Financing Hitler's Rise to Power

Book Review (Part 3 of 3)

Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

Carroll Quigley (1966 MacMillan)

Tragedy and Hope is a free download from

http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119975.pdf

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The most disturbing section of Tragedy and Hope describes how international bankers engineered World War I and what Quigley calls the Banker-Engendered Deflationary Crisis of 1927-40 (aka the Great Depression). The parallels are unmistakeable between the current “austerity cuts” being forced on us and the harsh economic measures the banks imposed on all western governments between 1918 and 1927. The supposed justification was to repay “debts” for a four year war the bankers themselves initiated.

According to Quigley, 19^th century capitalism saw a gradual transition from finance capitalism (in which bank loans fund economic growth) and monopoly capitalism (in which the profits generated by corporate monopolies fund growth). Although some private banking families invested in a few monopolies, such as oil companies and railroads. However for the most part, they preferred not to tie up their wealth in industrial stocks, less this deprive them of short term gains from loans and currency speculation.

The Threat Posed by German Industrialization

In fact, many bankers saw the growth of monopoly capitalism as a serious threat to their own economic interests. Following the 1870 unification under Bismarck, Germany experienced a rapid burst of industrialization, generating sufficient profit that they ceased to rely on investment banks to finance either business or government. A second way German industrialization threatened global bankers was by competing with England and other European countries for export markets. Russia also posed a significant threat, owing to claims it made on the Balkans and the Middle East (and Middle East oil) following the break-up of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire.

Thus between 1870 and 1914, the world banking oligarchy pressured western governments (by controlling their money supply and foreign exchange) to agree to a series of complicated alliances that had the ability to escalate local conflicts in unstable regions formerly controlled by Turkey into a full scale war (on Austria and Germany). The one that ultimately triggered World War I was a false flag incident (blamed on Serbia) involving the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne. During the same period, the world banking cabal simultaneously hatched a scheme to destabilize Russia by secretly funding the Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries.

Turning a Profit from World War I

The European central banks had it all worked out beforehand how they would turn the 1914 conflict that began in Sarajevo (which they believed would only last four to six months) to their own profit. Quigley describes a secret meeting in July 1914 (war was declared August 4, 1914) in which the major European bankers agreed to allow the British Treasury to print treasury notes to pay outstanding government bank debts. However this would only be with the understanding that this “fiat” money would be redeemed with gold certificates (via increased taxation) at the war’s end. They ultimately forced similar agreements on France and the US.

Financing Hitler and the Nazis

When the war ended in 1918, public debt in Western Europe and the US had increased by 1000%. The austerity measures global investment banks forced on the US, England, France and other European countries led to a massive bankruptcies and unemployment and the virtual collapse of foreign trade. Except in Germany. The global banking elite used the wealth generated from debt repayment to finance rapid German re-industrialization and militarization, along with the Nazi movement created by Hitler and the increasingly powerful German corporations, such as IG Farben, Siemens (renamed Bayer), Daimler Benz, Porsche/Volksvagen and Krupp. Quigley identifies American banks and corporations who helped finance the Nazi movement, which included Kodak, Ford, Coca-Cola, DuPont, Standard Oil, IBM, Random House and Chase Bank.

The bankers justified funding Hitler and re-militarizing Germany by talking of the need to contain a growing world communist movement – which they themselves had created.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy was the first, in 1967, to investigate the use of the Ford Foundation and other foundations as “conduits,” “pass-throughs,” and “fronts” to disguise CIA funding for domestic operations (it’s technically illegal for the CIA to operate on US soil under federal law). The investigation ended with Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in 1968 but in 1976 was taken up by the Church Committee, a Senate Select Committee formed in the aftermath of Watergate. The Church Committee found that between 1963-1966, 164 foundations gave out 700 grants over $10,000. Of these, 108 involved partial or complete funding by the CIA (Frances Stoner Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War)

Saunder’s work was the first, in an impressive body of research by progressive academics and investigative journalists:

• Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War (1999) by British historian and journalist Frances Stonor Saunders
• Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (2003) by New Hampshire political science professor Joan Roelof
• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2007) by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
• The Shock Doctrine (2007) by Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein
• Towers of Deception: the Media Cover-up of 911 (2006) by Canadian journalist, documentary producer and political activist Barry Zwicker
• Barack H. Obama: the Unauthorized Biography (2008) by historian and journalist Webster Tarpley

CIA Funding of Alternative Media

Most of the research into left gatekeeping foundations involves the funding of so-called alternative media outlets, largely based on information derived from tax returns. The most prolific writer in this area is Massachusetts-based investigative journalist Bob Feldman. Feldman published the bulk of his research in a paper in Critical Sociology “Report from the Field: Left Media and Left Think Tanks – Foundation-Managed Protest?” Although Critical Sociology charges a fee to download this paper, Feldman and others have republished excerpts elsewhere on the Internet. Edward Ulrich published a helpful digest of Feldman’s work in March 2011 at his blog “News of Interest” at http://www.newsofinterest.tv/politics/media_issues/demnow_npr_controlled.php

The History of CIA/Ford Foundation Collaboration

Feldman starts (http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html) by recapping the history Frances Sanders lays out in Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War).

The Ford Foundation was created in 1936 from the immense Ford family fortune. Historically its governance and mission has been conservative and pro-corporate, in line with its namesake Henry Ford, a rabid anti-Semite who admired Adolph Hitler and helped finance his rise to power.

The International Jew by Henry Ford

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The CIA-Ford Foundation collaboration began in 1953, when John McCloy, another Nazi sympathizer, because the director of the Ford Foundation. McCloy’s corporate credentials include serving as chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, Westinghouse, AT&T, Allied Chemical and United Fruit Company. As a lawyer, he served as chief counsel to Standard Oil of New Jersey, Mobil, Texaco and Gulf I.G. Farben (German chemical company that was Hitler’s primary German sponsor and which developed the nerve gas used in the mass execution of European Jews). Mcloy watched the 1936 Berlin Olympics from Hitler’s box seat and as the Assistant Secretary of War, blocked Jewish immigration to the US, as well as the bombing of railroads leading to Nazi concentration camps. As High Commissioner of Germany following the war, he pardoned a large majority of Nazi war criminals and assisted in their secret repatriation in the US and South America. Finally in 1963-64 he served on the Warren Commission, which like the 911 Commission, played a critical role covering up FBI, CIA and Pentagon involvement in the JFK assassination.

McCloy publicly advocated for the Ford Foundation to cooperate with the CIA. He argued that open collaboration was a better alternative than having the Agency secretly infiltrate the Foundation’s lower echelons and subvert their work. McCloy also chaired a three man committee that had to be consulted every time the CIA wanted to use the Foundation as a pass-through.

Ford Foundation archives reveal a raft of joint Foundation-CIA projects. The most prominent of these CIA fronts are the Eastern European Fund, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and International Rescue Committee (where William van den Heuvel, father of Nation editor and publisher Katrina van den Heuvel, was a long time board member). The Ford Foundation has also been the primary funder of two secret elite planning groups, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

Alternative Media Outlets Funded by the Ford Foundation

According to Feldman, the so-called alternative media outlets receiving Ford Foundation funding (based on their tax returns) include:

• Democracy Now!
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and their radio program Counterspin
• Working Assets Radio
• The Progressive
• Mother Jones
• South End Press (Z Magazine)
• Alternative Radio
• Ms. Magazine
• Political Research Associates (run by rabid anti-conspiracist Chip Berlet)

As Feldman points out, each of these outlets has systematically marginalized independent researchers who have systematically studied 9-11 and the JFK and other political assassinations. Feldman currently blogs at “Where’s the Change?” http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/

To be continued.