Quotes from WALL ST AND THE RISE OF HITLER

Chapter 3

The multinational giant General Electric has an unparalleled role in twentieth-century history. The General Electric Company electrified the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, and fulfilled for the Soviets Lenin’s dictum that “Socialism = electrification.”1 The Swope Plan, created by General Electric’s one-time president Gerard Swope, became Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, by a process deplored by one-time President Herbert Hoover and described in Wall Street and FDR.

In 1936 Senator James A. Reed of Missouri, an early Roosevelt supporter, became aware of Roosevelt’s betrayal of liberal ideas and attacked the Roosevelt New Deal programme as a “tyrannical” measure “leading to despotism, [and] sought by its sponsors under the communistic cry of ‘Social Justice.’ ” Senator Reed further charged on the floor of the Senate that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a “hired man for the economic royalists” in Wall Street and that the Roosevelt family “is one of the largest stockholders in the General Electric Company.”

As we probe into behind-the-scenes German interwar history and the story of Hitler and Naziism, we find both Owen D. Young and Gerard Swope of General Electric tied to the rise of Hitlerism and the suppression of German democracy. That General Electric directors are to be found in each of these three distinct historical categories—i.e., the development of the Soviet Union, the creation of Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the rise of Hitlerism—suggests how elements of Big Business are keenly interested in the socialization of the world, for their own purposes and objectives, rather than the maintenance of the impartial marketplace in a free society.

Walter Rathenau .... Walter Rathenau14 became a director of A.E.G. in 1899 and by the early twentieth century was a director of more than 100 corporations. Rathenau was also author of the “Rathenau Plan,” which bears a remarkable resemblance to the “Swope Plan” — i.e., FDR’s New Deal but written by Swope of G.E. In other words, we have the extraordinary coincidence that the authors of New Deal-like plans in the U.S. and Germany were also prime backers of their implementers: Hitler in Germany and Roosevelt in the U.S.

In January 1930 three G.E. men were elected to the board of A.E.G. — Clark H. Minor, Gerard Swope, and E. H. Baldwin — and International General Electric (I.G.E.) continued its moves to merge the world electrical industry into a giant cartel under Wall Street control.

In February General Electric focused on the remaining German electrical giant, Siemens & Halske, and while able to obtain a large block of debentures issued on behalf of the German firm by Dillon, Read of New York, G. E. was not able to gain participation or directors on the Siemens board. ... Siemens retained its independence from General Electric — and this independence is important for our story. The New York Times reported, "The entire press emphasizes the fact that Siemens, contrary to A.E.G., maintains its independence for the future and points out that no General Electric representative will sit on Siemens board of directors".

There is no evidence that Siemens, without American directors, financed Hitler. On the other hand, we have irrefutable documentary evidence (see document No. 391–395) that both German General Electric and Osram, both with American directors, financed Hitler.

In 1932 the American directors of A.E.G. were prominently connected with American banking and political circles as follows: GERARD SWOPE -- Chairman of International General Electric and president of General Electric Company, director of National City Bank (and other companies), director of A.E.G. and Osram in Germany. Author of FDR’s New Deal and member of numerous Roosevelt organizations.
OWEN D. YOUNG--Chairman of board of General Electric, and deputy chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Author, with J. P. Morgan, of the Young Plan which superseded the Dawes Plan in 1929. (See Chapter One.)
CLARK H. MINOR--President and director of International General Electric, director of British Thomson Houston, Compania Generale di Electtricita (Italy), and Japan Electric Bond & Share Company (Japan)

In brief, we have hard evidence of unquestioned authenticity (see previous document) to show that German General Electric contributed substantial sums to Hitler’s political fund. There were four American directors of A.E.G. (Baldwin, Swope, Minor, and Clark), which was 30 percent owned by International General Electric.

A.E.G. Avoids the Bombs in World War II

in 1939 the German electrical equipment industry was concentrated into a few major corporations linked in an international cartel and by stock ownership to two major U.S. corporations. This industrial complex was never a prime target for bombing in World War II. The A.E.G. and I.T.T. plants were hit only incidentally in area raids and then but rarely. The electrical equipment plants bombed as targets were not those affiliated with U.S. firms. It was Brown Boveri at Mannheim and Siemensstadt in Berlin — which were not connected with the U.S. — who were bombed.

That the A.E.G. plants in Germany were not bombed in World War II was confirmed by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey16, officered by such academics as John K. Galbraith and such Wall Streeters as George W. Ball and Paul H. Nitze. Their “German Electrical Equipment Industry Report” dated January 1947 concludes: "The industry has never been attacked as a basic target system, but a few plants, i.e. Brown Boveri at Mannheim, Bosch at Stuutgart and Siemenstadt in Berlin, have been subjected to precision raids; many others were hit in area raids."