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Bush's grandfather was director of bank seized by govt for affiliation with Nazi-funding...
Associated Press ^ | 10-17-03

Posted on 10/17/2003 4:32:00 PM PDT by Brian S

Edited on 04/13/2004 2:44:26 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.

Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp., a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.


(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections; US: Connecticut
KEYWORDS: archives; averellharriman; bias; nazi; prescottbush
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To: RWR8189
"Was he in cahoots with old man Kennedy?"

If they look hard enough, they might even be able to link Prescott Bush to Kevin Bacon ;-)

61 posted on 10/17/2003 5:12:37 PM PDT by mass55th
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To: StriperSniper
I don't wear tin foil, but I want Kerry not to be the dem nominee for that reason.

I don't care if it's the Yale glee club, I don't want our two choices to be two members of a society at the same university. I think it's unhealthy for our democracy to have to choose between two people from this same group.

It reminds me of that Simpsons episodes where the aliens took over Clinton and Dole's bodies, and we had to choose between them. No thanks.

62 posted on 10/17/2003 5:12:42 PM PDT by dogbyte12
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To: Peach; All
Indeed, Peach, you are wise to caution people to read this trash VERY CAREFULLY.

Here's what the real thrust of the story should be (if, in fact, it even should be an AP story more than 65 years after the events described):

Prescott Bush, the current president's grandfather, didn't even work at the bank. He was just a member of the Board of Directors. Many prominent people are on multiple boards. Most of the time, appointing a prominent person to a board amounts to little more than an honorific.

As a member of the board of Union Banking, Bush was three or more companies removed from the Thyssen group of businesses. Union Banking was owned by Bank Voor Handel, a Dutch bank described in the AP piece as "closely affiliated" with a German conglomerate, United Steel Works. The latter company was a part of the Thyssen group of businesses, which the AP piece describes as an "empire."

More importantly, the implied "link" between Prescott Bush and Hitler through Thyssen is buried in the AP's 7th paragraph. Apparently, seven of the U.S. directors of the Union Banking board held 4000 shares of the bank's stock. Prescott Bush held exactly ONE share.

Then, to poke even further holes in their own smear, Salant goes on to write that Fritz Tyssen broke with the Nazis in 1938. That was the year before WWII broke out in Europe. Tyssen split with them over their persecution of Catholics and Jews. In other words, although he may have supported them early on, Tyssen wasn't a Nazi. When he learned the truth about them, he heroically bucked them at a time when they were the biggest and most dangerous power in Europe. In fact, he spent about four years in a Nazi prison during the war.

Is this the best the Left can do? Laugh my butt off big time!!!

63 posted on 10/17/2003 5:12:53 PM PDT by Wolfstar (NO SECURITY = NO ECONOMY)
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To: Brian S
They actually had to go back 2 generations to find some kind of crap to make headlines this week?

bwaahahahhahahaha
64 posted on 10/17/2003 5:14:02 PM PDT by judicial meanz (Fry Arafat....baste him in Pig grease...and bury him upside down in a a manure pile)
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To: princess leah
Just to play devil's advocate..............

Do we not still prosecute the nazi guards when we can find them.....
65 posted on 10/17/2003 5:14:29 PM PDT by WhiteGuy (Not necessarily white, or a guy.............Or AM I???????)
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To: Brian S
This is really stupid. Brown Brothers Harriman was one of the most respected investment banking houses in the US. Averill Harriman was a heavy hitter Democrat. The Bushes were Republicans. So, a Harriman and a Bush sat on the Board of Directors of a bank their firm worked for. So what?

The bank was fincanced by Thyssen? That was and is one of the biggest industrial and financial concerns in Germany. It's modern incarnation is ThyssenKrupp. They have operations in the US today.

None of this makes for any Nazi connection by Brown Brother Harriman, unless you twist and distor the facts.

66 posted on 10/17/2003 5:14:51 PM PDT by colorado tanker (And I'll see you someday on Fiddlers Green)
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To: Brian S
Can you say hit piece, boys and girls?
67 posted on 10/17/2003 5:17:18 PM PDT by mhking (When it rains it pours: I'm looking for a job again -- any offers or help: mhking@bellsouth.net)
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To: Brian S
The sad fact is that many geopolitically blind firms were doing business with all of the instigators of WW-II in some cases right up until the US got into the war (which means, they were doing business with Germany, for example, ever AFTER the London Blitz! While at the same time, Lend Lease had already started!) Today, the same mistakes are repeated and the same geopolitical blindness is epidemic. The worst of it is with the PRC, however investments by duped Western firms are also going into the "former" USSR, its satellites, and our "friend" Pakistan. We never learned.
68 posted on 10/17/2003 5:19:00 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Un-PC even to "Conservatives!" - Right makes right)
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To: 11th Earl of Mar
***And Bill Clinton's father abused alcohol and women.

But did they report that?***

And Al Gore's father was buddy buddy with Armand Hammer, the first self-admitted communist to do business with the U. S. Furthermroe, Armand Hammer bankrolled Al Gore's father in his Senate bid, and paid him money for as long as both were alive.

69 posted on 10/17/2003 5:19:27 PM PDT by kitkat
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To: Brian S
Well who did you vote for?

Your hatred of GW is as bad as any DUer who gets zotted here.

All of these articles are citing the same lame old reference. Just shows how worthless the left wing media is and those who cite the left wing media.
70 posted on 10/17/2003 5:19:39 PM PDT by Grampa Dave (Get a free FR coffee mug! Donate $10 monthly to Free Republic or 34 cents/day!)
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To: WhiteGuy
Just to play devil's advocate..............

Do we not still prosecute the nazi guards when we can find them.....

Would we not still pursue anyone who had committed treason?

Would we not, 60 years from now, persecute the decendent of on of the "19 hi-jackers"?

Just wondering
71 posted on 10/17/2003 5:19:47 PM PDT by WhiteGuy (Not necessarily white, or a guy.............Or AM I???????)
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To: duckbutt
Actually, Teddy doesn't sit. He swims.
72 posted on 10/17/2003 5:20:45 PM PDT by Wolfstar (NO SECURITY = NO ECONOMY)
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To: Brian S
From The Straight Dope

Dear Cecil:

I read in the New Yorker that George W. Bush's grandfather and great-grandfather worked for Brown Brothers Harriman, and had clients who funded the building of the Nazi regime. I searched the Net and found hundreds of sites giving volumes of details and listing sources like the New York Times and the Library of Congress. Conspiracy theories aside, what's the truth about our president's family? --Matt Tiegler

Cecil replies:

Remember how during the Clinton era there were all those rabid EOBs (Enemies of Bill) who seemingly devoted their every waking hour to propagating scurrilous stories about the president and his family? Well, an equally dedicated crew is now spreading sensational allegations about Dubya and his forebears. (Sample: the president's grandfather not only financed the Nazis, he used concentration-camp prisoners as slaves.) So each side gets a chance to drag the other through the mud. Is this a great country or what?

Though the Bush family's detractors are legion, one of the most prominent is John Loftus, a former federal prosecutor and past president of the Florida Holocaust Museum in Saint Petersburg. In 1994 Loftus coauthored a book with Mark Aarons entitled The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People. The book alleges various misdeeds by George W.'s father, George H.W., his grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker. Since space is limited we'll focus on the accusations against Prescott Bush, which in my opinion are the most serious.

The central charge against Prescott Bush has a basis in fact. In 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. government seized several companies in which he had an interest. Prescott at the time was an investment banker with Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), which had funneled U.S. capital into Germany during the 1920s and '30s. Among the seized companies was the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) of New York, which was controlled by German industrialist Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen had been an early financier of the Nazi party--in fact, in 1941 he published a book entitled I Paid Hitler. Ergo, Prescott helped finance the Nazis.

An article by journalist Toby Rogers posted on Loftus's Web site makes an even more explosive charge. Another company in which Prescott and his associates had a stake was the Silesian-American Corporation (SAC), which owned several industrial concerns in Poland. The Auschwitz death camp was established in a district where SAC already had a steel plant. The plant allegedly used forced labor from Auschwitz during World War II. The article asserts that "a portion of the slave labor force in Poland was 'managed by Prescott Bush,' according to a Dutch intelligence agent." (See www.john-loftus.com/Thyssen.asp.)

The slave labor charge is easy to dismiss. SAC plants in Poland were taken over by the German government after the Nazi invasion of 1939, and the Auschwitz prison camp wasn't established until 1940. No one can seriously claim that Prescott Bush managed camp inmates in any of those plants.

Prescott's involvement with Nazi finance is more complicated. Though Thyssen had been an ardent backer of the Nazis in the early days, he broke with them in 1938 after the Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews. He fled to Switzerland the following year, and Hitler confiscated his fortune and stripped him of his citizenship. In I Paid Hitler Thyssen confessed his role in financing the Nazis and denounced the Führer. Arrested in Vichy France, he spent the balance of the war as an Axis prisoner. Prescott Bush, for his part, owned a single share of stock (of 4,000) in UBC, the Thyssen bank. According to a 2001 Boston Globe piece, the New York Herald Tribune ran a story in July 1942 headlined "Hitler's Angel Has 3 Million in US Bank," in which Prescott and other BBH partners "explain[ed] to government regulators that their position [as directors of UBC] was merely an unpaid courtesy for a client."

So, did Bush and his firm finance the Nazis and enable Germany to rearm? Indirectly, yes. But they had a lot of company. Some of the most distinguished names in American business had investments or subsidiaries in prewar Germany, including Standard Oil and General Motors. Critics have argued for years that without U.S. money, the Nazis could never have waged war. But American business has always invested in totalitarian regimes--witness our dealings with mainland China.

Loftus tells me there's more to it than that. He says that the value of German industrial assets in which Bush and friends invested increased during World War II, in part due to slave labor, and that Bush benefited from this increase when the assets were returned--supposedly he got $1.5 million when UBC was liquidated in 1951. I'll buy the claim that Bush got his share of UBC back--it was an American bank, after all--but the idea that his German holdings increased in value despite being obliterated by Allied bombs is ridiculous.

--CECIL ADAMS

73 posted on 10/17/2003 5:21:42 PM PDT by MattAMiller
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To: Wilhelm Tell
And Hitler was Stalin's "Icebreaker".... ;) Yes indeed, you are very well informed. Thanks!
74 posted on 10/17/2003 5:22:09 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Un-PC even to "Conservatives!" - Right makes right)
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To: Brian S
And Henry Ford was a Nazi Sympathizer and Jew Hater, Joe Kennedy thought Adolph was the bees knees amd embarrassed Roosevelt ending in his recall as Ambassador to England, Lindburgh thought facism the coming way, and Father Conklin was cheer leading for Hitler.Armand Hammer was a Communistand Gore Sr's mentor. The Duke abdicated King of England, and Duchess of Whales caused eyebrows to climb with their much too obvious adoration of Adolf. It was that that got them sent to the Bahamas to sit out the war. So What!!!Go sew buttons on eggshells!!!
75 posted on 10/17/2003 5:23:20 PM PDT by wingnuts'nbolts
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To: Zavien Doombringer
Does this qualify for a Viking Kitty Zot!?
76 posted on 10/17/2003 5:23:49 PM PDT by Grampa Dave (Get a free FR coffee mug! Donate $10 monthly to Free Republic or 34 cents/day!)
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To: Brian S
I wonder how many deaths and ruined lives "Rum Runner" Joe Kennedy was responsible for. I bet if the AP did an honest investigation, they would woudn't run out of print for years. It's just a shame that these freaks have control of the press, schools and courts. They are doing their best to try and kill this country now!
77 posted on 10/17/2003 5:24:17 PM PDT by Wiggins
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To: Pro-Bush
I wonder if perky Katie Couric will mention this on her show. She had so much fun with her broadside at Arnold, right?
78 posted on 10/17/2003 5:24:24 PM PDT by COBOL2Java
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To: Brian S
Shocking!! I must make a point of never voting for Prescott Bush
79 posted on 10/17/2003 5:24:40 PM PDT by muir_redwoods
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To: US_MilitaryRules
>>I have a friend, whose father in laws grampas DAD was a janitor at a place where they picked on Irish imigrants! This friends son is running for Dog Catcher. Do you think they will tar and feather him in the news?

If he's running as a Republican, and the AP is around, quite likely "yes".

lol at your analogy.
80 posted on 10/17/2003 5:25:46 PM PDT by FreedomPoster
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