Trading with the Enemy | Source |
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Here is the extraordinary true story of the American businessmen and government officials who dealt with the Nazis for profit or through conviction throughout the Second World War — Ford • Standard Oil • Chase Bank • members of the State Department — were among those who shared in the spoils.
Meticulously documented and dispassionately told, this is an alarming story. At its centre is ‘The Fraternity’, an influential international group associated with the Rockefeller or Morgan banks and linked by the ideology of Business as Usual.
Charles Higham starts with an account of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland — a Nazi-controlled bank presided over by an American, Thomas H. McKittrick, even in 1944. While Americans were dying in the war, McKittrick sat down with his German, Japanese, Italian, British and American executive staff to discuss the gold bars that had been sent to the Bank earlier that year by the Nazi government for use by its leaders after the war. This was gold that had been looted from the banks of Austria, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia or melted down from teeth fillings, eyeglass frames, and wedding rings of millions of murdered Jews.
But that is only one of the cases detailed in this book. We have Standard Oil shipping enemy fuel through Switzerland for the Nazi occupation forces in France; Ford trucks transporting German troops; I.T.T. helping supply the rocket bombs that marauded much of London; and I.T.T. building the Focke-Wulfs that dropped those bombs.
Acknowledgments Preface 1 A Bank for All Reasons 2 The Chase Nazi Account 3 The Secrets of Standard Oil 4 The Mexican Connection 5 Trickery in Texas 6 The Telephone Plot 7 Globes of Steel 8 The Film Conspiracy 9 The Car Connection 10 The Systems Tycoon 11 The Diplomat, the Major, the Princess, and the Knight 12 The Fraternity Runs for Cover Appendices Selective Bibliography Select Documentary Sources Selected Documents |
iii iv 1 10 18 28 34 39 48 53 61 70 74 82 88 89 101 |
Published by
Delacorte Press
1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10017
Copyright © 1983 by Charles Higham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
Manufactured in the United States of America
9876543
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Higham, Charles, 1931-
Trading with the enemy.
ISBN 0-440-09064-4