http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/27/finance_nazis/index.htmlThe profitable business of war
Three new books about allegations that the president's grandfather helped the Nazis and a related $40 billion legal action by two Holocaust survivors raise uncomfortable issues for the Bush campaign.
By Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell
Sep 27, 2004 | George W. Bush's grandfather, the late U.S. Sen. Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the U.S. National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave laborers at Auschwitz and to a hum of preelection controversy. The evidence has also prompted one former U.S. Nazi-war-crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
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The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, is contained in vesting order No. 248, which records the seizure of company assets. What these files show is that on Oct. 20, 1942, the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corp. and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corp. By November, the Silesian-American Co., another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, is contained in the files on IG Farben, which was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort."
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/25/bbc_ws_grandpappy_pl.htmlBBC: W's grandpappy planned fascist coup of USA
Kevin says: A BBC Radio 4 investigation sheds new light on a major subject that has received little historical attention, the conspiracy on behalf of a group of influential powerbrokers, led by Prescott Bush, to overthrow FDR and implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler.
2007/07/25 Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.
Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.