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.