  bistro777 Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do? Premium join:2002-02-07 Englewood, CO
| reply to Roundel Re: German History...
One more example - - - ITT
ITT was founded in 1920 by Sosthenes Behn. In 1930 Behn and ITT acquired several German companies (Standard Elekrizitats, A.E.G., Berliner Fernsprech und Telegraphenwerk, and others) - - - telephone companies and a number of heavy-industry manufacturing plants.
In 1938, following several meetings with Luftwaffe chief Herman Goring, Behn encouraged ITT's (German) Lorenz subsidiary to purchase 28 percent of the Focke-Wulf firm - - manufacturer of the bombers that were to sink so many Allied ships during the war. In addition, the German army, navy, and air force contracted with ITT for the manufacture of switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment, and thirty thousand fuses per month for artillery shells.
There is no record that ITT made direct payments to Hitler before his grab for power in 1933. On the other hand, numerous payments were made to Heinrich Himmler in the late 1930s and in World War II as late as 1944 through ITTs German subsidiaries.
The most bizarre aspect of the US/Nazi corporate partnership, was war reparations: ITT presented itself as an innocent victim of WWII, and it was recompensed for its injuries. In 196 ITT managed to obtain $27 million in compensation from the American government - - for war damage to Focke-Wulf plants! - on the basis that they were American property bombed by Allied bombers. Huh?!?!?
ITT was not alone: GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing. By 1967 GM had collected more than $33 million in reparations and Federal tax benefits for damages to its warplane and motor vehicle properties in formerly Axis territories. (Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne.)
And there's lots of history regarding Texeco, J.P. Morgan, the Rockefellers, John and Allen Dulles (real irony there!), and other mainstays of big business in the 1930s and 40s...
Timothy 6:10. 'For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.' |