On Jan. 3, 1936, in an unprecedented joint session of Congress when President Roosevelt announced a ban on military exports to fascist Italy, he blasted the American Liberty League: “They steal the livery of great national ideals to serve discredited special interests…. This minority in business and industry... engage in vast propaganda to spread fear and discord among the people.”

3. Dickstein-McCormick Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, 2nd Session, Testimony of Major General Smedley D. Butler, November 20, 1934, pp. 8-114, DC.

4. Morgan would have been one of the bankers that President Jackson would have been talking about had he lived then. In May 1933, J.P. “Jack” Morgan, Jr., as well as several of his partners and other major bank executives, testified at hearings held by the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency investigating the causes of the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent banking crisis. The hearings raised the question of the role banks played in the speculative fever leading up to the crash.

In the 1930’s populism resurfaced in America after Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bank and others profited from the Crash of 1929. House Banking Committee Chairman Louis McFadden (D-NY) said of the Great Depression, “It was no accident. It was a carefully contrived occurrence…The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all”. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-federal-reserve-cartel-the-eight-families/25080