Chapter Sixteen
CONSPIRACY

Efforts to camouflage Farben ownership of firms in America; the assistance rendered by Rockefeller interests; penetration into the U.S. government by agents of the cartel; and the final disposition of the I.G. Farben case.

Once again the reader may be wondering if it is really necessary to include all of this history about cartels in a study of cancer therapy. And, once again, let us state most emphatically that it is. Not only does this history lead us to a clearer understanding of how the pharmaceutical industry has come to be influenced by factors other than simple product development and scientific truth, but it also gives us the answer to an otherwise most perplexing question.

That question, often asked at the point of first discovering that vitamin therapy is the target of organized opposition usually is stated something like this:

"Are you suggesting that people in government, in business, or in medicine could be so base as to place their own financial or political interests above the health and well-being of their fellow citizens? That they actually would stoop so low as to hold back a cure for cancer?"

The answer, in the cold light of cartel history, is obvious.

If prominent citizens, highly respected in their communities, can plan and execute global wars; if they can operate slave labor camps and gas ovens for the extermination of innocent human beings; if they can scheme to reap gigantic profits from the war industry of, not only their own nation, but of their nation's enemy as well; then the answer is:

"You'd better believe it!"

So let us return to the dusty historical record for further enlightenment on current events.

The American cartel partners who attempted to conceal their ownership in German industry before the war were not unique. German interests were active doing exactly the same thing in the United States. World War I had taught them a lesson. During that war, all German-owned industry in America was seized by the federal government and operated in trust by the office of the Alien Property Custodian.

At the end of the war, the industries were sold under conditions which, supposedly, were to prevent them from reverting to German control. In the field of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, however, this goal was completely thwarted. Within a few years, all of these companies were back under Farben ownership or control even more firmly than before the war.

One of the key figures in administering the disposition of this property was Earl McClintock, an attorney for the Alien Property Custodian's office. McClintock later was hired (rewarded?) by one of the cartel companies, Sterling Products, at several times the salary he had earned on the government payroll.

It was during this period that Farben experienced its greatest expansion in the United States. Sterling organized Winthrop Chemical. They brought DuPont into half interest of the Bayer Semesan Company. The American I.G. Chemical Company transformed itself several times and, in the process, absorbed the Grasselli Dyestuff Company, which had been a major purchaser of former German properties.

Sterling acquired numerous patent "remedies" such as Fletcher's Castoria and Phillip's Milk-of-Magnesia. With Lewis K. Liggett they formed Drug, Incorporated, a holding company for Sterling, Bayer, Winthrop, United Drug, and Rexall-Liggett Drugstores.

They bought Bristol Meyers, makers of Sal Hepatica; Vick Chemical Company; Edward J. Noble's Life Savers, Incorporated; and many others. By the time the Nazis began to tool up for war in Europe, Farben had obtained control over a major segment of America's pharmaceutical industry.

Investment in both the arts of wounding and healing always have been a dominant feature of cartel development, for the profit potential is greater in these respective fields than in any other. When one wishes to wage a war or regain his health, he seldom questions the price.

When Farben's extensive files fell into the hands of American troops at the end of World War II, they were turned over to the Justice and Treasury Departments for investigation and analysis. One of the inter-office memorandums found in those files explained quite bluntly how the cartel had attempted to conceal its ownership of American companies prior to the war.

The memorandum states:

After the first war, we came more and more to the decision to "tarn" [camouflage] our foreign companies ... in such a way that the participation of I.G. in these firms was not shown. In the course of time the system became more and more perfect... Protective measures to be taken by I.G. for the eventuality of [another] war should not substantially interfere with the conduct of business in normal times.

 

For a variety of reasons, it is of the utmost importance ... that the officials heading the agent firms, which are particularly well qualified to serve as cloaks, should be citizens of the countries where they reside...(1)

1. Ambruster, Treason's Peace, op. cit., p. 89. Also see Sasuly, I.G. Farben, op. cit., p. 95, 96.

This memorandum sheds considerable light on previous events.

On October 30, 1939, the directors of American I.G. (including Walter Teagle of Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Charles Mitchell of Rockefeller's National City Bank, Paul Warburg of the Federal Reserve System, Edsel Ford, William Weiss, Adolph Kuttroff, Herman Metz, Carl Bosch, Wilfried Greif, and Hermann Schmitz, who also had been president of American I.G.) announced that their company had ceased to exist. It had been absorbed by one of its subsidiaries, the General Analine Works.

Furthermore, the newly dominant company was changing its name to the General Analine and Film Corporation. The dead give-away letters "IG" had vanished altogether.

Nothing had changed except the name. Exactly the same board of directors had served both companies since 1929. Later on, as the system to "tarn" became "more and more perfect," Hermann Schmitz was replaced as president of General Analine by his brother Dietrich who was an American citizen. But even that was too obvious so, by 1941, Dietrich was replaced by easy-going Judge John E. Mack of Poughkeepsie, New York.

Mack was not qualified to lead such a giant conglomerate, but he easily could be told what to do by those on the board and by strategically-placed advisors and assistants. His prime value was in his name and reputation. Known to be an intimate friend of President Roosevelt, he brought to GAF an aura of American respectability.

The obviously German names on the board were replaced by names of similar American prestige - such as Ambassador William C. Bullitt - men who were flattered to be named, but too busy with other matters to serve in a genuine capacity.

As part of the camouflage, Schmitz turned to his banking expert in Switzerland, Edward Greutert, and formed a Swiss corporation called Internationale Gessellschaft fur Chemische Unternehmungen A.G., more commonly known as I.G. Chemie.

T.R. Fehrenbach, in The Swiss Banks, described the elaborate precautions in this way:

The best North Atlantic legal firms, with offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and New York, were paid to study the problem. These firms had contacts or colleagues in Basel, Lausanne, Fribourg, and Zurich. They got together. It was quite simple to plan a succession of "Swiss" corporations to inherit licenses, assets, and patents owned by certain international cartels. This was to muddy the track and to confuse all possible investigating governments.

 

The transactions themselves were incredibly complex... Some of them will probably never be known in their entirety. Edward Greutert and his bank, and a large number of "desk-drawer" corporations formed through Greutert's services, became Schmitz' agents.

Schmitz, who can only be described as a financial wizard, made a weird and wonderful financial structure in Basel involving a dozen corporations and sixty-five accounts in the Greutert Bank. Each account was in a different name. Some were for the paper corporations, and some were in the names of corporation groups or syndicates - the European term is consortia. These consortia were owned by each other in a never-ending circle, and by Greutert and Farben executives.(1)

1. T.R. Fehrenbach, The Swiss Banks, (N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 216, 219.

The final step in this planned deception was to go through the motions of selling its American-based companies to I.G. Chemie.

Thus, in the event of war, these companies would appear to be Swiss owned (a neutral country) and with thoroughly American leadership. The phrase "going through the motions" is used because all of the money received by the American corporations as a result of the "sale" was returned almost immediately to Farben in the form of loans. But, on paper, at least, I.G. Chemie of Basel was now the official owner of eighty-nine percent of the stock in Farben's American companies.

The American side of this transaction was handled by Rockefeller's National City Bank of New York.

This is not surprising inasmuch as the head of its investment division, Charles Mitchell, also was on the board of these I.G. holding companies. But Rockefeller was more deeply involved than that. In 1938, the Securities and Exchange Commission began a lengthy investigation of American I.G. Walter Teagle, a member of the board, was called to the witness stand.

Mr. Teagle, as you recall, was also president of Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Under questioning, Mr. Teagle claimed that he did not know who owned control of the company he served as a director. He did not know how many shares were held by I.G. Chemie, or who owned I.G. Chemie.

In fact, he had the audacity to say that he didn't have any idea who owned the block of 500,000 shares - worth over a half-a-million dollars - that had been issued in his name!

Mr. Teagle, of course, was either lying, or suffering from a classical case of convenient amnesia.

Evidence was introduced later showing that, in 1932, he had received a letter from Wilfried Greif, Farben's managing director, stating in plain English:

"I.G. Chemie is, as you know, a subsidiary of I.G. Farben."⁽¹⁾

Also brought out in the investigation was the fact that on May 27, 1930, while Teagle was in London, he received a cable from Mr. Frank Howard, vice-president of Standard Oil, carrying this message:

In view of the fact that we have repeatedly denied any financial interest in American I.G., it seems to me to be unwise for us to now permit them to include us as stockholders in their original listing which is object of present transaction. It would serve their purpose to issue this stock to you personally... Will this be agreeable to you as a temporary measure? ⁽²⁾

Finally, in June of 1941, after three years of investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission gave up the cause.

Either because it was baffled by the cartel's camouflage (unlikely) or because it yielded to pressure from the cartel's friends high in government (likely), it issued this final report to Congress:

All attempts to ascertain the beneficial ownership of the controlling shares have been unsuccessful... As a consequence, the American investors, mainly bondholders, are in the peculiar position of being creditors of a corporation under an unknown control.⁽³⁾

1. Ambruster, op. cit., p. 114.
2. Ibid., p. 114.
3. Ibid., p. 121.

The evidence of cartel influence within the very government agencies that are supposed to prevent them from acting against the interests of the citizenry should not be passed over lightly. It is, unfortunately, a part of the stain that obscures the picture of cancer research. So let us turn now to that aspect of the record.

The story begins in 1916 when Dr. Hugo Schwitzer, of the Bayer Company, wrote a letter to the German Ambassador von Bernstorff in which he spoke of the necessity of bringing about the election of a president of the United States whose personal views and party politics were in harmony with the cause of I.G. Farben.

At that time, the Republican Party was favored for that purpose. Shortly afterward, Herman Metz, a Tammany leader and lifelong Democrat, switched allegiance to the Republican Party. Metz was president of the H.A. Metz Company of New York, a large pharmaceutical house that was controlled by Farben. In 1925, he helped to organize General Dyestuff Corporation, another Farben outlet, of which he became president.

In 1929, he helped organize the American I.G., and he became vice-president and treasurer of that organization. The conversion of Metz from a Democrat to a Republican was significant because it signaled the cartel's affinity for the Republican Party.

In October of 1942, the Library of Congress received a sealed gift of some nine-thousand letters comprising the files of the late Edward T. Clark. These files were important, because Clark had been the private secretary to President Calvin Coolidge, and they contained valuable data relating to behind-the-scenes politics.

On March 4,1929, Mr. Clark left his position in the White House and, in a revealing switch of roles, became vice-president of Drug, Incorporated, which was the giant Farben combine that pulled together such important companies as Sterling and Liggett and the multitude of subsidiaries which they owned.

Mr. Clark undoubtedly earned his pay. That he continued to maintain excellent contacts and to exercise influence at the highest levels of government is beyond doubt. In fact, in August of 1929, President Herbert Hoover asked him to return to the White House as his personal secretary - which he did.

Another prominent Republican with cartel connections was Louis K. Liggett.

As Republican National Committeeman from Massachusetts, he was no stranger to the intrigue of smoke-filled rooms. Working closely with Clark and other "men of influence," he was able to secure approval from the Justice Department for the merger that created Drug, Incorporated in spite of that merger being in direct conflict with the anti-cartel policies established by Congress some years earlier.

Did President Hoover receive the support of the cartel because he was a man whose party politics were "in harmony" with its cause? It is hard to imagine otherwise.

While he was Secretary of Commerce, he was given the heavy responsibility of deciding what to do about the menace of I.G. Farben. To broaden the share of responsibility for this decision and to brighten the process with the aura of "democracy," he set up a Chemical Advisory Committee to study the problem and make recommendations. This has become a standard ploy for making the voters think that all viewpoints have been melted down into a "consensus."

The committee members usually are carefully selected so that a clear majority can be counted on to conclude exactly what was wanted in the first place.

If there were ever any exceptions to this rule, they did not occur on the Chemical Advisory Committee. Hoover appointed such men as Henry Howard, vice-president of the Grasselli Chemical Company, Walter Teagle, president of Standard Oil, Lammot DuPont of the DuPont Company, and Frank A. Blair, president of the Centaur Company, a subsidiary of Sterling Products. The cartel was in no danger.

The record of how the cartel succeeded in frustrating the mission of the office of the Alien Property Custodian at the end of World War I is amazing. Digging into the story is like trying to separate a can of worms, but here, at least, are the visible and identifiable components.

Francis Garvan had been the Alien Property Custodian during World War I.

After American entry into the war he was instrumental in having all German-owned companies taken out of the hands of enemy control and held for later sale to American business firms. After the war, any Germans who could demonstrate that, as private citizens, they had been deprived of personal property through this action, were to be fully compensated out of the proceeds of the sale.

But, under no circumstances were these industries to be returned to German control. That was the firm directive given to the APC by Congress. As chronicled previously, however, within only a few years after the truce, and after Garvan had left government service, every one of these major enterprises had reverted to Farben control.

Garvan was enraged. He spoke out publicly against the corruption in Washington that made this possible. He sent letters to Congressmen. He testified before investigating committees. He named names.

He had to be silenced.

Suddenly, in 1929, Garvan found himself as the defendant in a suit filed by the Justice Department charging malfeasance in the discharge of his duties as the Alien Property Custodian! It was a perfect case of the best defense being a strong offense, and of accusing one's accuser of exactly the things which one has done himself. If nothing else, it tends to discredit the first accuser and to confuse the issue so badly that the casual observer simply doesn't know whom to believe.

The prosecution against Garvan was carried mainly by two men: Merton Lewis and John Crim, both on the staff of the Attorney General's office.

The most significant thing about these two men is that each of them previously had been intimately involved with the Farben cartel.

Lewis had been retained as counsel by the Bosch Company in 1919. Crim had been the counsel for Hays, Kaufman and Lindheim, representing the German Embassy. (Garvan had sent two members of that law firm to jail for treasonous activity during the war.)

In spite of the planned confusion of charges and counter charges, Garvan's testimony came through loud and clear. He had the documents, the dates, the inside information that could not be brushed aside. Here is what he revealed:

Herman Metz had made campaign contributions to Senator John King, former Republican National Committeeman from Connecticut.

Before running for the Senate, John King had been on the payroll of the Hamburg American line for three years, receiving an annual salary of $15,000 for mysterious, unspecified services.

King also had been appointed to the office of the Alien Property Custodian through the influence of Senator Moses. Senator Moses had appointed Otto Kahn as treasurer of a fund for the election of new senators. Otto Kahn was the investment partner of Paul Warburg, one of the directors of American I.G. King and Moses together secured the appointment of Thomas Miller to the APC.

Later, Miller was convicted and sent to the Atlanta Prison for being an agent of an enemy during wartime.

Garvan spared no names. His files showed that the office of the Attorney General, itself, had long been considered as the prize of the cartel. Homer Cummings, who had been the Attorney General for six years, later was employed as counsel for General Analine and Film with an annual retainer reported to be $100,000.

Garvan testified:

All that time, the Attorney General of the United States ... and the Alien Property Custodian, Thomas Miller, were in the employ and pay of German people and had $50,000 worth of U.S. Government bonds handed to them and put in their pockets by whom? By John T. King, the $15,000 representative who died three days before he could be tried...

Some of you saw the other day that Senator Moses had appointed Otto Kahn as treasurer for the election of new senators. You did not associate the fact that his friend and partner, Warburg, is the head and front of the American interest in the American Interessen Gemeinschaft...

It is never a dead issue. Peace? There is no peace. Always the fight goes on for the supremacy in the chemical industry because it is the keystone to the safety of the United States or of any country in the world today.⁽¹⁾

1. Ambruster, op. cit., pp. 147, 151.

The three posts in government which would be of special interest to cartels are the presidency itself, the office of Attorney General, and the office of Secretary of State. We have touched upon the first two. Now let us examine the third.

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was the leading partner in Sullivan and Cromwell, the largest of the law firms on Wall Street. Sullivan and Cromwell specialized in representing foreign business interests, and its partners held interlocking directorates with many leading corporations and banking houses - especially those comprising the Farben-American interlock.

John Foster Dulles represented Blyth and Company, the investment banking partner of the First National City Bank and the First Boston Corporation, two key investment enterprises of the Rockefeller group associated with the Chase Manhattan Bank. Dulles also represented Standard Oil and was made chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, a position signifying great trust on the part of the Rockefeller family.

Sullivan and Cromwell had been the principal representatives of such powerful investment houses as Goldman, Sachs, and Company; Lehman Brothers; and Lazard Freres, the firm that, together with Kuhn, Loeb and Company, had masterminded the expansion and mergers of ITT.

As recently as 1945, Dulles had been listed as one of the directors of the International Nickel Company of Canada. This also was part of the Farben interlock and had been the prime mover behind the stockpiling of nickel in Nazi Germany before the war.⁽¹⁾

Avery Rockefeller was a director of the J. Henry Schroeder Banking Corporation and the Schroeder Trust Company. He was also a full partner and stockholder in its affiliate, Schroeder, Rockefeller and Company. It is not surprising to learn, therefore, that John Foster Dulles also had been the American representative of the Schroeder trust which was Hitler's agent in the United States.

Westrick had been a Sullivan and Cromwell representative in Germany where he represented such multi-nationals as ITT. And at the beginning of World War II, Dulles became a voting trustee of Farben-controlled American corporations in an attempt to prevent them from being seized as enemy property.

Instead of this man going down in American history as a tool of international monopoly and a possible traitor in war, he was appointed as a member of a special high-level consulting committee established by the Alien Property Custodian to formulate the basic policies of that office. And then he was chosen by President Eisenhower as Secretary of State.

His brother, Allen Dulles, also a partner of Sullivan and Cromwell, was equally enmeshed in the cartel web as a negotiator with Farben interests for the Office of Strategic Services in Switzerland. (It was then that Allen Dulles had said, "Only hysteria entertains the idea that Germany, Italy or Japan contemplates war upon us.")

At the end of the war, after using his influence to protect Hitler's agent, Westrick,⁽²⁾ he was placed by President Eisenhower at the head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

1. William Hoffman, David; Report on a Rockefeller,. (New York: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1971), pp. 18,19. Also Ambruster, Treason's Peace, op. cit., p. 85.
2. Sampson, The Sovereign State of ITT, op. cit., p. 43.

Such is the power of the forces we are describing.

Perhaps the best way to judge the extent of hidden cartel power in the United States government is to observe how its German component fared during and after the war. As noted previously, its American holdings were seized by the federal government in February of 1942. Within a few months, all of the original directors and officers were compelled to resign.

But whom did the government put in their places?

Richard Sasuly answers:

Operating control has passed to a group of men who are tied in with a constellation of corporate interests which is rising rapidly in American business under the leadership of an international financier, Victor Emanuel. Emanuel himself sits on the board of directors of G.A.& F. [General Analine & Film] There is a liberal sprinkling of his associates among the other directors and officers.⁽¹⁾

Emanuel's assumption of leadership over I.G's holdings in the United States is significant. Between 1927 and 1934, he had been in London as an associate of the Schroeder banking interests. This is the same organization that, in conjunction with the Rockefeller group, represented I.G. and became the financial agent of Adolph Hitler.

Sasuly continues:

As is well known, the Schroeders of London are related to the Schroeders of Germany. Baron Bruno Schroeder is credited with having introduced Hitler to the principal industrialists of the Ruhr. Baron Kurt Schroeder held a high rank in the SS and was known as "The SS banker." The London banking house, J. Henry Schroeder and Company, was described by Time magazine in July, 1939, as an "economic booster of the Rome-Berlin Axis."⁽²⁾

And what of Victor Emanuel, President of Standard Gas and Electric, who dominated the "new" leadership of the Rockefeller-Farben empire? The answer was provided in one short sentence in a report of the Securities and Exchange Commission dated January 19,1943. It said:

The Schroeder interests in London and New York have worked with Emanuel in acquiring and maintaining a dominant position in Standard affairs.⁽³⁾

1. Sasuly, I.G. Farben, op. cit., p. 186.
2. Ibid., p. 187.
3. Ambruster, op. cit.., p. 366.

The much publicized shuffling of GAF directors and officers was a charade. Men with demonstrated loyalty to the cartel's interests continued to dominate. As usual, the American people hadn't the slightest inkling of what was really happening.

What transpired in Germany itself, however, is even more revealing of cartel influence at the very highest levels of American government. During the later stages of the war, the major industrial cities of Germany were nearly leveled by massive bombing raids.

This was the decisive factor that crippled the Nazi war machine and brought the conflict to an end. But when the Allied occupational forces moved into Frankfurt, they were amazed to discover that there was one complex of buildings left standing amid the rubble. Somehow, these and these only had been spared. The buildings housed the international headquarters of I.G. Farben.

Bombardiers had been instructed to avoid this vital target - the very backbone of Nazi war production - on the lame excuse that American forces would need an office building when they moved into town.

Parenthetically, it should be noted that the Under-Secretary of War at that time (promoted to Secretary of War in 1945) was Robert P. Patterson who, before his appointment by President Roosevelt, had been associated with Dillon, Read & Company, another Rockefeller investment banking firm. Dillon-Read had helped to finance a substantial portion of Farben's pre-war expansion - including its sprawling office building that was spared in the bombing raids.

James Forrestal, former president of Dillon, Read & Company, was Secretary of the Navy at the time but later became the first Secretary of Defense. If one were of a suspicious nature, one might conclude that Mr. Patterson and Mr. Forrestal might have used their influence to protect some of the assets of their company's investment.

As the Allied armies pushed into Germany, the extent of cartel power within the American government suddenly became visible - literally. Scores of American investment bankers, lawyers, and industrial executives - all with connections to the Farben mechanism - showed up in brigadier-general uniforms to direct the "de-Nazification and de-cartelization" of post-war Germany!

One such figure was Kenneth Stockton, chairman of ITT's European board of directors. According; to Anthony Sampson, Stockton appeared "alongside Westrick." The most conspicuous among these "generals" was Brigadier-General William Draper, Commanding Officer of the Economics Division of the American Control Group, which was the division with the greatest responsibility for implementing the de-cartelization program.

And what was Draper's civilian experience that qualified him for this post? He, too, was with the Wall Street firm of Dillon Read - of course!

In May of 1945, Max Ilgner was arrested and held for trial at Nuremberg. As head of I.G.'s international spy network which became the backbone of the Nazi Supreme Command, one might think that Ilgner would be concerned over the future. He was not.

Shortly after being arrested, he wrote a letter to two of his assistants and instructed them to keep in close touch with each other and with all the other I.G. leaders. He stressed the importance of keeping the structure functioning because, he said, it would not be much longer before the Americans would remove all restrictions.⁽¹⁾

He was correct. Within six months the cartel's factories were humming with activity. I.G. shares were enjoying spectacular confidence in the German stock market, and free American money in the form of the Marshall Plan was on its way.

Meanwhile, Colonel Bernard Bernstein, chief investigator for the Finance Division of the Allied Control Council and an outspoken critic of American coddling of cartelists, was fired by his superior officers. James Martin, the man who was head of the de-cartelization branch of the Department of Justice, resigned in disgust. One by one, the foes of monopoly were squeezed out.

In anger and frustration, Martin explained his resignation:

"We had not been stopped in Germany by German business. We had been stopped in Germany by American business."⁽²⁾

1. Sasuly, op. cit., p. 201.
2. Sampson, op. cit., p. 45.

The stage now was set for the final act of the drama. With Farben rapidly returning to its pre-war position of prosperity and influence in Europe, all that was left was to release its American holdings from government control.

By this time, I.G. Chemie in Switzerland had brightened its image by changing its name to French: Societe Internationale pour Participations Industrielles et Commerciales. In German, however, this translated into International Industrie und Handelsbeteiligungen A.G., or Interhandel, the name by which it became widely known. Once again, nothing had changed but the name.

On behalf of. Interhandel, the Swiss banks and the Swiss government demanded that the United States government now release the "Swiss-owned" companies. They claimed that Interhandel was not owned by German nationals (although they steadfastly refused to reveal who did own it), and that its American properties had been illegally seized.

In court, however, the Treasury Department proved - primarily from Farben's own files captured in Frankfurt - that Interhandel was merely the latest name for what Treasury described as:

... a conspiracy to conceal, camouflage, and cloak the ownership control, and domination by I.G. Farben of properties and interests in many countries of the world, including the United States.⁽¹⁾

1. Quoted by Waller, The Swiss Bank Connection, op. cit, p. 164.

The impasse was resolved under the Kennedy Administration. Robert Kennedy, the president's brother, was the Attorney General at the time. He proposed that General Analine be put up for sale to the highest bidder among American investment and underwriting houses.

The successful bidder then would be required to offer the stock for public sale. Basically, the proceeds were to be split between the United States government and the Swiss government, both of which would use the money to compensate American, Swiss, and German nationals respectively for losses due to damage during the war.

In 1953, Farben's German assets were transferred to Hoechst, Bayer, and other cartel members, leaving behind a company shell with only a few million dollars in trust to settle lawsuits from victims of the Nazi era.

Once again, I.G. had apparently disappeared.

The Kennedy proposal was accepted by all parties. As it turned out, however, all of the Swiss share of the proceeds went directly to Farben, and much, if not most, of the American proceeds found its way into the pockets of those American firms which, as Farben partners, had invested in pre-war German industry (such as ITT, previously mentioned).

It is likely that some of these American purchases were on behalf of German interests and that the "sale" enabled them to reclaim a substantial portion of their original position.

The auction took place in March of 1962. It was the largest competitive transaction ever to take place on Wall Street. A 225-company underwriting syndicate won the sealed bid with a price of over $329 million dollars. The victorious bidders were represented by the First Boston Corporation and Blyth and Company - you guessed it - Rockefeller agents, both!

Yes, Virginia, the cartel was not dead. It had grown. It prospered. Its center of gravity may have shifted away from Germany as a result of the displacements of war, but it was alive and well in the United States of America.

The conclusion of this drama was well summarized by Leslie Waller when he wrote:

Like the legendary phoenix, this colossus of business organizations was born in fire, yet survives the fiercest flames. It is an almost perfect example of corporate immortality, based on Swiss banking... Schmitz and Greutert were long dead. But thanks to Swiss tenacity, the original decision to conceal his holdings under the Matterhom had withstood the ravages of war, time, and politics.⁽¹⁾

1. Ibid., pp. 160,166.

The written record of this period of history is voluminous.

The reader should be cautioned, however, that much of this material was written with an axe to grind. In the wake of World War II, there were two powerful groups vying with each other for dominance within the United States government. One was the international financial and industrial consortium which is the subject of these chapters. The other was the apparatus of international Communism.

Their goals and methods of operation were almost identical, and there was considerable overlapping and cooperation between them. Algier Hiss, for example, was able to operate in both groups with little difficulty.

Nevertheless, just as members of a cartel will conspire with each other against the interests of the consumer while maneuvering between themselves for advantage within the cartel, so, also, do Communists and their so-called "anti-Communist" opponents, the monopoly capitalists, cooperate with each other against the interests of the public, yet fight each other for dominance within the political systems of the world.

Consequently, a great deal that was written about the evils of Nazi or Communist influence after the war was done primarily for propaganda purposes. The Communists charged that the Nazis were monopoly capitalists and that they had strong ties to American industrialists and to the American government itself. In this they were correct.

They used this truth, however, as a springboard for the propaganda line that monopoly capitalism was synonymous with the traditional American system and that, therefore, the system must be replaced with socialism and, ultimately, Communism. In other words, they proposed to replace the existing imperfect monopoly with their more perfect monopoly known to the peasants simply as Communism.

Their cartel opponents, on the other hand, publicly became outspoken "anti-Communists" and wrapped themselves in the stars and stripes of patriotism.

They called for thorough investigations and promised to sweep the Reds and Pinks out of the State Department and other branches of government. They even prosecuted one or two! In time, they led the United States into a series of limited wars against Communist regimes around the world. (For them, wars are profitable, both economically and politically.)

But they never tried to win those wars, because both sides had come to an understanding that unlimited competition would not be to their mutual advantage.

This background must be understood if one is to make sense out of the flood of books and articles that have inundated the American scene since World War II. Much truth is to be found in the special pleadings of both sides, but neither side can be trusted. If reliable leadership should ever present itself, it will be recognized by a single quality that neither Communism nor Nazism, nor any other totalitarianism can ever possess.

It will advocate and promote the drastic reduction of government. It will not merely advocate trimming the bureaucracy or tinkering with the existing structure to make it more efficient, it will call for the elimination of most of the structure that now exists. To recognize this leadership, we will not have to be political scientists, or philosophers, or history buffs. By this test alone, we will be able to distinguish between the genuine and the imitation.

With this kind of leadership, political conspiracies will be doomed to oblivion.
 

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