14-02-2017, 01:18 PM
William Stevenson's The Bormann Brotherhood
Extracted from page 129:
Extracted from pp 131-133:
There seemed no point beating around the bush. What, I asked, did he know about a so-called Brotherhood?
He looked startled. I said quickly there was no intention of pub- lishing his replies. There had been a continuing interest in such groups, I said; the Circle of Friends, for instance.
He stiffened at this mention of Martin Bormann's source of addi- tional funds, created by Schacht's successor and chief architect of his downfall: Walther Emanuel Funk.
I said: "Funk has told interrogators that the Circle of Friends broke up automatically, but the Brotherhood functions now to support Bormann."
His blue eyes, shaded by beetling brows, shifted behind the rim- less glasses. A trickle of sweat ran down his gaunt chin. I had been sweating all morning in the tropical heat, but Schacht, dressed like a Dutch colonizer in open shirt and shorts, white and starched, had shown no previous sign of discomfort.
"Funk said that?"
"So it is reported."
"Funk always was a fool." He drew back. "The Circle of Friends was a source of money, no thanks to Funk."
"And the Brotherhood?"
"Die deutsche Gemeinschaft. I know nothing. I am here on busi- ness. The war is past."
"Funk is still in Spandau Prison."
"And I was in Ravensbruck, Flossenburg, and Dachau," he snapped, naming the three concentration camps where Hitler had once held him.
"Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg." I stopped. Funk had escaped the hangman because of a strong feeling among the Allies that the real guilt lay with Schacht.
He looked away. "There was only one Brotherhood. In Vienna. It had no membership lists and nobody was known by his real name." "Your son-in-law was a member."
"Did he tell you that?"
"No, but he was part of that crowd. Their aim was to liberate the German people from Jewish influence."
"I had nothing against the Jews." Yet it was only sixteen years ago that this man had warned in a 1935 speech: "The Jew can become neither a citizen nor a fellow German." Now, he cocked his head like an intelligent secretary bird. "Are you Jewish?"
"No. Nor married to a Jewess," I added, reminding him of another Brotherhood prohibition.
"What is your purpose?" he asked stiffly.
"Your son-in-law says Russia can be beaten. Communism in China or Russia can be beaten if we learn from the last war."
"Ah. You think Indonesia will go Communist?"
"Yes. In its own peculiar way."
"Perhaps this can be stopped?"
"In the same manner as in Africa or, shall we say, South
America?"
"I go there from here. Conditions are better now, is it not true?" "Better for what?"
"Free enterprise."
He slapped at a mosquito. Around us, Dutch traders leaned on folded arms over the small round tables, or lifted mugs of beer to perspiring faces. Soon most of them would be deported, their com- mercial operations taken over, their assets seized, their families moved into camps. The words "free enterprise" echoed dismally in the moist air. Schacht had financed the rearming of Hitler's Germany in ways that were illegal under the statutes of the time. He had been deeply involved with a complicated arrangement by which the Soviet Union helped Germany to get around limits on the production of weapons. It seemed to me that his career was based upon exploitation of other people's free-enterprise systems. In the United States he had been partly successful in the early 1930's in reassuring American Jews that their coreligionists had nothing to fear from Hitler. Now it was convenient for him to forget his undercover campaign to drive Jews from German life, forget the big trade deals with Stalin and the "New Plan" to control everything the Reich bought abroad.
"Chancellor Adenauer says your experience in South America can be applied here."
Schacht nodded. "It could be done. Only here we must watch out for the Russians."
"And in Argentina?"
"The Catholic church is too strong to permit Communism. We have good relations there. In Bolivia also. So much in Latin America is badly developed. . . ."He began to talk about the bilateral barter agreements through which more than half of Nazi Germany's trade had been channeled. If things had worked out differently, Argentina and her neighbors would have been prosperous partners today, under a Nazi heaven.
"Perhaps this is still possible?"
"Not yet." He shrugged. Some of his earlier animosity began to melt in this unreal atmosphere. A cool breeze had sprung up, bringing a cleaner perfume of frangipani and spices. Schacht cocked his head. "You mentioned the Circle of Friends?"
"Yes."
"A foolish group of men. They can only do harm."
I realized suddenly that he was talking in the present tense.*
"These are the people who got the Nazis a bad name," he went on. "They lack the sense to keep out of the public eye. Strauss makes too much noise and gives propaganda material for the Communists. They talk about neo-Nazism and then the young students and the dupes of Communism take up the cry. We should move more slowly. Too many foreigners blame us for Hitler."
"But you had a great regard for Hitler."
"His ideas were good at the start. He was led astray."
"By whom? Goring? Bormann . . . ?"
"Not Bormann," he said quickly, and then compressed his lips.
* The Circle of Friends later came into the open in its new form. By 1970, it issued regular bulletins in support of Franz Josef Strauss, of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU). An example from a bulletin issued in Cologne, October 1970: "We have appealed to all who sympathize with the National Democrats [the most prominent of neo-Nazi groups] to vote to strengthen the position of Franz Josef Strauss. He is the coming man. He does not succeed nor replace Adolf Hitler but he has the leadership qualities. The German Army's officer corps awaits the strong man: Strauss. German youth needs strong and stern leadership. . . . The press must be strictly curbed. . . . We must seize power in one way or anothereven if the elections are not in our favor. Germany is at stake."
Anthony Sutton's Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
Extracted from page 129:
Quote:
Quote:"Horace Greeley and the Brotherhood getting up to mischief in our backyard," said a cable I received in Saigon in 1951. "If you have time between wars, wouldst intercept our Horace in Djakarta?"
Horace Greeley was part of the name given Hitler's banker by his father, who had emigrated from Schleswig-Holstein to America and then gone home again.
The note came from Black Hole Hollow Farm, near Saratoga, New York, where Ian Fleming was staying with Ivan Bryce.
Extracted from pp 131-133:
Quote:I met Schacht at the Hotel Capitol, overlooking the filthiest of Djakarta's canals. There was no protection from swarms of malarial mosquitoes and the stench of sluggish chocolate-brown waters sprinkled with garbage and human excrement. His narrow head balanced on a scrawny neck, his thin mouth pulled down at the corners, he regarded me warily. Below the open-sided hotel res- taurant, women loosened their batik sarongs and splashed their firm breasts in gestures that deepened his expression of disapproval. Fur- ther along the banks, men and boys urinated in graceful arcs. The air was heavy. The overhead fans crackled, and sparks of electricity showered down. I quoted an Indonesian saying that applied to the clogged canal: "Good germs eat up bad germs if you just leave things alone." He smiled faintly.
There seemed no point beating around the bush. What, I asked, did he know about a so-called Brotherhood?
He looked startled. I said quickly there was no intention of pub- lishing his replies. There had been a continuing interest in such groups, I said; the Circle of Friends, for instance.
He stiffened at this mention of Martin Bormann's source of addi- tional funds, created by Schacht's successor and chief architect of his downfall: Walther Emanuel Funk.
I said: "Funk has told interrogators that the Circle of Friends broke up automatically, but the Brotherhood functions now to support Bormann."
His blue eyes, shaded by beetling brows, shifted behind the rim- less glasses. A trickle of sweat ran down his gaunt chin. I had been sweating all morning in the tropical heat, but Schacht, dressed like a Dutch colonizer in open shirt and shorts, white and starched, had shown no previous sign of discomfort.
"Funk said that?"
"So it is reported."
"Funk always was a fool." He drew back. "The Circle of Friends was a source of money, no thanks to Funk."
"And the Brotherhood?"
"Die deutsche Gemeinschaft. I know nothing. I am here on busi- ness. The war is past."
"Funk is still in Spandau Prison."
"And I was in Ravensbruck, Flossenburg, and Dachau," he snapped, naming the three concentration camps where Hitler had once held him.
"Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg." I stopped. Funk had escaped the hangman because of a strong feeling among the Allies that the real guilt lay with Schacht.
He looked away. "There was only one Brotherhood. In Vienna. It had no membership lists and nobody was known by his real name." "Your son-in-law was a member."
"Did he tell you that?"
"No, but he was part of that crowd. Their aim was to liberate the German people from Jewish influence."
"I had nothing against the Jews." Yet it was only sixteen years ago that this man had warned in a 1935 speech: "The Jew can become neither a citizen nor a fellow German." Now, he cocked his head like an intelligent secretary bird. "Are you Jewish?"
"No. Nor married to a Jewess," I added, reminding him of another Brotherhood prohibition.
"What is your purpose?" he asked stiffly.
"Your son-in-law says Russia can be beaten. Communism in China or Russia can be beaten if we learn from the last war."
"Ah. You think Indonesia will go Communist?"
"Yes. In its own peculiar way."
"Perhaps this can be stopped?"
"In the same manner as in Africa or, shall we say, South
America?"
"I go there from here. Conditions are better now, is it not true?" "Better for what?"
"Free enterprise."
He slapped at a mosquito. Around us, Dutch traders leaned on folded arms over the small round tables, or lifted mugs of beer to perspiring faces. Soon most of them would be deported, their com- mercial operations taken over, their assets seized, their families moved into camps. The words "free enterprise" echoed dismally in the moist air. Schacht had financed the rearming of Hitler's Germany in ways that were illegal under the statutes of the time. He had been deeply involved with a complicated arrangement by which the Soviet Union helped Germany to get around limits on the production of weapons. It seemed to me that his career was based upon exploitation of other people's free-enterprise systems. In the United States he had been partly successful in the early 1930's in reassuring American Jews that their coreligionists had nothing to fear from Hitler. Now it was convenient for him to forget his undercover campaign to drive Jews from German life, forget the big trade deals with Stalin and the "New Plan" to control everything the Reich bought abroad.
"Chancellor Adenauer says your experience in South America can be applied here."
Schacht nodded. "It could be done. Only here we must watch out for the Russians."
"And in Argentina?"
"The Catholic church is too strong to permit Communism. We have good relations there. In Bolivia also. So much in Latin America is badly developed. . . ."He began to talk about the bilateral barter agreements through which more than half of Nazi Germany's trade had been channeled. If things had worked out differently, Argentina and her neighbors would have been prosperous partners today, under a Nazi heaven.
"Perhaps this is still possible?"
"Not yet." He shrugged. Some of his earlier animosity began to melt in this unreal atmosphere. A cool breeze had sprung up, bringing a cleaner perfume of frangipani and spices. Schacht cocked his head. "You mentioned the Circle of Friends?"
"Yes."
"A foolish group of men. They can only do harm."
I realized suddenly that he was talking in the present tense.*
"These are the people who got the Nazis a bad name," he went on. "They lack the sense to keep out of the public eye. Strauss makes too much noise and gives propaganda material for the Communists. They talk about neo-Nazism and then the young students and the dupes of Communism take up the cry. We should move more slowly. Too many foreigners blame us for Hitler."
"But you had a great regard for Hitler."
"His ideas were good at the start. He was led astray."
"By whom? Goring? Bormann . . . ?"
"Not Bormann," he said quickly, and then compressed his lips.
* The Circle of Friends later came into the open in its new form. By 1970, it issued regular bulletins in support of Franz Josef Strauss, of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU). An example from a bulletin issued in Cologne, October 1970: "We have appealed to all who sympathize with the National Democrats [the most prominent of neo-Nazi groups] to vote to strengthen the position of Franz Josef Strauss. He is the coming man. He does not succeed nor replace Adolf Hitler but he has the leadership qualities. The German Army's officer corps awaits the strong man: Strauss. German youth needs strong and stern leadership. . . . The press must be strictly curbed. . . . We must seize power in one way or anothereven if the elections are not in our favor. Germany is at stake."
Anthony Sutton's Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
Quote:CHAPTER NINE
Wall Street and the Nazi Inner Circle
During the entire period of our business contacts we. had no inkling of Farben's conniving part in Hitler's brutal policies. We offer any help we can give to see that complete truth is brought to light and that rigid justice is done. (F. W. Abrams, Chairman of the Board, Standard Oil of New Jersey, 1946.)
Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Josef Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler, the inner group of Naziism, were at the same time heads of minor fiefdoms within the Nazi State. Power groups or political cliques were centered around these Nazi leaders, more importantly after the late 1930s around Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, Reich-Leader of the S.S. (the dreaded Schutzstaffel). The most important of these Nazi inner circles was created by order of the Fuehrer; it was known first as the Keppler Circle and later as Himmler's Circle of Friends.
The Keppler Circle originated as a group of German businessmen supporting Hitler's rise to power before and during 1933. In the mid-1930s the Keppler Circle came under the influence and protection of S.S. chief Himmler and the organizational control of Cologne banker and prominent Nazi businessman Kurt von Schroder. Schroder, it will be recalled, was head of the J.H. Stein Bank in Germany and affiliated with the L. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation of New York. It is within this innermost of the inner circles, the very core of Naziism, that we find Wall Street, including Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.T.T., represented from 1933 to as late as 1944.
Wilhelm Keppler, founder of the original Circle of Friends, typifies the well-known phenomenon of a politicized businessman i.e., a businessman who cultivates the political arena rather than the impartial market place for his profits. Such businessmen have been interested In promoting socialist causes, because a planned socialist society provides a most lucrative opportunity for contracts through political influence.
Scenting such profitable opportunities, Keppler joined the national socialists and was close to Hitler before 1933. The Circle of Friends grew out of a meeting between Adolf Hitler and Wilhelm Keppler in December 1931. During the course of their conversation this was several years before Hitler became dictator the future Fuehrer expressed a wish to have reliable German businessmen available for economic advice when the Nazis took power. "Try to get a few economic leaders they need not be Party members who will be at our disposal when we come into power.1 This Keppler undertook to do.
In March 1933 Keppler was elected to the Reichstag and became Hitler's financial expert. This lasted only briefly. Keppler was replaced by the infinitely more capable Hjalmar Schacht, and sent to Austria where in 1938 he became Reichs Commissioner, but still able
to use his position to acquire considerable power in the Nazi State. Within a few years he captured a string of lucrative directorships in German firms, including chairman of the board of two I.G. Farben subsidiaries: Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. and Kontinental Oil A.G. Braunkohle-Benzin was the German exploiter of the Standard Oil of New Jersey technology for production of gasoline from coal. (See Chapter Four.)
In brief, Keppler war the chairman of the very firm that utilized American technology for the indispensible synthetic gasoline which enabled the Wehrmacht to go to war in 1939. This is significant because, when linked with other evidence presented in this chapter, it suggests that the profits and control of these fundamentally important technologies for German military ends were retained by a small group of international firms and businessmen operating across national borders.
Keppler's nephew, Fritz Kranefuss, under his uncle's protection, also gained prominence both as Adjutant to S.S. Chief Heinrich Himmler and as a businessman and political operator. It was Kranefuss' link with Himmler which led to the Keppler circle gradually drawing away from Hitler in the 1930s to come within Himmler's orbit, where in exchange for annual donations to Himmler's pet S.S. projects Circle members received political favors and not inconsiderable protection from the S.S.
Baron Kurt von Schroder was, as we have noted, the I.T.T. representative in Nazi Germany and an early member of the Keppler Circle. The original Keppler Circle consisted of:
THE ORIGINAL (PRE-1932) MEMBERS OF THE KEPPLER CIRCLE
Circle Member
Wilhelm KEPPLER
Fritz KRANEFUSS Kurt von SCHRODER
Karl Vincenz KROGMANN August ROSTERG
Emil MEYER
Otto STEINBRINCK
Main Associations
Chairman of I.G. Farben subsidiary Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. (exploited Standard Oil of N.J. oil from coal technology)
Keppler's nephew and Adjutant to Heinrich Himmler. On Vorstand of BRABAG
On board of all International Telephone & Telegraph subsidiaries in Germany
Lord Mayor of Hamburg
General Director of WINTERSHALL
On the board of I.T.T. subsidiaries and German General Electric.
Vice president of VEREINIGTE STAHLWERKE (steel cartel founded with Wall Street loans in 1926)
Hjalmar SCHACHT Emil HELFFRICH
Friedrich REINHARDT Ewald HECKER
Graf von BISMARCK
The S.S. Circle of Friends
President of the REICHSBANK
Board chairman of GERMAN-AMERICAN PETROLEUM CO. (94-percent owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey) (See above under Wilhelm Keppler)
Board chairman COMMERZBANK
Board chairman of ILSEDER HUTTE
Government president of STETTIN
The original Circle of Friends met with Hitler in May 1932 and heard a statement of Nazi objectives. Heinrich Himmler then became a frequent participant in the meetings, and through Himmler, various S.S. officers as well as other businessmen joined the group. This expanded group in time became Himmler's Circle of Friends, with Himmler acting as protector and expeditor for its members.
Consequently, banking and Industrial interest were heavily represented in the inner circle of Naziism, and their pre-1933 financial contributions to Hitlerism which we have earlier enumerated were amply repaid. Of the "Big Five" German banks, the Dresdner Bank had the closest connections with the Nazi Party: at least a dozen members of Dresdner Bank's board of directors had high Nazi rank and no fewer than seven Dresdner Bank directors were among Keppler's expanded Circle of Friends, which never exceeded 40.
When we examine the names comprising both the original pre-1933 Keppler Circle and the post-1933 expanded Keppler and Himmler's Circle, we find the Wall Street multi-nationals heavily represented more so than any other institutional group. Let us take each Wall Street multinational or its German associate in turn those identified in Chapter Seven as linked to financing Hitler and examine their links to Keppler and Heinrich Himmler.
I.G. Farben and the Keppler Circle
I.G. Farben was heavily represented within the Keppler Circle: no fewer than eight out of the peak circle membership of 40 were directors of I.G. Farben or a Farben subsidiary. These eight members included the previously described Wilhelm Keppler and his nephew Kranefuss, in addition to Baron Kurt von Schroder. The Farben presence was emphasized by member Hermann Schmitz, chairman of I.G. Farben and a director of Vereinigte Stahlwerke, both cartels built and consolidated by the Wall Street loans of the 1920s. A U.S. Congressional report described Hermann Schmitz as follows:
Hermann Schmitz, one of the most important persons in Germany, has achieved outstanding success simultaneously in the three separate fields, industry, finance, and government, and has served with zeal and devotion every government in power. He symbolizes the German citizen who out of the devastation of the First World War made possible the Second.
Ironically, his may be said to be the greater guilt in that in 1919 he was a member of the Reich's peace delegation, and in the 1930's was in a position to teach the Nazis much that theft had to know concerning economic penetration, cartel uses, synthetic materials for war.2
Another Keppler Circle member on the I.G. Farben board was Friedrich Flick, creator of the steel cartel Vereinigte Stahlwerke and a director of Allianz Versicherungs A.G. and German General Electric (A.E.G.).
Heinrich Schmidt, a director of Dresdner Bank and chairman of the board of I.G. Farben subsidiary Braunkohle-Benzin A.G., was in the circle; so was Karl Rasehe, another director of the Dresdner Bank and a director of Metallgesellschaft (parent of the Delbruck Schickler Bank) and Accumulatoren-Fabriken A.G. Heinrich Buetefisch was also a director of I.G. Farben and a member of the Keppler Circle. In brief, the I.G. Farben contribution to Rudolf Hess' Nationale Treuhand the political slush fund was confirmed after the 1933 takeover by heavy representation in the Nazi inner circle.
How many of these Keppler Circle members in the I.G. Farben complex were affiliated with Wall Street?
MEMBERS OF THE ORIGINAL KEPPLER CIRCLE ASSOCIATED WITH U.S. MULTI-NATIONALS
Member of Keppler Circle
Wilhelm KEPPLER
Fritz KRANEFUSS
Emil Heinrich MEYER
I.G. Farben
Chairman of Farben subsidiary BRABAG
On Aufsichrat of BRABAG
I.T.T.
On board of all I.T.T. German subsidiaries: Standard/Mix
&Genest/Lorenz
Standard Oil of New Jersey
General Electric
Board of A.E.G.
Emil HELFFRICH
Friedrich FLICK
Kurt von SCHRODER
I.G. Farben
On board of all I.T.T. subsidiaries in Germany
Chairman of DAPAG (94-percent owned by Standard of New Jersey
Board of A.E.G.
Similarly, we can identify other Wall Street institutions represented in the early Keppler's Circle of Friends, confirming their monetary contributions to the National Trusteeship Fund operated by Rudolf Hess on behalf of Adolf Hitler. These representatives were Emil Heinrich Meyer and banker Kurt von Schroder on the boards of all the I.T.T. subsidiaries in Germany, and Emil Helffrich, the board chairman of DAPAG, 94-percent owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Wall Street in the S.S. Circle
Major U.S. multi-nationals were also very well represented in the later Heinrich Himmler Circle and made cash contributions to the S.S. (the Sonder Konto S) up to 1944 while World War II was in progress.
Almost a quarter of the 1944 Sonder Konto S contributions came from subsidiaries of International Telephone and Telegraph, represented by Kurt von Schröder. The 1943 payments from I.T.T. subsidiaries to the Special Account were as follows:
Mix & Genest A.G. C. Lorenz AG
Felten & Guilleaume Kurt von Schroder
And the 1944 payments were:
Mix & Genest A.G. C. Lorenz AG
Felten & Guilleaume Kurt von Schroder
5,000 RM 20,000 RM 25,000 RM 16,000 RM
5,000 RM 20,000 RM 20,000 RM 16,000 RM
Sosthenes Behn of International Telephone and Telegraph transferred wartime control of Mix & Genest, C. Lorenz, and the other Standard Telephone interests in Germany to Kurt von Schroder who was a founding member of the Keppler Circle and organizer and treasurer of Himmler's Circle of Friends. Emil H. Meyer, S.S. Untersturmfuehrer, member of the Vorstand of the Dresdner Bank, A.E.G., and a director of all the I.T.T. subsidiaries in Germany, was also a member of the Himmler Circle of Friends giving I.T.T. two powerful representatives at the heart of the S.S.
A letter to fellow member Emil Meyer from Baron von Schroder dated February 25, 1936 describes the purposes and requirements of the Himmler Circle and the long-standing nature of the Special Account 'S' with funds at Schroder's own bank the J,H. Stein Bank of Cologne:
Berlin, 25 February 1936 (Illegible handwriting)
To Prof. Dr. Emil H. Meyer
S.S. (Untersturmfuchrer) (second lieutenant) Member of the Managing Board (Vorstand) of the Dresdner Bank
Berlin W. 56,
Behrenstr. 38
Personal!
To the Circle of Friends of the Reich Leader SS
At the end of the 2 day's inspection tour of Munich to which the Reich Leader SS had invited us last January, the Circle of Friends agreed to put each one according to his means at the Reich Leader's disposal into "Special Account S" (Sonder Konto S), to be established at the banking firm J.H. Stein in Cologne, funds which are to be used for certain tasks outside of the budget. This should enable the Reich Leader to rely on all his friends. In Munich it was decided that the undersigned would make themselves available for setting up and handling this account. In the meantime the account was set up and we want every participant to know that in case he wants to make contributions to the Reich Leader for the aforementioned tasks either on behalf of his firm or the Circle of Friends payments may be made to the banking firm J.H. Stein, Cologne (Clearing Account of the Reich Bank, Postal Checking Acount No. 1392) to the Special Account S.
: Heil Hitler!
(Signed) Kurt Baron von Sehroder (Signed) Steinbrinck3
This letter also explains why U.S. Army Colonel Bogdan, formerly of the Schroder Banking Corporation in New York, was anxious to divert the attention of post-war U.S. Army investigators away from the J. H. Stein Bank in Cologne to the "bigger banks" of Nazi Germany. It was the Stein Bank that held the secrets of the associations of American subsidiaries with Nazi authorities while World War II was in progress. The New York financial interests could not know the precise nature of these transactions (and particularly the nature of any records that may have been kept by their German associates), but they knew that some record could well exist of their war-time dealings enough to embarrass them with the American public. It was this possibility that Colonel Bogdan tried unsuccessfully to head off.
German General Electric profited greatly from its association with Himmler and other leading Nazis. Several members of the Schroder clique were directors of A.E.G., the most prominent being Robert Pferdmenges, who was not only a member of the Keppler or Himmler Circles but was a partner in the aryanized banking house Pferdmenges & Company, the successor to the former Jewish banking house Sal Oppenheim of Cologne. Waldemar von Oppenheim achieved the dubious distinction (for a German Jew) of "honorary Aryan" and was able to continue his old established banking house under Hitler in partnership with Pferdmenges.
MEMBERS OF THE HIMMLER CIRCLE OF FRIENDS WHO WERE ALSO DIRECTORS OF AMERICAN-AFFILIATED FIRMS:
I.G. Farben
KRANEFUSS, Fritz x
KEPPLER, Wilhelm x
SCHRODER, Kurt x Von
BUETEFISCH, x Heinrich
RASCHE, Dr. Karl x
FLICK, Friedrich x
LINDEMANN, Karl
SCHMIDT, x Heinrich
ROEHNERT, Kellmuth
SCHMIDT, Kurt MEYER, Dr. Emil
SCHMITZ, x Hermann
I.T.T.
x
Standard Oil of New
A.E.G. Jersey
Pferdmenges was also a director of A.E.G. and used his Nazi influence to good advantage.4
Two other directors of German General Electric were members of Himmler's Circle of Friends and made 1943 and 1944 monetary contributions to the Sonder Konto S. These were:
Friedrich Flick 100,000 RM
Otto Steinbrinck 100,000 RM (a Flick associate)
Kurt Schmitt was chairman of the board of directors of A.E.G. and a member of the Himmler Circle of Friends, but Schmitt's name is not recorded in the list of payments for 1943 or 1944.
Standard Oil of New Jersey also made a significant contribution to Himmler's Special Account through its wholly owned (94 percent) German subsidiary, Deutsche-Amerikanische Gesellschaft (DAG). In 1943 and 1944 DAG contributed as follows:
Staatsrat Helfferich of Deutsch- 10,000 RM Amerikanische Petroleum A.G.
Staatsrat Lindemann of 10,000 RM Deutsch- 4,000 RM Amerikanische Petroleum A.G.
and personally
It is important to note that Staatsrat Lindemann contributed 4,000 RM personally, thus making a clear distinction between the corporate contribution of 10,000 RM from Standard Oil of New Jersey's wholly owned subsidiary and the personal contribution from director Linde-mann. In the case of Staatsrat Hellfrich, the only contribution was the Standard Oil contribution of 10,000 RM; there is no recorded personal donation.
I.G. Farben, parent company of American I.G. (see Chapter Two), was another significant contributor to Heinrich Himmler's Sonder Konto S. There were four I.G. Farben directors within the inner circle: Karl Rasehe, Fritz Kranefuss, Heinrich Schmidt, and Heinrich Buetefisch. Karl Rasche was a member of the management committee of the Dresdner Bank and a specialist in international law and banking. Under Hitler Karl Rasche became a prominent director of many German corporations, including Accumulatoren-Fabrik A.G. in Berlin, which financed Hitler; the Metallgesellschaft; and Felten & Guilleame, an I.T.T. company. Fritz Kranefuss was a member of the board of directors of Dresdner Bank and a director of several corporations besides I.G. Farben. Kranefuss, nephew of Wilhelm Keppler, was a lawyer and prominent in many Nazi public organizations. Heinrich Schmidt, a director of I.G. Farben and several other German companies, was also a director of the Dresdner Bank.
It is important to note that all three of the above Rasche, Kranefuss, and Schmidt were directors of an I.G. Farben subsidiary, Braunkohle-Benzin A.G. the manufacturer of German synthetic gasoline using Standard Oil technology, a result of the I.G.
Farben-Standard Oil agreements of the early 1930s.
In brief, the Wall Street financial elite was well represented in both the early Keppler Circle
and the later Himmler Circle.5
Footnotes:
1From the affidavit of Wilhem Keppler, NMT, Volume VI, p. 285. 2Elimination of German Resources, p. 869.
3NMT, Volume VII, p. 238. "Translation of Document N1-10103, Prosecution Exhibit 788." Letter from von Schroder and Defendant Steinbrinck to Dr. Meyer, Dresdner Bank official, 25 February 1936, noting that the Circle of Friends would put funds at Himmler's disposal "For Certain Tasks outside of the Budget" and had established a "Special Account for this purpose."
4Elimination of German Resources, p. 857.
5The significant nature of this representation is reflected in Chart 8-1, "Wall Street representation in the Keppler and Himmler Circle, 1933 and 1944.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14