Opinion
OTHER VIEWS
American Corporate Complicity
A
dolf Hitler was completely
responsible for the Holocaust.
But Hitler had help.
When zealous Nazis waged war against
an imaginary generation-to-generation
Jewish conspiracy ... when Nazis created
ghastly extermination plans to help ensure
their master race would rule the world
... when the German military smashed
across Europe with lightning speed in
heavy Blitz trucks ... when Mengele
undertook heinous medical experiments
on twins in Auschwitz ... when the Reich
identified the Jews everywhere in Europe
and then systematically pauperized and
destroyed them ... when all these terrible
things were done, the shape and scope of
the horror was pivotally determined by
major American industrial giants.
Now the dots can be connected. They
create an undeniably Nazi nexus between
iconic American corporations and the
greatest crime of the 20th century: the
Holocaust.
Henry Ford, acting directly through the
Ford Motor Company, virtually invented
political anti-Semitism when he pub-
lished worldwide the fake Protocols of
the Learned Elders of Zion. Ford's book
quickly became the bible of German anti-
Semites and early incarnations of the Nazi
party. Nazis shipped the work throughout
the country "by the carload." Among the
many Germans massively influenced by
the book was Adolf Hitler. Der Fuhrer read
the work at least two years before Mein
Kampf was written. In Mein Kampf Hitler
wrote, "The whole existence of this people
is based on a continuous lie [as] shown
incomparably by the Protocols of the Elders
of Zion . .."
The Carnegie Institution, the philan-
thropic incarnation of America's great-
est steel fortune, propagated the deadly
American race science of eugenics, which
idealized a blond, blue-eyed superior
race. In pursuit of that dream, Carnegie
Institution scientists believed some 90
percent of humanity was to be eliminated
using various methods. These methods
included organized identification, seizure
of assets, marriage prohibition or nullifi-
cation, forced surgical sterilization, segre-
gation into camps, and publicly operated
gas chambers. The Carnegie Institution
spent millions to propagate American
eugenic theories in post-World War I
Germany, financing race science programs
in universities and official institutions.
While in prison, Hitler closely studied
American eugenics. He proudly told his
comrades, "I have studied with great inter-
est the laws of several American states
A24
March 12 = 2009
JN
concerning prevention of reproduction
by people whose progeny would, in all
probability, be of no value or be injurious
to the racial stock." Hitler was so steeped
in American race science that he even
wrote a fan letter to American eugenic
leader Madison Grant, called his writing
"my bible." Der Fuhrer merely
exchanged the American term
"Nordic" for the Nazi term
"Aryan" and then medicalized
his pre-existing virulent anti-
Semitism and fascist national-
ism to formulate the concept
of the blond, blue-eyed Master
Race he deified in Mein Kampf
As Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess
insisted, "National Socialism is
nothing but applied biology"
The Rockefeller Foundation,
the philanthropic incarna-
tion of Standard Oil, acted as
a full partner with Carnegie
in establishing eugenics in Germany.
In the quest to perfect the master race,
millions of Depression-era dollars were
transmitted by Rockefeller to Hitler's most
anti-Jewish doctors. In this quest, one
specimen was desired above all: twins.
Rockefeller funded Hitler's chief raceolo-
gist Otmar Verschuer and his insatiable
twin experimentation programs. Twins, it
was thought, held the secret to industri-
ally multiplying the Aryan racial type,
and quickly subtracting biological unde-
sirables. Verschuer had an assistant, Josef
Mengele. Rockefeller funding stopped
during World War II. But by that time,
Mengele had transferred into Auschwitz
to continue twin research in a monstrous
fashion. Ever the eugenicist, he sent pre-
cise clinical reports weekly to Verschuer.
From the first weeks of the Third Reich,
General Motors president Alfred Sloan
committed the company and its German
division Opel to motorizing a substantially
horse-drawn Germany, preparing it for
war. Prior to this, Germany had been a
nation devoted to legendary automotive
engineering but only one vehicle at a time,
built by craftsman. GM brought mass pro-
duction to the Reich, converting it from a
horse-drawn threat to a motorized power-
house. Sloan and GM knowingly prepared
the Wehrmacht to wage war in Europe.
GM built the Blitz truck for the Blitzkrieg.
Detroit even secretly moved massive stores
of spare Blitz parts to the Polish border
in the days just before the Sept. 1, 1939,
invasion to facilitate the Blitzkrieg. Using a
charade of interlocking boards and execu-
tive committees, Sloan kept GM's role
secret as long as possible.
Internal Business Machines, inventor of
the Hollerith punch card, precursor to the
modern computer, custom-designed and
co-planned the Nazi solutions to Jewish
existence. IBM enjoyed a monopoly on
information technology. Under the micro-
management of its president Thomas
Watson, while advertising itself
as "a solutions company," IBM
in 1933 reached out to the new
Hitler regime. It offered to orga-
nize and systemize any solution
the Reich desired, including
solutions to the Jewish problem.
With IBM as a partner,
the Hitler regime was able to
substantially automate and
accelerate all six phases of the
12-year Holocaust: identifica-
tion, exclusion, confiscation,
ghettoization, deportation and
even extermination. As it did
with any other customer, IBM
simply asked the Hitler regime what result
was desired. Then company engineers
devised custom-tailored punch card
systems to deliver those results. There
was an IBM customer site in every con-
centration camp. Machines were serviced
monthly sometimes weekly by IBM on
site — whether that site was Auschwitz or
downtown Berlin.
Had it not been for the continued con-
America's Corporatdiarii
to i-f•ttsr':-'14r4c
EDWIN BLACK
- •
scious involvement of iconic American
corporations in Hitler's war against the
Jews, the speed, shape and statistics of the
Holocaust as we know it would have been
dramatically different. No one knows how
different, but the astronomical dimensions
could have never been achieved. For their
part, American corporate collaborators have
long tried to obscure or hide the details of
their collusion using the well-known tools
of corporate misinformation, financial
contributions, and bought and paid for
historian reviews. But in era when people
no longer believe big corporations, the dots
can be fully connected to unveil the out-
lines of an indispensible Nazi nexus. The
words "never again" must resound not just
among the victims, but also within board-
rooms of corporate perpetrators.
❑
Edwin Black is the New York Times bestsell-
ing investigative author of "IBM and the
Holocaust." His just-released book, "Nazi
Nexus: America's Corporate Connections to
Hitler's Holocaust" (Dialog Press). He can be
reached at www.nazinexus.com .
For a more complete report on the "Nazi
Nexus," go to JNonline.us.
Automakers Come To Grips With Their Past
Ford Motor Company has repeatedly
self-investigated, has bent over back-
wards to reveal, and has cooperated
with probes by Black and others into
its Nazi past. "It is exemplary," Black
told the JN.
Writes Black in his new book Nazi
Nexus: "The Reich report concluded,
among other things, that Ford-Werke,
the company's German subsidiary,
used slave labor from the Buchenwald
concentration camp in 1944 and 1945
and functioned as an integral part
of the German war machine. Ford
officials in Detroit have publicly com-
mented on their Nazi past, remained
available for comment, apologized,
and have generally helped all those
seeking answers about its involve-
ment with the Hitler regime."
GM leaders at many levels have told
Black "that they own up, acknowledge
and regret what was done."
"They have cooperated with me
and many others," he told the JN.
"They also facilitated my work at the
archives [Yale University Sterling
Memorial Library], which further
revealed and documented the past."
Writes Black in his 2008 book The
Plan: How To Rescue Society The Day
The Oil Stops – Or The Day Before:
"I have chronicled the company's
conscious destruction of the electric
trolleys, inexcusable alliance with
Adolf Hitler, and seemingly intrac-
table harm to our fuel independence.
General Motors media relations
people and their executives in the
past have been arrogant and in denial
about their own arrogance. Yet, know-
ing what they do about me, General
Motors moved with electric speed to
provide me every detail of informa-
tion, every act of cooperation and
access to its top executives. Perhaps
this company has been reinvented
from the inside out."
Both automakers have built strong,
productive relationships and partner-
ships on both communal and financial
levels with the Jewish community.