So, there was ample opportunity for a resourceful Nazi to worm his way back into power and continue steering the great ship Germania for the promised land. Herman Abs, was one such man.
By 1942, Abs held 40 German directorships, a quarter of which were in countries occupied by the Nazis. Many of these Aryanised companies used slave labour and by 1943 Deutsche Bank's wealth had quadrupled.
Abs also sat on the supervisory board of I.G. Farben as Deutsche Bank's representative.
I.G. Farben was one of Nazi Germany's most powerful companies, formed out of a union of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst and subsidiaries in the 1920s.
It was so deeply entwined with the SS and the Nazis that it ran its own slave labour camp at Auschwitz, known as Auschwitz III, where tens of thousands of Jews, Roma and other prisoners died producing artificial rubber. When they could work no longer, or were "verbraucht" (used up) in the Nazis' chilling term, they were moved to Birkenau.
Abs was one of the most important figures in Germany's post-war reconstruction. It was largely thanks to him that a 'strong German empire' was indeed rebuilt, one which formed the basis of today's European Union.
Abs was put in charge of allocating Marshall Aid - reconstruction funds - to German industry. By 1948 he was effectively managing Germany's economic recovery.
Crucially, Abs was also a member of the European League for Economic Co-operation, an elite intellectual pressure group set up in 1946. The league was dedicated to the establishment of a common market, the precursor of the European Union.
Its members included industrialists and financiers and it developed policies that are strikingly familiar today - on monetary integration and common transport, energy and welfare systems.
But of course, Abs and his Nazi banking friends had already worked out the finer points of a unified Europe. One that was designed to de-industrialise the periphery nations, and turn them into farms to feed the German machine - with the added bonus of removing British influence from Europe. Download EEC 1942 Doc HERE
from a 1999 article by Mike O'Sullivan:
ReplyDelete"Friday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center displayed a report on Deutsche Bank that has been in its archives for 20 years. Dated November 1946, the report was compiled by investigators for the US military government of post-war Germany.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center's director, read from the three main recommendations of the report. "It is recommended that 'the Deutsche Bank be liquidated,' that 'the responsible officials of the Deutsche Bank be indicted and tried as war criminals,' that 'the leading officials of the Deutsche Bank be barred from positions of importance or responsibility in German economic or political life.'"
It's interesting that the Wiesenthal Center's Los Angeles branch was funded by Roland Arnall, very likely a Bormann operative, and that the Center took twenty years to publicize the report on Deutsche Bank.
Sometimes it is best to not show your cards.
ReplyDeleteIsrael and the Wiesenthal Centre have crates and crates of information damaging to Germany, waiting for a rainy day.
Ref Bormann funding, that may well be the case, BUT, why not use the enemy's money against him? We have had various dealings with the Wiesenthal Centre and in our opinion they are not compromised by any such links. When required, they will do the right thing and blow a hole in Germany's post-war propagandised image.
If only we could get our hands on some Bormann capital!