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conflicts. Its ostensible purpose was to provide the Allies with reparations to be paid by Germany for WW I. However, it soon became an instrument to funnel money from America and Britain to Hitler's war machine. In May of 1944 during BIS's armua) meeting, while young Americans were dying on the Italian' beach heads, the fmancial fraternity was deciding what to do with ttre $378 million in gold that the Nazi government had looted from the national banks of Austria, Holland, and Belgium. Some other examples of traitorous activity: 1) While GM was equipping the USAF in 1943, the Germ'an GM group was developing and assembling motors for the Messerschmidt 262, the fITst jet fighter in the world. (GM went unpunished after the war; in fact, they were awarded a $33 million tax exemption on profits for its destroyed factories in Germany and Austria by the US government.) Studying government documents obtained through the FOIA, 2) SKF (Swedish Enskilda Bank) was the colossal ball-bearings Charles Higham entered a most alarming world. He discov trust. Goering's cousin, Hugo von Rosen, and William Ban, Vice ered to his utter dismay and growing contempt the secret Chairman of the War Production Board, were directors of SKF in negotiations, trades, sales, and fmancial dealings that had gone on America throughout the war. Ball-bearings wer.e essential-....tanks, before, during and after the war between COiporate leaders of the Itrucks, planes, armored cars, U-boats, railroads, lIT's communica United States and the ftrms of Nazi Germany. tion devices, guns, and bombsights would have been powerless His book, Trading With The enemy, is fined with stories of without them. Therefore, ball-bearings were among the most secret trading and funding for anti-war sentiment, among other powerful! weapons of "the fraternity"'s (the name iHi'gham continu traitorous activities. !In his preface, the author asks some extreme ally uses to refer to the men who were overseeing the game of ly poignant questions which we should be asking ourselves in banking on war) sophisticated form of wartime neutrality. SKF relation to the US-Soviet Union cormection. not only controlled ball-bearings but, since its inception in 1907, it What would have happened if millions of American and British controlled iron ore mines, steel and blast furnaces, foundries, fac people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas s.tations, had tories and plants in US, Germany, France, and Britain. The largest learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey managers shipped share of its production was allocated to Germany: 60 per cent. the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy The all-important Curtiss-Wright Aviation Corporation was was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that unable for 15 monUts after Pearl Harbour to secure sufficient 'ball the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbour was bearings from SKF, and came close to closing down. Worn ball doing millions of dollars worth of business with the enemy with bearings caUsed' crashes that COSt American lives. Large numbers the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan? Or that Ford of planes were grounded because of the lag in supply. Batt would trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in do nothing; the inventories at the plant in ~iladelphia France? Or that Col. Sosthenes lJehn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate lIT, flew ftom New York to Madrid to Berne during ,the war to help improve Hitler's commu nications systems and the robot bombs that devastated London? Or Ithat 111' built the Focke-Wulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial ball-bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice chairman of the US War Production Board, in partner sllip with (high Nazi official) Goering's cousin in Philadelphia, when American forces were desperately shon of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored? Some of it was 'business as usual' and SQme transactions' pur poses were traitorous, i.e., favouring Hitler and Nazism. An organisation that combined these motives was the iBIS (Bank for International Settlements), created in 1930 of the world's central banks andl inspired by Hjalmar Schacht, Nazi Minister of Economics, who had ,powerful Wall Street connections. BIS was created to retain charmels of communication and collu sion between the world's financial leaders during international JUNE - JUILY 1993 were doc tored to appear that only a few million 'bearings were ground out, when in fact much more had been produced. And sometimes Goering's cousin, von Rosen, would manufacture incomplete bearings for Americans that were useless. Investigation.£ were being implemented, accountancy files and correspondence were burned, Watergates upon Watergates trying to ascertain who were the traitors in the War Production Board. In the end, Ban and von Rosen went without punishment The secret promises with other members of the fraternity were kept. 'The SKF plants in Sweden and Germany would not be broken down or removed. 00 Trading With the Enemy Delacourte Press, NY, USA a book review by Charles Higham extracted from issue 1 of: Paranoia - The Conspiracy Reader PO Box 3570, Cranston, RI 02910 USA NEXUS·19