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Between 1929 and 1939 there were changes in the make-up of the board of American I.G.
The number of directors varied from time to time, although a majority always had I.G.
backgrounds or connections, and the board never had less than four American directors. In
1939  presumably looking ahead to World War II  an effort was made to give the board
a more American complexion, but despite the resignation of Hermann Schmitz, Carl Bosch,
and Walter Duisberg, and the appointment of seven new directors, seven members still
belonged to the I.G. group. This I.G. predominance increased during 1940 and 1941 as
American directors, including Edsel Ford, realized the political unhealthiness of I.G. and
resigned.
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CHAPTER TWO: The Empire of I.G. Farben
Several basic observations can be made from this evidence. First, the board of American
I.G. had three directors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most influential of
the various Federal Reserve Banks. American I.G. also had interlocks with Standard Oil of
New Jersey, Ford Motor Company, Bank of Manhattan (later to become the Chase
Manhattan), and A.E.G. (German General Electric). Second, three members of the board of
this American I.G. were found guilty at Nuremburg War Crimes Trials. These were the
German, not the American, members. Among these Germans was Max Ilgner, director of
the I.G. Farben N.W. 7 office in Berlin, i.e., the Nazi pre-war intelligence office. If the
directors of a corporation are collectively responsible for the activities of the corporation,
then the American directors should also have been placed on trial at Nuremburg, along with
the German directors  that is, if the purpose of the trials was to determine war guilt. Of
course, if the purpose of the trials had been to divert attention away from the U.S.
involvement in Hitler's rise to power, they succeeded very well in such an objective.
Footnotes:
1
German firms have a two-tier board of directors. The Aufsichsrat concerns
itself with overall supervision, including financial policy, while the Vorstand is
concerned with day-to-day management.
2
Taken from Der Farben-Konzern 1928, (Hoppenstedt, Berlin: I928), pp. 4-5.
3
Elimination of German Resources, p. 943.
4
Ibid, p. 945.
5
New York Times, October 21, 1945, Section 1, pp. 1, 12.
6
Ibid, p. 947.
7
Elimination of German Resources.
8
Bernhard is today better known for his role as chairman of the secretive,
so-called Bilderberger meetings. See U.S. Congress, House of Representatives,
Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi
Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain other Propaganda
Activities. 73rd Congress, 2nd Session, Hearings No. 73-DC-4. (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1934), Volume VIII, p. 7525.
9
Ibid p. 949.
10
Ibid p. 952.
11
Ibid p. 1293.
12
Ibid p. 954.
13
Ibid p. 954.
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CHAPTER TWO: The Empire of I.G. Farben
14
Ibid, pp. 954-5.
15
U.S. Congress. House of Representatives, Special Committee on
Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and
Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, op. cit.
16
Ibid, p. 178.
17
Ibid, p. 183.
18
Ibid, p. 188.
BACK
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Chart 2-1: German Army (Wehrmacht) Dependence on I.G. Farben Production (1943)
BACK
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CHAPTER THREE: General Electric Funds Hitler
CHAPTER THREE
General Electric Funds Hitler
Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry
Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933. The origins of this scheme are worth
repeating. These ideas were first suggested by Gerard Swope of the General
Electric Company ... following this they were adopted by the United States
Chamber of Commerce .... (Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover:
The Great Depression, 1929-1941, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952,
p. 420)
The multi-national giant General Electric has an unparalleled role in twentieth-century
history. The General Electric Company electrified the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s,
and fulfilled for the Soviets Lenin's dictum that "Socialism = electrification."1 The Swope
Plan, created by General Electric's one-time president Gerard Swope, became Franklin D.
Roosevelt's New Deal, by a process deplored by one-time President Herbert Hoover and
described in Wall Street and FDR.2 There was a long-lasting, intimate relationship between
Swope and Young of General Electric Company and the Roosevelt family, as there was
between General Electric and the Soviet Union. In 1936 Senator James A. Reed of Missouri,
an early Roosevelt supporter, became aware of Roosevelt's betrayal of liberal ideas and
attacked the Roosevelt New Deal program as a "tyrannical" measure "leading to despotism,
[and] sought by its sponsors under the communistic cry of 'Social Justice.'" Senator Reed
further charged on the floor of the Senate that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a "hired man for
the economic royalists" in Wall Street and that the Roosevelt family "is one of the largest
stockholders in the General Electric Company."3
As we probe into behind-the-scenes German interwar history and the story of Hitler and
Naziism, we find both Owen D. Young and Gerard Swope of General Electric tied to the
rise of Hitlerism and the suppression of German democracy. That General Electric directors
are to be found in each of these three distinct historical categories  i.e., the development
of the Soviet Union, the creation of Roosevelt's New Deal, and the rise of Hitlerism 
suggests how elements of Big Business are keenly interested in the socialization of the
world, for their own purposes and objectives, rather than the maintenance of the impartial
market place in a free society.4 General Electric profited handsomely from Bolshevism,
from Roosevelt's New Deal socialism, and, as we shall see below, from national socialism in
Hitler's Germany.
General Electric in Weimar Germany
Walter Rathenau was, until his assassination in 1922, managing director of Allgemeine
Elekrizitats Gesellschaft (A.E.G,), or German General Electric, and like Owen Young and
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CHAPTER THREE: General Electric Funds Hitler
Gerard Swope, his counterparts in the U.S., he was a prominent advocate of corporate
socialism. Walter Rathenau spoke out publicly against competition and free enterprise,
Why? Because both Rathanau and Swope wanted the protection and cooperation of the state
for their own corporate objectives and profit. (But not of course for anybody else's
objectives and profits.) Rathanau expressed their plea in The New Political Economy:
The new economy will, as we have seen, be no state or governmental economy
but a private economy committed to a civic power of resolution which certainly
will require state cooperation for organic consolidation to overcome inner
friction and increase production and endurance.5
When we disentangle the turgid Rathenau prose, this means that the power of the State was
to be made available to private firms for their own corporate purposes, i.e., what is popularly
known as national socialism. Rathenau spoke out publicly against competition and free
enterprise. inheritance."6 Not their own wealth, so far as can be determined, but the wealth
of others who lacked political pull in the State apparatus.
Owen D. Young of General Electric was one of the three U.S. delegates to the 1923 Dawes
Plan meeting which established the German reparations program. And in the Dawes and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]