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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Treason on Wall Street during World War II,
By A Customer
This review is from: Trading With the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949 (Hardcover)
This is a fascinating look at how some major American and German banks and corporations managed to conduct business with each other during World War II.
In what is largely an untold story in American history, this book reveals how some of the biggest names on the Fortune 500 (Dupont, Ford, the Rockefeller interests) managed to maintain wartime business ties with I.G. Farben, the Deutsche Bank and others via Swiss banks and corporate subsidiaries in South America.
It raises some interesting questions in todays global economy. When the nation's interests are on the line, are our multinational corporations on anybody's side but their own?
Amazon.com notes this is out of print, but I found this as a cheap reprint on the bargain book counter of my local Barnes & Noble. (No offense to Amazon intended!)
Jim Lutz
Kirkland, WA
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi American Money Plot,
By Donald Bellunduno (Billerica, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Trading With the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949 (Hardcover)
The bottom line of this book is quite simple: in America in the 1930s - as it is now, business is business. It doesn't matter if business men are dealing with a sweet little old lady who's selling flowery vases on a street corner or a multi-million dollar chemical industry that produces deadly toxins that are used to destroy hundreds of thousands of lives - business is business. And those who were given the opportunity to take part in it easily fell into the old trap: absolute power corrupts absolutely. Especially if there's money to be made. Even the American Government was powerless to stop certain American companies from selling aviation fuel and oil to the NAZIS during the time we were at war with Germany!!! Umm...those facts seem to have been left out of your average 9th Grade American reader. Hmmm...I wonder why? So much for being loyal to your country, or doing the right thing for the greater morality of the time. Mr. Hingham's book outlines the rampant treason that was going on in American industry before, during, and after the Second World War. And, if you'd like a nice follow up to this book, read THE BEAST REAWAKENS by Martin Lee. His book takes up somewhat where this one leaves off: the treason continues...
24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hidden History,
By A Customer
This review is from: Trading With the Enemy: An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949 (Hardcover)
This is an astonishing book, even for those jaded by the routine amorality of international politics. How many Americans believe that WWII was anything other than a 100% patriotic effort by all sectors of society, including big business. At least, that's the way it's portrayed in those assembly-line documentaries that serve as history texts for most of us. Turns out however that those governments above government such as Standard Oil, ITT, I.G. Farben, et. al., refused to let even a world war block the flow of profits and products, not only to friends, but to the enemy as well. All of which yields an interesting idea of where power really lies, since It also turns out that neither Hitler nor Roosevelt could challenge this supremacy -- both Allied and Axis war machines were dependent on corporation good will for materiel to fight the enemy! In the final analysis, the ambitions of both sides were beholden to the same international cartels and the leverage they wielded behind the scenes. (Check out Standard Oil executive William Farish's lecture to chief trust-buster Thurman Arnold, p.66.) Thus, whoever won the war, the trans-nationals were guaranteed a continuing place on top, their business networks intact. Moreover, trading with the enemy was made legal by Executive Order 8389, in which the Secretary of the Treasury was empowered to authorize such arrangements with the Axis powers. Certainly no hint of any of this in those high-kicking Hollywood tributes to the boys at the front, so popular at the time. We also get interesting glimpses of that ultimate Establishment figure FDR, as he weasles around the admirable likes of Harold Ickes, Arnold, and other administration figures opposed to business as usual. Despite the occasional fuss, apparently no one blew the whistle on this deal making at the top -- bad, I guess, for morale among a nation of 150 million ration stamp users.An expose like this depends greatly on documentation and while I'm in no position to judge Higham's sources, extensive appendices are attached for those wishing to dig more critically. Assuming Executive Order 8389 as a minimum, it would seem that standard histories of WWII have left out some of the most important parts, even in this, our most patriotic war. And who's to say that the vectors of power revealed by the book have altered in the meantime. Though no longer in print, the book can still be obtained used and should be for the light it continues to cast.
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