(The Elkhorn Manifesto)
SHADOW OF THE SWASTIKA:
The Real Reason the Government Won't Debate Medical Cannabis and
Industrial Hemp Re-legalization
An Open Letter to All Americans By R. William Davis
Documented Evidence of a Secret Business and Political Alliance
Between the U.S. "Establishment" and the Nazis - Before, During and
After World War II - up to the Present.
PREFACE
Before the Gatewood Galbraith for Governor Campaign in 1991, few
Kentuckians knew that the plant that the federal government had
demonized for over 50 years as "Marijuana - Assassin of Youth," was,
in fact, Cannabis Hemp, the most traded commodity in the world until
the mid-1800s, and our state's number one crop, industry, and most
important source of revenue, for over 150 years.
Today, thanks to the efforts of pioneer hemp researchers and public
advocates such as Galbraith, Jack Fraizer, Jack Herer, Chris Conrad,
Ed Rosenthal, Don Wirtshafter and others, the federal government's
unjustifiable suppression of our state's right to develop our most
valuable and versatile natural resource, is facing increasing
opposition from an informed public. Hemp is now recognized as the
number one agriculturally renewable raw material in the world, and
perhaps the only crop / industry which can guarantee us industrial
and economic independence from the trans-national corporations.
"Shadow of the Swastika" is a follow-up to my earlier work,
"Cannabis Hemp: the Invisible Prohibition Revealed," which I wrote
and published in support of the Galbraith Campaign. Since
publication of that booklet, there has been growing public
acceptance of the evidence that Marijuana Prohibition was created in
1937, not to protect society from the "evils of the drug Marijuana,"
as the Federal government claimed, but as an act of deliberate
economic and industrial sabotage against the re-emerging Industrial
Hemp Industry.
Previous investigations by hemp researchers have been limited to
the suppression of free-market competition from the hemp industry,
and focused on the activities of three prominent members of
America's corporate, industrial and banking establishment during the
mid- to late-1930s:
WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST, the newspaper and magazine tycoon.
The expected rebirth of cannabis hemp as a less expensive source of
pulp for paper meant his millions of acres of prime timberland, and
investment in wood pulp papermaking equipment, would soon be worth
much less. In the 1920s, about the same time as the equipment was
developed to economically mass-produce raw hemp into pulp and fiber
for paper, he began the "Reefer Madness" hoax in his newspaper and
magazine publications.
ANDREW MELLON, founder of the Gulf Oil Corporation.
He knew that cannabis hemp was an alternative industrial raw
material for the production of thousands of products, including fuel
and plastics, which, if allowed to compete in the free-market, would
threaten the future profits of the oil companies. As Secretary of
the Treasury he created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and
appointed his own future nephew-in-law, Harry Anslinger, as
director. Anslinger would later use the sensational, and totally
fabricated, articles published by Hearst, to push the Marijuana Tax
Act of 1937 through Congress, which successfully destroyed the
rebirth of the cannabis hemp industry.
A prominent member of one Congressional subcommittee who voted in
favor of this bill was Joseph Guffey of Pennsylvania, an oil tycoon
and former business partner of Andrew Mellon in the Spindletop oil
fields in Texas.
THE DU PONT CHEMICAL CORPORATION,
which owned the patents on synthetic petrochemicals and industrial
processes that promised billions of dollars in future profits from
the sale of wood pulp paper, lead additives for gasoline, synthetic
fibers and plastics, if hemp could be suppressed. At the time, du
Pont family influence in both government and the private sector was
unmatched, according to historians and journalists.
This publication, however, reveals documented historical evidence
that the suppression of the hemp industry was only one key part of a
much larger conspiracy in the 1930s, not only by the three corporate
interests named above, but by many others, as well.
Congressional records, FBI reports and investigations by the
Justice Department, during the 1930s and 1940s, have already
documented evidence of this wider plot. A list of the corporations
named include Du Pont, Standard Oil, and General Motors, all of
which were proven to be conspiring with Nazi industrial cartels to
eliminate competition world-wide and divide among themselves the
Earth's industrial resources and commercial markets, for profitable
exploitation.
This conspiracy succeeded. It is now obvious that this lack of
serious competition in the industrial raw materials market caused
our present - and totally contrived - addiction to petrochemicals.
Its success is directly responsible for the most troubling problems
we now face in the 1990s; serious damage to our environment,
concentration of economic and political power into fewer and fewer
hands, and the weakening of the rights of individuals and states to
determine their own futures.
It is more and more evident that, given the historical record, the
structure of the New World Order is being built upon the Foundation
of Marijuana Prohibition, and only the relegalization of free-market
hemp competition can save us.
R. William Davis July 4, 1996 Louisville, Kentucky
INTRODUCTION
To clearly understand the circumstances which existed during the
1930s and 1940s, and are the subject of this booklet, it would be
helpful to first put the hemp / petrochemical conflict into
historical perspective. The events which took place in the years
leading up to World War II were a continuation of a struggle between
agricultural and industrial interests that began before the American
Revolution, a struggle which has yet to be decided, even today.
AGRICULTURE VS. INDUSTRY
The historical record, at least as it has been presented to us in
the public school system, is that the Civil War was fought to end
slavery. This is not the whole story. The truth of the matter is
that it was also a clash between Northern industrialists and
Southern agriculturists, over control of the expansion into the
newly opened West.
In 1845, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "I hold it a paramount duty of us
in the free states due to the union of the states, and perhaps to
liberty itself, to let the slavery of other states alone." (1)
Concerning the Western territories, he said "The whole Nation is
interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We
want them for homes and free white people. This they cannot be, to
any considerable extent, if slavery be planted within them." (2)
Lincoln was caught in the middle between the Northern
industrialists and the Southern agriculturists, who both wanted to
dominate Western expansion because of the wealth it offered. The
industrialists knew that the agriculturists depended on slavery
because cotton, upon which Southern wealth was based, was very labor
intensive and required the inexpensive labor that slavery provided.
They knew that if the Western lands were declared "free states" then
the Southern agriculturists would be unable to compete, and would be
forced to leave Western expansion, and its potential profits, to the
Northern industrialists.
Quoting "The Irony of Democracy," by Thomas R. Dye and T. Harmon
Zeigler,
"The importance of the Civil War for America's elite structure was
the commanding position that the new industrial capitalists won
during the course of the struggle. . . . The economic transformation
of the United States from an agricultural to an industrial nation
reached the crescendo of a revolution in the second half of the
nineteenth century.
"Civil War profits compounded the capital of the industrialists and
placed them in a position to dominate the economic life of the
nation. Moreover, when the Southern planters were removed from the
national scene, the government in Washington became the exclusive
domain of the new industrial leaders." (3)
The Northern industrialists used this increased capital to build
the system of transcontinental railways, linking the Northeast with
both the South and West. The labor for this undertaking was from the
Northeastern Establishment's own source of cheap labor - recently
freed slaves and poor immigrants from Europe and China - who
suffered under living conditions which were often little better than
those which existed under the Slave System just a few years before.
It was during the years between the Civil War and the beginning of
the Twentieth Century that the Northern industrialists altered the
role of the American government. Originally established by the
Revolution to protect and preserve the lives, property and freedoms
of all Americans from repressive government, it was transformed into
an agency to protect the economic future of Northern industrialists.
"[T]he industrial elites," according to Dye and Zeigler, "saw no
objection to legislation if it furthered their success in business.
Unrestricted competition might prove who was the fittest, but as an
added precaution to insure that the industrial capitalists
themselves emerged as the fittest, these new elites also insisted
upon government subsidies, patents, tariffs, loans, and massive
giveaways of land and other natural resources." (4)
The struggle between Western farmers and the railroads owned by the
Northern industrialists is a good example. To protect their
interests, citizens created "the Grange," an organization which
helped to enact state laws regulating the "ruthless aggression" of
the railroads. In 1877, these laws were upheld by the Supreme Court
in the Munn v. Illinois decision. But, a few years later, Justice
Stephen A. Field changed the role, and the very definition, of the
corporation. He gave a new interpretation to the Fourteenth
Amendment that actually gave corporations legal status as citizens .
. . as artificial persons. (5)
It was not long after this change in the interpretation of the
Fourteenth Amendment that John D. Rockefeller, the father of the
modern-day corporation, created the great Standard Oil Corporation
which, by the late 1880s, gained control over 90% of all the oil
refineries in America. (6)
The roots of 20th Century American politics can best be illustrated
by the 1896 Presidential Election, won by Republican William
McKinley by a landslide. The McKinley campaign was directed by
Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Standard Oil and raised a $16,000,000
campaign fund from wealthy fellow industrialists, (an amount that
was unmatched in Presidential campaigns until the 1960s). The major
theme of the campaign, and one that would echo far into the future,
was "what's good for business is good for the country." (7)
This emerging political and judicial misuse of power in America was
feared by Thomas Jefferson who, in 1787, wrote, "I think our
governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they
remain chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall
be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one
another in large cities as in Europe they will become corrupt as in
Europe." (8)
It is important to remember that the American Revolution was a
clash between the agriculturists in the colonies, and the British
industrialists who controlled the government in England. Almost 100
years later the Civil War was fought as a continuation of the same
basic struggle, but with the victory going back to the
industrialists. This began the erosion of the American government
"of the people, for the people and by the people." The buying of the
1896 Presidential Election, by Hanna of Standard Oil and the
Northern industrial interests, was the next important step on the
long road to the American government "of the corporation, for the
corporation and by the corporation."
A few years later, World War I would forge an even closer
relationship between corporations and government in the United
States, as well as around the world. Anthony Sampson, in his book
"The Arms Bazaar," notes that "the American companies, led by US
Steel and du Pont, were transformed by war orders. US Steel, which
had absorbed Carnegie's old steel company, had made average annual
profits in the four pre-war years of $105 million, while in the four
war years they were $240 million; and du Pont's average profit went
up from $6 million to $58 million. . . .
"Certainly the arms companies had become much richer through the
war, and there were widespread suspicions that they were actually
trying to prolong it." (9)
The bottom line is, of course, victory or profit, and in what
proportions? To what lengths would this nation's top industrial
leaders go to secure their share of the profits before and during
the next "war to end all war?"
NOTES: INTRODUCTION
1.American Political Tradition, Hofstadter, p. 109. (As reprinted
in The Irony of Democracy, Thomas R. Dye and L. Harmon Zeigler, p.
- 2.American Political Tradition, p. 113. (As reprinted in The
Irony of Democracy, p. 72) 3.Irony of Democracy, p. 73 4.Ibid., p.
74 5.Ibid., p. 75 6.Ibid., p. 76 7.Ibid., p. 82 8.Ibid., p. 62 9.The
Arms Bazaar, Anthony Sampson, p. 65
U.S. CORPORATIONS AND THE NAZIS
"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. . . .
"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." - William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to
Germany, 1937.(1)
A large volume of documentary evidence exists that reveals that
many of the richest, most powerful men in the United States, and the
giant corporations they controlled, were secretly allied with the
Nazis, both before and during World War II, even after war was
declared between Germany and America. This alliance began with U.S.
corporate investment during the reconstruction of post-World War I
Germany in the 1920s and, years later, included financial,
industrial and military aid to the Nazis.
On the pages which follow we will review which prominent Americans
and corporations were involved, what aid and comfort they gave our
nation's enemies - treasonable offenses during time of war, and
investigations into these matters which produced evidence of a
US/Nazi corporate conspiracy to bring a fascist state to America,
and eliminate competition in the industrial raw materials market in
order to force world-wide dependance on oil-based petrochemicals.
WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST
Hearst, who was so concerned about the American public's health and
safety on the matter of marijuana use, apparently had no such fears
when it came to Hitler and the Nazis. According to journalist George
Seldes:
". . . Hitler had the support of the most widely circulated
magazine in history, 'Readers Digest,' as well as nineteen big-city
newspapers and one of the three great American news agencies, the
$220-million Hearst press empire.
". . . William Randolph Hearst, Sr., . . . was the lord of all the
press lords in the United States. The millions who read the Hearst
newspapers and magazines and saw Hearst newsreels in the nation's
moviehouses had their minds poisoned by Hitler propaganda.
"It was . . . disclosed first to President Roosevelt [by Ambassador
Dodd] almost on the day it happened, in September 1934, and it is
detailed in the book 'Ambassador Dodd's Diary,' published in 1941,
and again in libel-proof documents on file in the courts of the
state of New York. William E. Dodd, professor of history [at the
University of Chicago], told me about the Hearst sell-out . . .
"According to Ambassador Dodd, Hearst came to take the waters at
Bad Nauheim in September 1934, and Dodd somehow learned immediately
that Hitler had sent two of his most trusted Nazi propagandists,
Hanfstangel and Rosenberg, to ask Hearst how Nazism could present a
better image in the United States. When Hearst went to Berlin later
in the month, he was taken to see Hitler."
Seldes reports that a $400,000 a year deal was struck between
Hearst and Hitler, and signed by Doctor Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi
propaganda minister. "Hearst," continues Seldes, "completely changed
the editorial policy of his nineteen daily newspapers the same month
he got the money."
In the court documents filed on behalf of Dan Gillmor, publisher of
a magazine named "Friday," in response to a lawsuit by Hearst, under
item 61, he states: "Promptly after this said visit with Adolf
Hitler and the making of said arrangements. . . said plaintiff,
William Randolph Hearst, instructed all Hearst press correspondents
in Germany, including those of INS [Hearst's International News
Service] to report happenings in Germany only in a friendly' manner.
All of such correspondents reporting happenings in Germany
accurately and without friendliness, sympathy and bias for the
actions of the then German government, were transferred elsewhere,
discharged, or forced to resign. . . ."
In the late 1930s, Seldes recounts, when "several sedition
indictments [were brought by] the Department of Justice . . .
against a score or two of Americans, the defendants included an
unusually large minority of newspaper men and women, most of them
Hearst employees." (2)
ANDREW MELLON
"Thurman Arnold, as assistant district attorney of the United
States, his assistant, Norman Littell, and several Congressional
investigations, have produced incontrovertible evidence that some of
our biggest monopolies entered into secret agreements with the Nazi
cartels and divided the world up among them," states Seldes in his
book, "Facts and Fascism," published in 1943. "Most notorious of all
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." (3)
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,"
writes Seldes, "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." (4)
DU PONT AND GENERAL MOTORS
General Motors is included here because, by 1929, the Du Pont
corporation had acquired controlling interest in, and had
interlocking directorships with, General Motors.
Irenee du Pont, "the most imposing and powerful member of the
clan," according to biographer and historian Charles Higham, "was
obsessed with Hitler's principles." "He keenly followed the career
of the future Fuhrer in the 1920s, and on September 7, 1926, in a
speech to the American Chemical Society, he advocated a race of
supermen, to be achieved by injecting special drugs into them in
boyhood to make their characters to order." Higham's book on this
subject, "Trading with the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American
Money Plot 1933-1949," is highly recommended.
Du Pont's anti-Semitism "matched that of Hitler" and, in 1933, the
Du Ponts "began financing native fascist groups in America . . ."
one of which Higham identifies as the American Liberty League: "a
Nazi organization whipping up hatred of blacks and Jews," and the
"love of Hitler.
"Financed . . . to the tune of $500,000 the first year, the Liberty
League had a lavish thirty-one-room office in New York, branches in
twenty-six colleges, and fifteen subsidiary organizations nationwide
that distributed fifty million copies of its Nazi pamphlets. . . .
"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. . . . It was brought out that at
least fifty people, many of them blacks, had been butchered by the
Legion." (5)
Du Pont support of Hitler extended into the very heart of the Nazi
war machine as well, according to Higham, and several other
researchers: "General Motors, under the control of the Du Pont
family of Delaware, played a part in collaboration" with the Nazis.
"Between 1932 and 1939, bosses of General Motors poured $30 million
into I.G. Farben plants . . ." Further, Higham informs us that by
"the mid-1930s, General Motors was committed to full-scale
production of trucks, armored cars, and tanks in Nazi Germany." (6)
Researchers Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen, in their book, "Power
Inc.," describe the Du Pont-GM-Nazi relationship in these terms:
". . . In 1929, [Du Pont-controlled] GM acquired the largest
automobile company in Germany, Adam Opel, A.G. This predestined the
subsidiary to become important to the Nazi war effort. In a heavily
documented study presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust
and Monopoly in February 1974, Bradford C. Snell, an assistant
subcommittee counsel, wrote:
"'GM's participation in Germany's preparation for war began in
- That year its Opel subsidiary cooperated with the Reich in
locating a new heavy truck facility at Brandenburg, which military
officials advised would be less vulnerable to enemy air attacks.
During the succeeding years, GM supplied the Wehrmact with Opel
"Blitz" trucks from the Brandenburg complex. For these and other
contributions to [the Nazis] wartime preparations, GM's chief
executive for overseas operations [James Mooney] was awarded the
Order of the German Eagle (first class) by Adolf Hitler.'"
Du Pont-GM Nazi collaboration, according to Snell, included the
participation of Standard Oil of New Jersey [now Exxon] in one, very
important arrangement. 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, according to Snell:
"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 and Standard Oil] had presented us with the production
plants complete with experimental knowledge. Without lead-tetraethyl
the present method of warfare would be unthinkable.'" (7)
At about the same time the Du Ponts were serving the Nazi cause in
Germany, they were involved in a Fascist plot to overthrow the
United States government.
"Along with friends of the Morgan Bank and General Motors," in
early 1934, writes Higham, "certain Du Pont backers financed a coup
d'etat that would overthrow the President with the aid of a $3
million-funded army of terrorists . . ." The object was to force
Roosevelt "to take orders from businessmen as part of a fascist
government or face the alternative of imprisonment and execution . .
."
Higham reports that "Du Pont men allegedly held an urgent series of
meetings with the Morgans," to choose who would lead this "bizarre
conspiracy." "They finally settled on one of the most popular
soldiers in America, General Smedly Butler of Pennsylvania." Butler
was approached by "fascist attorney" Gerald MacGuire (an official of
the American Legion), who attempted to recruit Butler into the role
of an American Hitler.
"Butler was horrified," but played along with MacGuire until, a
short time later, he notified the White House of the plot. Roosevelt
considered having "the leaders of the houses of Morgan and Du Pont"
arrested, but feared that "it would create an unthinkable national
crisis in the midst of a depression and perhaps another Wall Street
crash." Roosevelt decided the best way to defuse the plot was to
expose it, and leaked the story to the press.
"The newspapers ran the story of the attempted coup on the front
page, but generally ridiculed it as absurd and preposterous." But an
investigation by the Congressional Committee on Un-American
Activities - 74th Congress, first session, House of Representatives,
Investigation of Nazi and other propaganda - was begun later that
same year.
"It was four years," continues 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." (8)
The names of important individuals and groups involved in the
conspiracy were suppressed by the committee, but later revealed by
Seldes, Philadelphia Record reporter Paul French, and Jules Archer,
author of the book, "The Plot to Seize the White House." Included
were John W. Davis (attorney for the J.P. Morgan banking group),
Robert Sterling Clark (Wall Street broker and heir to the Singer
sewing machine fortune), William Doyle (American Legion official),
and the American Liberty League (backed by executives from J.P.
Morgan and Co., Rockefeller interests, E.F. Hutton, and Du Pont-
controlled General Motors). (9)
THE US/NAZI CARTEL AGREEMENT
"On November 23, 1937," states Higham, "representatives of General
Motors held a secret meeting in Boston with Baron Manfred von
Killinger, who was . . . in charge of West Coast espionage [for the
Nazis], and Baron von Tipplekirsch, Nazi consul general and Gestapo
leader in Boston. This group signed a joint agreement showing total
commitment to the Nazi cause for the indefinite future. . . ." (10)
Seldes describes the plotters as "the great owners and rulers of
America who planned world domination through political and military
Fascism" including "several leading American industrialists, members
of the Congress of the United States, and representatives of large
business and political organizations . . ."
He obtained the text of the agreement, and published it in his
newsletter, "In Fact," on July 13, 1942. The plan "goes much further
than the mere cartel conspiracies of Big Business of both
countries," writes Seldes, "because it has political clauses and
points to a bigger conspiracy of money and politicians such as
helped betray Norway and France and other lands to the Nazi machine.
The most powerful fortress in America is the production monopolies,
but its betrayal would involve, as it did in France, the
participation of some of the most powerful figures of the political
as well as the industrial world." (11)
STANDARD OIL OF NEW JERSEY (Now Exxon)
"On February 27, 1942," according to Higham, "Arnold, with
documents stuffed under his arms, . . . strode into the lion's den
of Standard at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Just behind him were Secretary
of the Navy Franklin Knox and Secretary of the Army Henry L.
Stimson." They confronted Standard official William Farish and
"Arnold sharply laid down his charges" that "by continuing to favor
Hitler in rubber deal and patent arrangements," Standard Oil "had
acted against the interests of the American government . . .
suggested a fine of $1.5 million and a consent decree whereby
Standard would turn over for the duration all the patents" in
question.
"Farish rejected the proposal on the spot. He pointed out that
Standard" was also selling the U.S. a "high percentage" of the fuel
being used by the Army, Navy, and Air Force "making it possible for
America to win the war. Where would America be without it?"
Blackmail? Yes, says Higham. And effective. Arnold was finally
reduced to asking the oil company official "to what Standard Oil
would agree. After all, there had to be at least token punishment. .
. . Arnold, Stimson, and Knox soon realized they had no power to
compare with that of Standard."
The price Standard Oil "agreed" to pay for its crime? A modest fine
of a few thousand dollars divided up among ten defendants. "Farish
paid $1,000, or a quarter of one week's salary, for having betrayed
America."
In New Jersey, charges of "criminal conspiracy with the enemy" were
filed against Standard, then "dropped in return for Standard
releasing its patents and paying the modest fine." But Arnold, and
his ally, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, weren't finished
with Standard Oil just yet. They approached Senator Truman, chairman
of the Senate Special Committee Investigating the National Defense
Program. "With great enthusiasm Give 'em Hell Harry embarked on a
series of hearings in March 1942, in order to disclose the truth
about Standard."
Between the 26th and the 28th of March, 1942, Arnold "produced
documents showing that Standard and Farben in Germany had literally
carved up the world markets, with oil and chemical monopolies all
over the map," according to Higham. (12)
Mintz and Cohen describe the confrontation:
"Four months after the United States entered World War II, the
Justice Department obtained an indictment of Exxon and its principal
officers for having made arrangements, starting in the late 1920s
with I.G. Farben involving patent sharing and division of world
markets. Jersey Standard agreed not to develop processes for the
manufacture of synthetic rubber; in exchange, Farben agreed not to
compete in the American petroleum market. After war broke out in
Europe, but before the attack on Pearl Harbor, executives of
Standard Oil and Farben, at a meeting in Holland, established a
'modus vivendi' for continuing the arrangements in event of war
between the United States and Germany - although the arrangements
interfered with the ability of the United States to make synthetic
rubber desperately needed after it entered the war in December 1941.
Rather than face a criminal trial, Exxon and the indicted executives
entered no-contest pleas - the legal equivalent of guilty pleas -
and were fined the minor sums which were the maximum amounts
permitted by law. A few days later, on March 26, 1942, the Senate
Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program held a
hearing at which Thurman Arnold, chief of the Antitrust Division,
put into the record documents on which the [criminal] indictment had
been based, including a memo from a Standard Oil official on the
'modus vivendi' agreed to in Holland. After the hearing, the
committee chairman, Harry S. Truman, characterized the arrangements
as treasonable." (13)
Another source book on this subject of US / Nazi corporate
activities is "The Secret War Against the Jews," by Mark Aarons and
John Loftus. Here is their version of the events:
"Before the war Standard of New Jersey had forged a synthetic oil
and rubber cartel with the Nazi-controlled I.G. Farben," which
"worked well until the United States joined the war in 1941. . . .
Next to the Rockefellers, I.G. Farben owned the largest share of
stock in Standard Oil of New Jersey. Among other things, Standard
had provided Farben with its synthetic rubber patents and technical
knowledge, while Farben had kept its patents to itself, under strict
instructions from the Nazi government."
Evidence which Thurman Arnold turned over to the Truman Committee,
which Truman would declare "treasonous," included "Standard's 1939
letter renewing its agreement, which made it clear that the
Rockefellers' company was prepared to work with the Nazis whether
their own government was at war with the Third Reich or not.
Truman's Senate Committee on the National Defense was outraged and
began to probe into the whole scandalous arrangement, much to the
discomfort of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Suddenly, however, the whole
matter was dropped.
"There was a reason for Rockefeller's escape: blackmail. According
to the former intelligence officers we interviewed on this point,
the blackmail was simple and powerful: The Dulles brothers [John
Foster, later Secretary of State, and Allen, later director of the
CIA] had one of their clients threaten to interrupt the U.S. oil
supply during wartime."
When confronted by Arnold on the Standard - Farben arrangement
"Standard executives made it clear that the entire U.S. war effort
was fueled by their oil and it could be stopped. . . . The American
government had no choice but to go along if it wanted to win the
war." (14)
July 13, 1944, Ralph W. Gallagher, attorney for Standard Oil, filed
a lawsuit against the U.S. government's seizure of the contested
patents. "On November 7, 1945, Judge Charles E. Wyzanski gave his
verdict," according to Higham. "He decided that the government had
been entitled to seize the patents. Gallagher appealed. On September
22, 1947, Judge Charles Clark delivered the final word on the
subject. He said, 'Standard Oil can be considered an enemy national
in view of its relationships with I.G. Farben after the United
States and Germany had become active enemies.' The appeal was
denied." (15)
One aspect of this Standard - I.G. Farben relationship, revealed in
testimony during the Patents Committee hearings, chaired by Senator
Homer T. Bone in May 1942, is of interest to those who seek direct
evidence of a conspiracy by big oil companies to suppress
development of synthetic substitutes to petrochemical products such
as industrial chemicals, aircraft lubricants and fuel, all of which
can be made from hemp:
"On May 6th, John R. Jacobs, Jr., of the Attorney General's
department, testified that Standard had interfered with the American
explosives industry by blocking the use of a method of producing
synthetic ammonia. As a result of its deals with Farben, the United
States had been unable to get the use of this vital process even
after Pearl Harbor. Also, the United States had been restricted in
techniques of producing hydrogen from natural gas and from obtaining
paraflow, a product used for airplane lubrication at high altitudes.
. . ."
On August 7th, "Texas oil operator C.R. Starnes appeared to testify
that Standard had blocked him at every turn in his efforts to
produce synthetic rubber after Pearl Harbor. . . ."
On August 12th, "John R. Jacobs reappeared in an Army private's
uniform (he had been inducted the day before) to bring up another
disagreeable matter: Standard had also, in league with Farben,
restricted production of methanol, a wood alcohol that was sometimes
used as motor fuel." (16)
The restriction against methanol production apparently did not
apply to the Nazis, however. "As late as April 1943," Higham
reveals, "General Motors in Stockholm [Sweden] was reported as
trading with the enemy. . . . Further documents show that, as with
Ford, repairs on German army trucks and conversion from gasoline to
wood-gasoline production were being handled by GM in Switzerland."
(17)
The use of hemp as a source of methanol was known to the Nazis,
revealed in the pamphlet "The Humorous Hemp Primer," published in
Berlin, also in 1943. This document, recently re-published in the
1995 edition of "Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor
Wears No Clothes," by veteran hemp conspiracy researcher Jack Herer,
states that:
"Crops should not only provide food in large quantities, they can
provide raw materials for industry. . . . Among such raw materials
of especially high value is hemp . . .
"The woody part of this large plant is not to be thrown out, since
it can easily be used for surface coatings for the finest floors. It
also provides paper and cardboard, building materials and wall
paneling. Further processing will even produce wood sugar and wood
gas. . . .
"Anyone who grows hemp today need not fear a lack of a market,
because hemp, as useful as it is, will be purchased in unlimited
amounts." (18)
The Nazis obviously considered hemp a vital war material that could
be used to produce methanol, or "wood gas," at the same time, in
1943, that Du Pont-controlled General Motors in Switzerland was
"converting from gasoline to wood-gasoline production." This, taken
into consideration along with the earlier statement that Standard
Oil-I.G. Farben had "restricted production of methanol" and the GM-
Standard Oil-I.G. Farben joint venture, Ethyl, Inc., whose
profitability depended on the production of lead-tetraethyl for oil-
based petrochemical gasoline - in direct competition with the
alternative methanol, or "wood gas," certainly opens new avenues of
investigation into the existence of a conspiracy against hemp as an
alternative, and competing, industrial raw material, by these very
same corporations which sold America out to the Nazis for profit and
control of world resources and markets.
"Just after Pearl Harbor," writes Seldes, "the Assistant Attorney
General, Mr. Thurman Arnold, issued a sensational report of the
sabotage of the national [war production] program, the first report
naming the practices which were later to be referred to as the
treason of big business in wartime. Said Mr. Arnold:
"Looking back over 10 months of defense effort we can now see how
much it has been hampered by the attitude of powerful basic
industries who have feared to expand their production because
expansion would endanger their future control of industry.
"Anti-trust investigations during the past year have shown that
there is not an organized basic industry in the United States which
has not been restricting production by some device or other in order
to avoid what they call 'ruinous overproduction after the war'."
(19)
By "ruinous overproduction," of course, they meant free-market
competition. So, to question the existence of an industrial
conspiracy against competition, during the 1930s and 1940s, is
pointless. It has long been totally documented by volumes of
evidence, available in the public record. And among this list of
convicted corporate conspirators are murderers, racists, pro-Nazi
collaborators, blackmailers and American Fascists who plotted at
least one armed take-over of the U.S. government. And the list is
not yet complete.
THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY
Henry Ford, writes Higham, "admired Hitler from the beginning, when
the future Fuhrer was a struggling and obscure fanatic. He shared
with Hitler a fanatical hatred of Jews."
"Ford's book 'The International Jew' was issued in 1927. A virulent
anti-Semitic tract, it was still being distributed in Latin America
and the Arab countries as late as 1945. Hitler admired the book and
it influenced him deeply. Visitors to Hitler's headquarters at the
Brown House in Munich noticed a large photograph of Henry Ford
hanging in his office. Stacked high on the table outside were copies
of Ford's book. As early as 1923," when Hitler heard that Ford was
planning to run for President, he "told an interviewer from the
'Chicago-Tribune,' 'I wish that I could send some of my shock troops
to Chicago and other big American cities to help'."
As late as 1940, Ford Motor Company "refused to build aircraft
engines for England and instead built supplies of the 5-ton military
trucks that were the backbone of German army transportation." (20)
The Ford Motor Company was also aware of the potential of hemp as
an alternative industrial resource, devoting many years research to
the subject.
In a 1989 ABC Radio broadcast, Hugh Downs reported that in the
1930s, "the Ford Motor Company also saw a future in biomass fuels.
Ford operated a successful biomass conversion plant that included
hemp at their Iron Mountain facility in Michigan. Ford engineers
extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl acetate, and
creosote - all fundamental ingredients for modern industry, and now
supplied by oil-related industries. . . . Henry Ford's experiments
with methanol promised cheap, readily-available fuel." (21)
As reported in "Popular Mechanics" in December, 1941, Ford's
research represented "an industrial revolution in progress . . . a
revolution in materials that will affect every home." (22)
So, it is possible, even likely, that Ford and General Motors
conversion "from gasoline to wood-gasoline production" for Nazi
Germany, as earlier reported by Higham, involved at least some
consideration of hemp as a resource, if not actual production of
"wood-gas" from hemp. After all, Ford had already committed several
years and significant research dollars to the subject.
The implication of methanol fuel patents, hemp industry research
and production facilities, all in the hands of this cabal of Nazi-
allied American corporations, during a proven period of anti-
competition conspiracies, and wartime blackmail against the U.S.
government, should provide additional support for the hemp
conspiracy theories. The fact is that Nazi Germany recognized hemp
as a vital war material - one which, just before America's entrance
into World War II, was positioned to compete in the free-market
against the products controlled by the Pro-Nazi American
corporations. Unrestricted expansion of United States industrial
hemp production threatened not only the profits of these treasonous
corporations, but the degree of their control over America's
production of vital war materials.
This view of hemp, not as a "dangerous drug" but as a vital war
material, was acknowledged by the Kentucky Legislature a little over
100 years before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1841,
according to Professor James F. Hopkins, author of "A History of the
Hemp Industry in Kentucky," published by the University of Kentucky
Press in 1951:
"When the farmers of Woodford County [KY] assembled in October,
1841, to consider a program of hemp production for the navy, they
only went as far as to express an opinion that the government should
employ a rope spinner in Kentucky for the purpose of converting the
fiber into yarns, which could be transported much more cheaply and
safely than the bulky raw material. The Committee on Agriculture of
the Kentucky House of Representatives inquired into the matter early
in 1842 . . .
"Both houses of the General Assembly sent to the Senators and
Congressmen from Kentucky a request that they use their 'best
exertions' to have established in the state one or more agencies for
the inspection and manufacture of hemp for the navy. A select
committee of Congress, appointed to consider the resolutions from
Kentucky, reported three resolutions of its own: that the navy be
directed to construct a factory at Louisville 'for the purpose of
depositing and manufacturing . . . such hempen fabrics of domestic
water-rotted hemp as the public service may require'; that
inspectors be appointed to test the fiber that might be offered for
sale; and that, after due notice to the public, purchase of the
necessary amount of fiber be made at the factory. The Committee
contended that its plan would build up during peacetime a source of
hemp which would be vitally important in case of war, encourage
American agriculture and manufactures, and decrease the unfavorable
balance of trade." (23)
[NOTE: For many years we Kentuckians have had a good deal of our
heritage and history buried beneath a thick layer of propaganda from
a source of power and control in this country which knows neither
honor nor justice. Now, we are learning the truth. Our history as a
state built upon the foundation of a long- and dishonestly- outlawed
industry endures.]
INTERNATIONAL TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH
Even after Pearl Harbor, ITT was working for the Nazis, reports
Higham: ". . . the German army, navy, and air force contracted with
ITT for the manufacture of switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs,
buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment, and thirty
thousand fuses per month for artillery shells used to kill British
and American troops."
ITT also "supplied ingredients for the rocket bombs that fell on
London," and other devices as well, without which "it would have
been impossible for the German air force to kill American and
British troops, for the German army to fight the Allies in Africa,
Italy, France, and Germany, for England to have been bombed, or for
Allied ships to have been attacked at sea." (24)
In 1938, "following a series of meetings with Luftwaffe chief
Herman Goring, [ITT founder and chairman Sosthenes] Behn encouraged
ITT's Lorenz subsidiary to purchase 28 percent of the Focke-Wulf
firm, manufacturer of the bombers that were to sink so many Allied
ships during the war," according to researcher and author Jim
Hougan. (25)
Anthony Sampson, in "The Sovereign State of ITT," reports on what
is perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the US/Nazi corporate
partnership, war reparations:
". . . ITT now presents itself as the innocent victim of the Second
World War, and has been handsomely recompensed for its injuries. In
1967, nearly thirty years after the events, ITT actually managed to
obtain $27 million in compensation from the American government, for
war damage to Focke-Wulf plants - on the basis that they were
American property bombed by Allied bombers." (26)
The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission was responsible for this
payment to ITT, and other U.S. corporations as well.
Bradford Snell reports that "After the cessation of hostilities, GM
and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime
damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied
bombing. By 1967 GM had collected more than $33 million in
reparations and Federal tax benefits for damages to its warplane and
motor vehicle properties in formerly Axis territories . . . Ford
received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of
damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne." (27)
ALLEN DULLES: ARCHITECT OF THE US-NAZI NETWORK
Contemporary history records Allen Dulles as one of America's top
spymasters, from his early days in the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS) in World War II, to his position as Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1950s and early 1960s (until
President John F. Kennedy fired him over the Bay of Pigs disaster in
1961), and finally to his membership on the controversial Warren
Commission, which investigated President Kennedy's assassination.
Until recently, his pivotal role in promoting a U.S. corporate
relationship with the Nazis was little known. Loftus and Aarons
describe the post-World War I role of Allen, and his brother, John
Foster, in the following terms:
"We first turn to Dulles's creation of international finance
networks for the benefit of the Nazis. In the beginning, moving
money into the Third Reich was quite legal. Lawyers saw to that. And
Allen and his brother John Foster were not just any lawyers. They
were international finance specialists for the powerful Wall Street
law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. . . .
"The Dulles brothers were the ones who convinced American
businessmen to avoid U.S. government regulation by investing in
Germany. It began with the Versailles Treaty, in which they played
no small role. After World War I the defeated German government
promised to pay war reparations to the Allies in gold, but Germany
had no gold. It had to borrow the gold from Sullivan & Cromwell's
clients in the United States. Nearly 70 percent of the money that
flowed into Germany during the 1930s came from investors in the
United States, many of them Sullivan & Cromwell clients. . .
"Foster Dulles, as a member of the board of I.G. Farben, seems to
have had little difficulty in getting along with whoever was in
charge. Some of our sources insist that both Dulles brothers made
substantial but indirect contributions to the Nazi party as the
price of continued influence inside the new German order. . . ."
(28)
NOTES: U.S. CORPORATIONS AND THE NAZIS
1.Facts and Fascism, George Seldes, p. 122 Trading with the Enemy,
Charles Higham, p. 167 2.Even the Gods Can't Change History, Seldes,
pp. 140-144 3.Facts and Fascism, p. 68 4.Ibid., p. 262 5.Trading
with the Enemy, pp. 162-165 6.Ibid., p. 166 7.Power, Inc., Morton
and Mintz, pp. 497-499 8.Trading with the Enemy, pp. 163-165 9.The
Plot to Seize the White House, Jules Archer, Hawthorn Books, 1973
(Quoted from It's A Conspiracy, National Insecurity Council,
EarthWorks Press, 1992, pp. 179-184) 10.Trading with the Enemy, pp.
167-168 11.Facts and Fascism, pp. 68-70 12.Trading with the Enemy,
pp. 45-46 13.Power, Inc, pp. 499-500 14.The Secret War Against The
Jews, Aarons and Loftus, pp. 44-65 15.Trading with the Enemy, pp.
61-62 16.Ibid., pp. 49-52 17.Ibid., p. 176 18.The Emperor Wears No
Clothes, Jack Herer, pp. 127-130 19.One Thousand Americans, Seldes,
pp. 142-143 20.Trading with the Enemy, pp. 154-156 21.Ain't Nobody's
Business If You Do, p. 734 22.Popular Mechanics Magazine, Vol. 76,
No. 6, Dec. 1941 (The Emperor Wears No Clothes, 1995 edition, p.
- 23.A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky, Professor James
F. Hopkins, University of Kentucky Press, 1951 24.Trading with the
Enemy, p. 99 25.Spooks, Jim Hougan, pp. 423-424 26.The Sovereign
State of ITT, Anthony Sampson, p. 47 (Power, Inc., pp. 500-501)
27.GM and the Nazis, by Bradford C. Snell, Ramparts Magazine, June
1974, pp. 14-16 (Democracy for the Few, Michael Parenti, pp. 91-92)
28.The Secret War Against the Jews, pp. 55-60
THE NEW WORLD (DIS)ORDER
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if
the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it
becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in
essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a
group, or by any other controlling power.
"Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in
history is growing." - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1)
As mentioned earlier, the secret U.S./Nazi corporate alliance
during World War II was the result of substantial American
investment in post-World War I Germany. In order to protect these
investments, and the accumulating profits, the U.S. multinational
corporations remained an important part of the Nazi war machine
until the final defeat of Germany in 1945. What effect did the end
of World War II have on this faction of American Nazi collaborators?
In this section we will review the evidence, much of it from
recently de-classified documents, that this pro-Nazi faction, rather
than facing charges of high treason, became an integral part of the
United States national security apparatus, extending its fascist
influence in both foreign and domestic policies and, in effect,
creating what has been referred to as America's "Invisible
Government." The excuse, of course, was Communism.
THE BUGGING OF WALL STREET
Aarons and Loftus' research, which documents the Dulles brothers'
pro-Nazi activities, did not go unnoticed. "Before his death, former
Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg granted one of the authors an
interview. Justice Goldberg had served in U.S. intelligence during
World War II. Although he said little in public, he had collected
information on the Dulles boys' activities over the years. His
verdict was blunt. 'The Dulles brothers were traitors.' They had
betrayed their country, by giving aid and comfort to the enemy in
time of war." (2)
Much of what is now known about the activities of the Dulles
brothers and other American Nazi collaborators in banking and
industry came as a result of a top-secret joint U.S.-British
intelligence program known as the Ultra Project. "Prior to the
United States' entry into the war," write Loftus and Aarons,
"Roosevelt permitted British intelligence to wiretap American
targets.
"According to our sources in the intelligence community, the area
of coverage included a good bit of the New York financial district,
several floors of Rockefeller Plaza, part of the RCA Building, two
prominent clubs, and various shipping firms. . . .
"The wiretap unit reported to Sir William Stephenson, a Canadian
electronics genius better known by his code name, 'Intrepid.' From
his headquarters in the Rockefeller building, Stephenson's job was
to identify U.S. companies that were aiding the Nazis." (3)
"Several months before the United States declared war," continue
Loftus and Aarons, "Bill Donovan invited Allen Dulles to head up the
New York branch of the Office of the Coordinator of Information
(COI), President Roosevelt's new intelligence agency and the
precursor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Its primary
mission was to collect information against the Nazis and their
collaborators. In other words, Dulles was asked to inform on his own
clients in New York. . . ."
"Roosevelt had approved his selection as head of the COI Manhattan
branch because he wanted Dulles where the British wiretappers could
keep an eye on him. . . .
"One floor below Dulles was Stephenson's wiretap shop. Inside
Dulles's operation was one of Roosevelt's spies, Arthur Goldberg . .
." who, "confirmed . . . that Dulles's appointment was a setup. . .
.
"Roosevelt was giving Dulles enough rope to hang himself. From
Stephenson's Manhattan wiretaps, it is known that Dulles was
continuing to work with his German business clients, who wanted to
remove Hitler and install a puppet of their own who would make peace
with the West while forging an alliance against Stalin. It was to be
a kinder, gentler Third Reich, favorably disposed to American
financial interests. . . . (4)
"The wiretap evidence against Dulles originally was collected by a
special section of Operation Safehaven, the U.S. Treasury
Department's effort to trace the movement of stolen Nazi booty
towards the end of the war. Roosevelt and Treasury Secretary Henry
Morganthau had set up Dulles by giving him the one assignment -
intelligence chief in Switzerland - where he would be most tempted
to aid his German clients with their money laundering."
Roosevelt had one thing in mind: "The sudden release of the
Safehaven intercepts would force a public outcry to bring treason
charges against those British and American businessmen who aided the
enemy in time of war." Among the targets were Allen Dulles, Henry
Ford, and other U.S. industrialists. (5)
The plan failed, however, due to Dulles being "tipped off . . .
that he was under surveillance" in time to cover his tracks. One
possible source of the leak was Vice President Henry Wallace, "who
constantly shared information with his brother-in-law, the Swiss
minister in Washington during the war."
"Wallace," the authors reveal, "gave many details of his secret
meetings with Roosevelt to the Swiss diplomat." The problem was
that, at the time, the Nazis "had recruited the head of the Swiss
secret service."
It is, perhaps, no coincidence that Roosevelt dropped Wallace
during the 1944 election, choosing instead Senator Harry S. Truman
as his new running mate. (6)