Relationship of General Motors and Ford with Nazis

During the 1920's 30's, the German automobile market was very lucrative and General Motors as well as Ford wanted a big piece of this market to do business.

As time went by, both these companies established factories in Germany which churned out automobiles for Nazi Germany.

Adolf Hitler was an ardent admirer of the - American Assembly Line - style of production. He once famously remarked - "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration"

Pic - Henry Ford receiving the 'Grand Cross of German Eagle' - the highest medal which Nazi Germany gave to a foreigner, 1938

James D. Mooney, the president of General Motors (Rest of the World Market) was awarded the 'German Order of Merit of the Eagle'

How Standard Oil (now Exxon) fueled the Nazi war machinery

The Standard Oil Group of Companies, of which Rockefeller family had a significant stake helped the Germans significantly before the war and during (accusations alone) the war.

Until late 1920's, Germany used to import around 85% of its fuel needs. However, Germany had huge deposits of coal. In the late 1920's, Standard Oil gave the patented technology of 'Hydrogenation of Coal' to convert raw coal into gasoline in exchange for patented technology on manufacturing synthetic rubber. This patented technology wasn't shared by the company with the US but Germans had access to the same.

Standard Oil also exchanged technology of converting oil stored in Canaries into aviation fuel. Refineries were built in the Canaries and one was also built in Hamburg which produced 15000 tons of aviation to fuel the German Luftwaffe (The bombing of Hamburg during the war were directed also against these refineries).

After the end of first world war, most of the European countries were against the growth of an industrialized Germany. However, the United States invested huge sums of money into the German industries and one of the most important among them was - wikipedia.orgUnion Banking Corporation.

The Union Banking Corporation was headed by Prescott Bush (grandfather of George W. Bush).

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, "Trading with the enemy" an old law was brought into the picture and thus, Standard Oil was stopped from supplying fuel and other deals with the Nazi Germany.

But it is accused that Standard Oil continued to rake in profits by supplying fuel to the Nazis through neutral countries like Switzerland and Argentina.

It is ironic to note that Standard Oil also got into an agreement with Chemical company IG Farben and Standard IG Farben was found.

After the war, it was found that the gas, Zyklon B (used to gas the Jews in the extermination camps) were produced by the IG Farben.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels

Goebbels, pictured with Adolf Hitler, his wife Magda and his children

Joseph Goebbels was one of the most important and influential people in Nazi Germany.

• Hitler put him in charge of the party's propaganda machine in 1929 and he played a key role in implementing the dictator's agenda.
• His limp and sharp tongue earned him the nickname among some as the 'Poison Dwarf'.
• He organised attacks against Jews, banned them from the world of the arts and media, censored the news and supported Nazi propaganda films.
• As WWII turned in favour of the Allies, he increased his propaganda in order to convince the German people of the idea of 'total war' and mobilisation.
• Goebbels killed himself and his wife, and their six biological children with cyanide capsules the day after Hitler committed suicide in 1945.

The Secret Operation To Bring Nazi Scientists To America

The U.S. government undertook a huge propaganda campaign to whitewash the pasts of Nazi scientists.

Operation Paperclip is about the connection between Nazi scientists and American government secrets. Under this program, more than a thousand of Nazi scientists were brought to America immediately after the end of World War Two. Those scientists helped develop rockets, the NASA program, chemical and biological weapons, aviation and space medicine and many other weapons of mass destruction.They came to America at the behest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Some officials believed that by endorsing the Paperclip program they were accepting the lesser of two evils-that if America didn't recruit theses men, the Soviet Communists would.

• book : "Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America" by Annie Jacobsen 
• book review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/books/review/operation-paperclip-by-annie-jacobsen.html
• More than 3,000 Nazi scientists were brought to America and lived the American dream
• Many of them, such as the inventor of the sarin gas, were convicted at the Nuremberg trial, but received American clemency and received American contracts at the Department of Energy, etc.
• USA was 20 years behind Germany in rocket development, and these Nazis helped America go to the moon
• The U.S. also granted immunity to the entire Unit 731 medical staff, including their chief, provided they offered what they had learned from their heinous experiments. Many of them continued to work for the U.S. Army and were based at Ft. Detrick, headquarters for the biological defense command. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

listen to the story : http://www.npr.org/2014/02/15/275877755/the-secret-operation-to-bring-nazi-scientists-to-america

Also at NPR Tech Nation; March 11, 2014; Moira speaks with Journalist ANNIE JACOBSEN about how NASA and other federal government agencies came to be staffed by former Nazi Scientists after World War II: http://www.technation.com/

On the U.S. government's efforts to mask the scientists' past

There began a propaganda campaign by the U.S. government to whitewash the pasts of these scientists who we very much knew were ardent Nazis. And it happened on a number of levels, from the bureaucrats in Army intelligence who were asked to sort of re-write the dossiers, on up to the generals in the Pentagon who flatly said we need these scientists, and we're going to have to re-write some history. And that's where it becomes very tricky and very nefarious.

You have to be a Nazi ideologue to move up that chain of command so high. It's almost like someone who is a hedge fund manager in the United States trying to take the line that they don't believe in capitalism, you know? That they're just trying to earn a living for their family. I mean, if you're going to rise to the top of your field, you maintain the party line and that is what I found was the case with Paperclip.

On Wernher von Braun's Nazi past

He is a great example, because you wonder where the deal with the devil really happened in terms of his whitewashed past — because the U.S. government, NASA in particular, was so complicit in keeping his past hidden.

In doing the research, one discovers that not only was von Braun a Nazi, but a member of the SS. And not only was he running the underground slave labor facility where his rockets were being built — he wasn't running the facility but he was in charge of the science there — but when they were running low of good technicians, Wernher von Braun himself traveled nearby to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he hand-picked slaves to work for him as laborers.

When you see that kind of activity during the war, and you have to imagine what he saw and what he knew, it's impossible to excuse him from his Nazi past.

On the fates of the Nazi scientists

They all had different trajectories, but none of them seemed to have been held accountable for what happened and what they were involved in during the war. Dr. Benzinger, who was one of the Nazi doctors, came here, and when he died at the age of ninety-something he had a wonderful obituary in The New York Times lauding him for inventing the ear thermometer. Entirely left out of the story was the work that he performed on concentration camp prisoners.