Prescott Bush and the Nazi (I need help refuting this)

The Dallas Libertarian ^ | Richard N. Draheim, Jr

[mafree]

That helped give cover to others. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the self-styled orator whose floor speeches often quote the philosophers of ancient Rome and Athens, finally snapped on Oct. 17, 2003, when he gave a floor speech recalling Hans Christian Andersen's story in which "the emperor has no clothes." He closed with an open comparison of President Bush to Nazi propaganda minister Paul Joseph Goebbels. Other stories swirled on the Internet accusing presidential political strategist Karl Rove of having family ties to the Nazis.

Byrd got his nerve!

[jdsteel]

Inventing a lo-cal cheese snack...instead of responding to that cheese-whiz...good one!

[ravingnutter]

I can't keep my conspiracy theories straight now.

There was some guy that called in to talk radio last week and said that Bush, Kerry, Bin Laden and even Saddam were part of the Illuminati and that the Illuminati chose Bush to win a second term. After doing a search on that theory (just for kicks), I found that those same people also claim that 9/11 was a CIA and Mossad operation. And the Dems called *me* a raving nutter (that's how I got the screen name)...go figure...

[tbeatty]

Really? any source for your accusation?

[Laura Earl]

Try something like "I know you are, but what am I?" That is about all the libs are able to grasp.

[massgopguy]

John Forbes Kerry's family money came from the J.M. Forbes Opium trade. The family laundered the money into the J.M. Forbes Naushon Island Trust. Because the Island Trust was set up under the guise of Agriculture, Liveshot's family pays $300 a year in property taxes for the 5,000 acre island. The Sheepherders that provide the cover story for the scam earn a whopping $15,000 a year. Good jobs at good wages, Kerry says he'll create. Among John Kerry's crazier cousins is Michael Paine, who owned the garage where Oswald hid the rifle he used to kill the real JFK.

[JesseJane]

You have just described my in-laws.

[Always Right]

I have my hands on a memo from CBS that show GW Bush had direct ties to Hitler.

[Mi-kha-el]

No one had to get any "value voters". Knowing the alternative, the "value voters" should have rushed to the poll booths smashing everything on their way. Does not mean, though that the President should take those votes for granted. However, the voters did no one favors either but themselves.

[JustDoItAlways]

Prescott Bush was helping the Nazis, while his son, George Bush Sr. was fighting for the US against the Nazi-Japanese coalition?????

Used this before and the Dems, Bush is a Nazi crew shut up right away. They realized how ridiculous it was.

[SJackson]

Minor correction.

The Republican party was created after a war in the Whig party over slavery. The Whigs supported it, the first second pub presidential candidate, Lincoln, ended it. The "American Party" were the know nothings.

Election Results--1856

Presidential Candidate	Party	State	Popular Vote:	Electoral Vote:
James Buchanan	Democratic	Pennsylvania	1,838,169	174
John Charles Frémont	Republican	California	1,341,264	114
Millard Fillmore	American	New York	874,534	8
Vice Presidential Candidate	Party	State	Popular Vote:	Electoral Vote:
John Cabell Breckinridge	Democratic	Kentucky	- - -	174
William Lewis Dayton	Republican	New Jersey	- - -	114
Andrew Jackson Donelson	American

[Bob J]

Correction noted, thanks!

[Rockingham]

The basic facts are true, but the account is highly colored and grossly misleading, an example of slender historical fact built up into a partisan ambush. The listener is intended to be overwhelmed by complicated facts and assertions he is unfamiliar with into embracing false propositions -- rather like the way that a crank tinkerer grabs one by the lapels and presses detailed claims about a new theory of physics that explains how perpetual motion machines can free us from oil dependency.

During WW II, there were numerous violations of the laws against trading with Germany and the Axis. Prescott Bush was a minor offender. There is considerable difference between sending cash, technical secrets, and strategic materials to the Axis, which a few did, and not turning over a private German ownership interest to the US government, which is what Prescott Bush and a number of others were guilty of. In net effect, what Prescott Bush did was of no benefit for Nazi Germany but might have helped one German businessman keep some property out of the hands of the US government.

Prescott Bush's role was as a member of a long established investment banking firm. There is no credible indication that he had pro-Nazi sympathies. The individual German involved, Fritz Thyssen, was a leading German businessman with an equivocal and in some respects creditable personal history. A wealthy and prominent industrialist, Thyssen and his family were seized at their home and nearly executed by German communists in the period of turmoil just after WW I. In genuine fear of having himself and his family killed if the communists came to power, Thyssen financed and supported Hitler as a counter to the communists, a folly in which he had much company.

A faithful Catholic, Thyssen broke with Hitler in 1938 after the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews -- and too bad that the rest of Germany did not. Thyssen fled Germany, but was eventually arrested in France by the Vichy government and sent back to Germany. Hitler confiscated Thyssen's property and put him in a concentration camp, which is where the Allies found him. They prosecuted him for supporting Hitler, eventually confiscating a percentage of property as restitution for Hitler's victims but not imposing any jail time.

Keep in mind that after WW II, in an era when the Nazis were a fresh and bitter memory, Prescott Bush was elected to the US Senate despite the publicity accorded the trading with the enemy charge in 1942. The substance of the charge was apparently recognized as akin to tax evasion or questionable accounting practices, not treason or substantive support or sympathy for the Nazis. Prescott Bush deserves criticism and discredit but not to be smeared as a Nazi ally or sympathizer, and there is no reason why George W. Bush should suffer any discredit for conduct before he was born by a grandfather now many years dead.

Take a look at the following for more information:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030214.html

and the book Trading with the Enemy, by Charles Higham, for an extended treatment of the subject. There is also a prior book by Anthony Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.

As for the argument that Bush and his family are members of some sort of long-established, hereditary class of predatory American capitalists, this charge originates on the Left but has an echo among the crackpot libertarian populist Right. It tells a great deal about the pathologies of its exponents but nothing much beyond that. If the worst that can be said about George W. Bush is a smear based on family history and false inferences, then he has considerably more virtue and far less against him than most political figures.

[pepperhead]

And Clinton's dad was who?

A milkman

[massgopguy]

Is it written in Cray-on on the back of an Eskimo Pie wrapper? Only real official documents are written on the back of Eskimo Pie wrappers.

[vaudine]

And Al Gore's father was close to Armand Hammer (Russian connections) and literally ALL Gore's money comes from Hammer and Occidental Oil through Gore Sr's connections.

Joe Kennedy had dealings with Nazi Germany, I believe.

Some of the Rockefellers, mentioned in this diatribe, are Democrats.

Brown & Root (read Halliburton) helped LBJ cheat his way into the House.

Can anyone tell me why the Bush's fortunes aren't nearly so great as many Dems since they have been involved in so many evil enterprises fir so long?

This is all a case of selecting certain facts while ignoring others and skewing them into a selected propaganda mode.

vaudine

And so on. However

[ozzymandus]

This lie is ancient. Call it a lie and forget it.

[jimfrommaine]

I can't think of a more decent, honorable man than our President. I feel so blessed to be part of his popular vote mandate.
Most democrats are good people. But I truly believe that the leadership of their party, the extreme left, are evil. Because they will stop at nothing to gain power. They will destroy people who stand in their way. I thank God that the President won. Can you imagine what Kerry and the gang would have done to the folks at free republic? Sinclair broadcasting?
Now that the President has won re-election, the left is trying to discredit him, anyway they can. But thank God the President won. Because four years from now Free Republic, the internet, fox news, talk radio will seal the coffin shut on the left and the mainstreet media. We're going to do it not by destroying people's lives but by presenting the truth. God bless everybody. Jim

[truth_seeker]

"This is in keeping with the actual history of the Republican Party. It was founded in the 1850's explicitly as the party of high taxes to subsidize politically connected businesses, (then known as "internal improvements")."

It was founded to oppose slavery.

[LouD]

The single biggest apologist for the Nazis was Joseph P. Kennedy, who led the charge for appeasement and succeeded in keeping us out of the war for nearly two years while Roosevelt thought we should join in support of England.

His money went to supporting the political careers of his inbred leftist children and grandchildren.