Global Research

US Collaboration with Nazis Before and During World War 2

Prior to WW2, many prominent American business owners and politicians were involved in the rise of Nazism. Fascist forces around the globe, not just Germany and Italy, gravitated around and contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler. In the United States, no example of this is more notorious than that of Prescott Bush, farther to US President George H.W. Bush, and grandfather of US President George W. Bush. The Guardian in an article titled, “How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power,” states:

George Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator 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 US 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 labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

Banker and politician Prescott Bush wasn’t the only prominent member of America’s monied elite to collaborate with Hitler’s Nazis. Chase Bank, controlled by the Rockefeller family, assisted Germany in the plundering of Jewish assets as well as with other financial services. The New York Daily News reported in an article titled, “Chase Banked on Nazis – Report,” that:

Chase National Bank the precursor of today’s Chase Manhattan Bank allegedly helped the Nazis plunder Jewish property in France during World War II, according to a published report. The New York-based bank controlled by the Rockefeller family closed Jewish accounts even before the Germans ordered them to do so and did business with the Nazis while they were sending Jews to the gas chambers, Newsweek magazine reports in this week’s edition. And while the U.S. was at war with the Nazis, Chase also apparently helped German banks do business with their overseas branches, the magazine reported. Chase Manhattan is now the largest bank company in the U.S. with more than $300 billion in assets.

The same report would astoundingly claim (emphasis added):

Recently declassified documents revealed that at least 300 U.S. companies continued doing business in Germany during the war, Newsweek reported. And subsidiaries of Ford and General Motors have been accused of forcing thousands of Jews, Poles and others to work as slave laborers.

Clearly before and during World War 2, a substantial representation of special interests within the United States chose opportunism over American values – aiding and abetting one of the worst purveyors of human misery in the 20th century. While some may claim that this was merely a handful of special interests within the US and did not represent the overall political agenda of America, it should be noted that many of these special interests were holding or influencing offices of power while collaborating with the Nazis, and continued to do so well after the war was over. Prescott Bush, for example, was a US Senator until 1963 and the Rockefeller family would fill positions as governors, senators, and even the US vice presidency.

Operation Paperclip 

After World War 2, the United States rushed to gather up Nazi intelligentsia to exploit their talent in America’s own bid for global hegemony. Operation Paperclip, as it was called, in many cases scooped up scientists and technicians who may have collaborated with the Nazis during the war, but did so with little other choice. Some escaped or tried to escape the Nazi regime at great personal risk. However, others, it turned out, played a much deeper role in Nazi Germany’s atrocities, and continued their dark deeds under covert programs within the US Central Intelligence Agency.  

The New York Times in an article titled, “Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says,” reveals this extensive program, claiming that perhaps up to 10,000 Nazis were given sanctuary in the United States. One must wonder if among the 300 companies that collaborated with the Nazis during the war, whether at least some of them served as sponsors for this influx of “émigrés.” The NYT report states: 

Perhaps the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

The Justice Department report, describing what it calls “the government’s collaboration with persecutors,” says that O.S.I investigators learned that some of the Nazis “were indeed knowingly granted entry” to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. “America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well,” it said.

While collaboration with the Nazis before and during World War 2 was mainly the domain of monied special interests with political influence over the US government, Operation Paperclip and the harboring of Nazis with dark pasts was the occupation of the inner most workings of the US government itself. Little is revealed in the way of what “intelligence purposes” these Nazis were used for, but right-wing fascist juntas across the world during the Cold War, particularly in South America where the Nazis had a foothold during the World War, might offer some hints.

White House Resurrects Nazi Menace on Russia’s Doorstep 

It is clear that the special interests driving US foreign policy do not actually adhere to the many values it claims America champions – they merely hide behind them. This is what leads to America politically aligning itself with abhorrent dictatorships like the House of Saud, the Shinawatra regime, or Al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, and now Syria.

It is also what has led to the United States and the European Union – through NATO – to align themselves with Neo-Nazis and the ultra-right in Ukraine, resurrecting along Russia’s borders the menace of Nazism millions laid their lives down for during World War 2 to stop.

The bolstering of Ukraine’s ultra-right began in 2004, when the United States directly funded and organized the “Orange Revolution. The Guardian would admit in its 2004 article, “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” that:

…while the gains of the orange-bedecked “chestnut revolution” are Ukraine’s, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

While the Guardian attempts to justify American meddling in multiple nations as an attempt to “salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes,” it does not deny that the meddling took place and goes on to explain in great detail just how that meddling was carried out. The ultra-right Neo-Nazis now occupying Kiev in the wake of the so-called “Euromaidan,” are the heirs of the “Orange Revolution.” The parties that benefited from 2004’s unrest, including the “Fatherland Party,” now hold power.  

While the “Orange Revolution” was carried out more covertly, the “Euromaidan” was openly backed by both the US and the European Union. At the height of the protests, US Senator John McCain would literally take the stage with the ultra-right, Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party leaders as well as meet with “Fatherland Party” member and future “prime minister,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Additionally, in mid-April, CIA director John Brennan was confirmed to have traveled to Kiev. Forbes in their article, “Why CIA Director Brennan Visited Kiev: In Ukraine The Covert War Has Begun,” reported that:

Over the weekend, CIA director John Brennan travelled to Kiev, nobody knows exactly why, but some speculate that he intends to open US intelligence resources to Ukrainian leaders about real-time Russian military maneuvers. The US has, thus far, refrained from sharing such knowledge because Moscow is believed to have penetrated much of Ukraine’s communications systems – and Washington isn’t about to hand over its surveillance secrets to the Russians.

Forbes would continue by suggesting arrangements were being made to prepare Ukraine for a possible proxy war with Russia – describing the shortcomings of Western backing during another proxy confrontation with Russia, the Georgia-Russia conflict in 2008 where Western equipped Georgian troops were humiliated after invading South Ossetia and incurring a counterattack by superior Russian forces.

US-EU Kiev Junta are Nazis

The West has invested heavily in covering up the fact that its new proxies in Kiev are ultra-right Neo-Nazis. However, the Western media itself has, in the past, extensively documented the nature of each of the most prominent groups that compose the current, unelected regime.

In a January 2014 Spiegel Online article titled, “‘Prepared to Die’: The Right Wing’s Role in Ukrainian Protests,” it described Svoboda in no uncertain terms (emphasis added):

The Svoboda party also has excellent ties to Europe, but they are different from the ones that Klischko might prefer. It is allied with France’s right-wing Front National and with the Italian neo-fascist group Fiamma Tricolore. But when it comes to the oppression of homosexuality, representative [Igor] Myroshnychenko is very close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, even if he does all he can to counter Moscow’s influence in his country.

It goes on to state (emphasis added):

Myroshnychenko was press spokesman for the Ukrainian national football team in the lead up to the 2008 European Championships, but he isn’t exactly cosmopolitan. He would even like to see foreign professional football players deported because they “change Ukraine’s ethnic map.”

There have been other, similar incidents. In a 2012 debate over the Ukrainian-born American actress Mila Kunis, he said that she wasn’t Ukrainian, rather she was a “Jewess.”Indeed, anti-Semitism is part of the extremist party’s platform; until 2004, they called themselves the Social-National Party of Ukraine in an intentional reference to Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist party. Just last summer, a prominent leader of party youth was distributing texts from Nazi propaganda head Joseph Goebbels translated into Ukrainian.

In Channel 4′s (UK), “Ukraine: far-right extremists at core of ‘democracy’ protest,” it mentions both Svoboda MP Myroshnychenko as well as current Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyahnybok (emphasis added):

In December US senator John McCain travelled to Ukraine to offer his support to the opposition, appearing on stage with leaders of the three opposition parties leading the protests – including the far-right Svoboda party.

Svoboda is currently Ukraine’s fourth biggest party and holds 36 seats in parliament. It is also part of the Alliance of European National Movements, along with the BNP and Hungary’s Jobbik.

Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok is one of the faces of the protests, appearing regularly along with opposition leader and former boxer Vitali Klitschko (see picture right) voicing opposition to Putin’s influence over the region.

However, Tyahnybok has provoked controversy in the past with his anti-Semitic claims that a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” controls Ukraine.

In another Channel 4 report titled, “Far-right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US senator,” it stated (emphasis added):

…in 2004 [Svoboda] leader Oleh Tyahnybok gave a speech attacking what he called “the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine” and in another speech declared: “the Moskali, Germans, Kikes and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.”

Despite the controversy his statements attracted in the West, Tyahnybok was voted Person of the Year by readers of Ukrainian news magazine Korrespondent last year.

In another outburst from the party their deputy chief, Ihor Miroshnychenko, wrote an anti-Semitic attack on Mila Kunis on Facebook: “Kunis is not Ukrainian, she is a Yid. She is proud of it, so Star of David be with her.”

The Fatherland Party, which is leading the coalition junta, even in name alone echos the disturbing nationalist nomenclature of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. Beneath the rhetorical similarities are disturbing parallels of more substance.

From the Fatherland Party is drawn the current “prime minister” of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Yatsenyuk is a renowned bigot. He would catch the attention of Amnesty International in its 2008 report, “Overview of Lesbian and Gay Rights in Eastern Europe (.pdf), which cited him saying – when his views regarding homosexual marriage were labelled “conservative” – that:

 ”I do not agree. If a man has normal views, then you label him a conservative, but those who use drugs or promote sodomy – you label them a progressive person. All of these are perversions.”

In March 2013 LGBT Weekly’s article, “Leading Ukraine Opposition figure surprises supporters by denouncing gay marriage,” would state:

Leading Ukraine Opposition figure, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, risks disappointing liberal supporters of his All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” party, having publicly rejected gay marriage at a recent rally. 

Yatsenyuk was confronted by a representative of the Western-Ukrainian Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender community who said to him: “Many people live in love, but not in law. Promise me that if you become president, you will legalize same-sex relationships, and I promise that all gays and lesbians will vote for you.”

But Yatsenyuk, who leads “Fatherland” in the absence of jailed leader Yulia Tymoshenko, revealed that he rejects gay marriage because his personal beliefs stand in the way of any political position.

And while the West parades out before global audiences “Jewish” commentators claiming the new regime is free of antisemitism, growing fear has been documented amongst Ukraine’s Jewish population during the last decade the West has been propping up the ultra-right.  An interesting report in the wake of the Fatherland Party’s failed attempt to take power during 2010′s elections by The Jewish Week titled, “Change For Ukraine, But Likely Not For Jews,” portrayed Ukraine’s Jews in fear of a potential win by “Fatherland” which was perceived as both nationalist and anti-Semitic. A video report published in 2012 on Jewish News One titled, “Ukraine far-right Svoboda party anti-Semitism,” further exposes the West’s current narrative regarding their proxies in Kiev as nothing more than a public relations campaign designed to cover up what is essentially a Nazis regime. 

Past, Present, Future?

It is said that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Clearly, a large segment of the global population has failed to learn from history leading to an almost verbatim repeat of the horrors of World War 2. Some have warned in the past that when fascism returned, it would not be as obvious as the stock footage of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis legions. However, in Kiev, there are literally Neo-Nazis hailing Hitler, wearing his Nazi Party’s insignia, and carrying out the same campaign of brutal repression, political intimidation, and mass murder that were the hallmarks of Nazi Germany’s descent into darkness.

Those that understand that history is now repeating itself, and recognize the United States, European Union, and their NATO alliance are behind it, must educate those that have yet to recognize the monster that has been reawakened.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.