Never Fight a Land War in Asia: Dollars for Deutschland

A good example of one of Hitler's industrialist sponsors would be Friedrich Flick, a majority owner of the German Steel Trust. The German Steel Trust supplied raw material to the Nazi arms build-up, as well as large infusions of cash in the form of corporate donations.

Flick's role as a major financier of Hilter earned him a trial at Nuremburg and a few years in jail. Behind this German industrialist was a team that was mostly composed of Americans. A set of Wall Street bankers did the real work of providing Hitler with cash an supplies.

Well, in 1942, the finanaces of this group were frozen under the Trading with the Enemy Act. An audit of their effect calculated that the efforts of these Americans accounted for:

50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
36.0% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
35.0% of Nazi Germany's explosives

I feel silly pointing this out, but the Voice of Reason has induced this selective amnesia: not everyone's in it for the principles. Some people don't have any principles at all. OK, that's not news? Fine.

What I really want to know is this: when you know someone isn't acting on principle yeah… and that means they're acting out of self-interest yeah… but they're are clearly making a great effort to act like they have principles which they don't… why the fuck do you think this person can or should be trusted to run the most powerful country in the world?!!.

The head of the New York Bankers was a Maine native and accomplished war profiteer from World War I. Since he'd been plugged into WWI, he got an early peek at this Hitler guy. "Whoo boy," thought George, the war profiteer, "This guy's the big time in war profiteering!" George attached his son-in-law, Prescott and several other partners to the project. They proceeded set up a collection of store-fronts to get money and material to Hilter through their Nazi contact, Flick. The group kept their activities low key, including operations of steamships which delivered material past trade sanctions for I.G.Farben, the German chemical concern that made explosives and Zyklon-B — the gas crystals for... you know.

Yes! Caught and indicted. Never tried. President Roosevelt really wanted to try them, but he died. Truman didn't get anywhere, and then he was out of office. Einsenhower dropped the whole thing. The whole gang ended WWII in the clear and really fucking rich.

Nuremburg defendant Flick died at a ripe old age with billions in the bank. George Walker's son-in-law went on to congress. His name might ring a bell: Prescott Bush. Any bells?

OK: Prescott's son George Herbert Walker Bush followed in dad's footsteps when he was arranged the sale of arms to the enemy (Iran) during the 1980s. Despite this betrayal of America, we elected the fucker President. There was even a little scandal about Bush having a former Eastern-European Nazi — A Nazi who had presided over thousands of exterminations — on his campaign staff in 1988.

What do you have to do to lose the conservative vote in this country? Actually eat a live baby on TV?

Anyway, Bush 41's most momentus acheivement ended up leaving the Arabian Peninsula in violent turmoil for 10 years, causing untold suffering and death.

All this history granted elder Bush the family fortune to buy his son George W. Bush the Presidency, so that the younger Bush could bring us to the cusp of more possible military conflict.

That wouldn't necessarily be such a bad ending, per se. Saddam Hussein is a really evil fuck and it would be great if he were gone — but getting rid of fascists isn't what we're about, so there's no guarantee we will. We don't care about freedom, we just want stability in an oil producing region. Yeah, makes a lot more sense why we tried to just go ahead and leave Saddam there hoping he'd pipe down, huh?

Unfortunately, the regional politics is so convoluted, it's seems like what peace and order exists now has the durability of a soap bubble. I don't know about you, but I'd feel better if this situation we in the hands of someone who I knew would do the right thing instead of what he knew would make him and his buddies the most money. I'm weird that way.

I'll cut a Bush some slack the day I see on of 'em tour the Holocaust museum, and while he's posing in front of a pile of shoes, and flashing some kind of "aw shucks" grin, points it finger and sweeps it around the panorama while announcing, "You know, my family helped finance all this." And he's not talking about the museum itself.