|
 John Brand writes: On May 7, 1945, General Eisenhower accepted the total and unconditional surrender of Germany's military forces. World War II had come to an end. Freedom prevailed over enslavement; democracy triumphed over dictatorship. Now we could look forward to building a world based on the Four Freedoms promulgated at the Yalta Conference: freedom of speech and of religion as well as freedom from want and from fear. Our marching orders for building a brave new world were in place. The U.N. was to be the vehicle turning dreams of justice into reality, translating hopes for peace into an actual dynamic. But in the mind of this old soldier, doubts began to arise as early as 1945. As I mentioned in one of my previous columns, I was stationed in Hofheim, Germany, located near Frankfurt. ... I took my discharge in Germany and went to work as an investigator for the War Department. I was assigned to the External Assets Branch. Our task was to locate records evidencing the transfer of legal ownership of American-based German companies into the hands of American citizens who were sympathetic to Hitler. This "legal" transfer began in about 1936 and 1937. When the war broke out, the American Alien Property Custodian could not sequester these German assets because they were legally owned by American citizens. That was a pretty neat trick pulled by the Hitler gang. The legal ownership was American but the actual management was German. ... The I.G. Farben section made the most interesting discovery. General Aniline, a chemical corporation located in New Jersey, was suspected by the Alien Property Custodian to be a company owned and controlled by I.G. Farben. However, during the war that claim could never be established. General Aniline continued their operations without American control or oversight. Discovery of records in Berlin traced the legal ownership of General Aniline to a Swiss bank acting as a holding company for I.G. Farben. A trip to that source resulted in a rather interesting conversation. The American investigator asked the Swiss banker what he knew about the ownership of General Aniline. His answer was the classic Swiss reply, "Our banking laws do not permit me to make any comment on that matter." ... I guess it shouldn't come as a great surprise that big business has all sorts of under-the-table deals while young men and women are losing their lives protecting corporate interests. The chicanery of German companies and their American and Swiss friends reflects the mendacity perpetrated by the international military industrial complex. (10/07/03)
|
