THE WALL STREET-RUHR ALLIANCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000100040011-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 21, 1998
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: December 11, 1954
• Content Type: OPEN

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The Wall Street-Ruhr Alliance
W I'TI-I the conclusion of the Paris agree-
ments, framed hurriedly, in a matter of a
ew weeks, and signed on October 23, the
Western Powers have set out to bring the Ger-
an militarists back on the scene, that is, to
eanimate the forces which engineered two
orld wars and are trying to precipitate a
bird. The basis is thus being laid for a
ew crime against mankind.
Who stands to gain from these agreements?
he elements especially interested in their im-
plementation are the big war monopolies of the
capitalist world, including the U.S.A., Britain
and France, for they will certainly make a
handsome profit out of the remilitarization of
Western Germany and the frenzied arms drive
that will be set off in the West. The London
and Paris agreements owe their chief inspira-
tion to the American and Bonn war monop-
olies. They, and their political agents, worked
behind the scenes to consummate the division
of Germany and the re-creation of the Wehr-
macht in its Western part. For them this means
business-and profits-on a scale hitherto un-
known.
Nor was there any difficulty in arranging
this compact. The U.S. and German monopo-
lists had close connections before the first
world war. They were further cemented in the
years preceding the second world war, and
secretly maintained at the height of the war,
in the forties. And after the war, it was the
American munition monopolies that helped
their West-German counterparts retain their
plants and advance to a dominant position in
the Bonn Reich.
Today the leadership of the ruling plutoc-
racy in Western Germany is made up basi-
cally of associates, partners and agents of the
American war monopolies.
In the nine years since the war there has
been a significant realignment within the
West-German monopoly hierarchy. The process
was a complex one and was frequently at-
tended by sharp clashes of interests. But in
the end, supreme leadership in industry, fi-
nance and politics went to a tight group organ-
ized around the Deutsche Bank.
This is the very same bank which, more
than half a century ago, assisted at the birth
of German imperialism. It was the chief or-
ganizer of German capital exports, the initiator
of imperial Germany's projects of world su-
premacy: the Berlin-Bagdad Railway, the Mit-
tel-Europa plan, the various schemes for Ger-
man colonization of the Middle East, Africa,
China, and so on. Two of its directors, 1-Ielf-
ferich and Kuhlmann, held key cabinet posts
under Wilhelm II, and a third, Arthur von
Gwinner, was one of the Kaiser's intimate ;ad-
visers.
The Deutsche Bank has gained a predomi-
nant position in Bonn Germany, largely due to
the efforts of Dr. Adenauer, who has long-
standing connections with it. They date back
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o the Weimar years, when the present Fed-
-ral Chancellor was Mayor of Cologne and a
ember of the bank's supervisory council. The
)eutsche Bank is the financial mainstay of the
Kristian-Democratic Union, the ruling party
n Bonn. But it is equally true to say that the
DU is the political mainstay of the Deutsche
Bank. Its directors have traditionally main-
tained close relations with the Catholic cler-
ical element in the Rhineland and Bavaria---
the forces grouped around Cardinals Faulhaber
and Frings-and were thus ensured direct con-
act with the Vatican. It is these forces which,
beginning with 1945, the Western Powers have
advanced to regnant positions in the Bonn
Reich.
But that is not the only connection. The
Deutsche Bank was closely associated with all
the leading trusts and concerns in the Ruhr
heavy industries--the steel Trust, the Krupp,
Klockner, Haniel, Hoesch, 1v'lannesmann, and
the I.G. Farbenindustrie chemical monopoly,
of which it was one of the founders.
After the war the Western occupation iau-
thorities "decentralized" the bank, breaking it
up into four organizations. But the "decentral-
ization" was purely fictitious-to all intents
and purposes the four banks today comprise a
single financial monopoly.
It has penetrated every pore of the economy,
and every sphere of political life. Directly or
indirectly, its activities and influence extend to
every branch of industry and to all the big
plants in Western Germany. Its present head,
Hermann Abs, financlal adviser to Hitler who
was listed as to war criminal in 1945, is now e
board member of over twenty leading com-
panies, chairman of the supervisory council of
the Badische Anilin- and Sod,nfabrik, the ker-
nel of the old I.G. Farben empire, and head of
the organization that is working to rebuild
that empire, Among the other concerns in
which he holds directorships are the Karlsruhe
Industrie-Werke (ordnance), Siemens (elec-
trical equipment) and Metallgesellschaft (non-
ferrous metals for the war industries). Abs is
one of Adenauer's principal economic advisers.
Another leading figure in the Deutsche Bank
group is Robert Pferdmenges, likewise listed
as a war criminal, and reputed to be the
richest man in Western Germany. He is a
close personal friend of Adenauer's and the
Christian-Democratic Union. Pferdmenges is
vice-chairman of the supervisory council of
Vereinigte Stahlwerke (the Thyssen and Din-
kelbach controlled steel trust), a member of
the supervisory council of the Klockner con-
cern (heavy industries), and of AEG (elec-
trical engineering). Other Deutsche Bank men
are Robert Lehr, former Home Minister in the
Bonn government, and for many years ia board
member of the bank and of the Steel Trust;
Gunter Henle, head of the Klockner concern, a
CDU member of the Bundestag and a board
member of Siemens; and Kurt Weigelt, a for-
mer director of the bank and one of the spon-
sors of German colonization in Turkey and
the Balkans. In 1945 Weigelt was listed as a
nazi war criminal, and is now chairman of the
supervisory council of the Lufthansa, of which
he was general manager under Hitler.
A list of all Deutsche Bank directors and
associates who hold official posts in Bonn
would probably take up many pages. But even
this partial list fully establishes the main fact:
the Adenauer political coterie, the Deutsche
Bank financial alignment and the old German
war monopolies comprise one single group.
The Deutsche Bank created and cemented
this group. But it owes its advent to power in
Western Germany to another, and incompar-
ably more powerful, group-the American war
monopolists whose chief political agents are
the Dulles brothers.
A close connection between the American
and German monopolies already existed in the
years between the two world wars. The Deut-
sche Bank was one of the most zealous of Wall
Street's middlemen in the operation of the
Dawes and Young plans which opened the
spigot of dollar financing of the German war
economy, That was the period when many
German monopolies built up contractual rela-
tions with American corporate interests. The
Dulles brothers, acting on,behalf of the U.S.-
Anglo-German bank of Schroder and the New
York banking house of Dillon, Read and Co.,
were in direct contact with most of the Ger-
man munitions trusts.
It was American capital that saved Krupp
from bankruptcy in 1924: the firm was given
:i lnan of ten million dollars to reormranize and
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expand its ordnance plants. Krupp's connec-
tions with the American steel monopolies, not-
ably Carnegie and Bethlehem Steel, date back
to the turn of the century. Krupp's sold diem
their armoured plate patents.
In the years between the two world wars,
Dillon, Read and Schroder extended substan-
tial credits also to Stinnes, Thyssen, Ilaniel,
Siemens, AEG, the Steel Trust and other Ger-
man concerns. The Schrrd.der organization in
New York was headed by Allen Dulles, the
present chief of America`s intelligence service..
His brother, John Foster Dulles, the present
Secretary of State, was a director of the Inter-
national Nickel Co. and a trustee of the Rocke-
feller Foundation. One of the German SchrB-
ders, Baron Kurt von Schroder, financed the
Nazi Party and was subsequently made a gen-
eral of the SS, Himmler's brown-shirt cut-
throats. In fact, he was commonly known as
the "SS banker." But the headquarters of the
bank were in New York, and in charge of
Allen Dulles.
The president of Dillon, Read, the bank which
poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the
German war industry, was James Forrestal,
who later became U.S. Secretary of Defence,
and the vice-president, William Draper, later
Under-Secretary of the Army. The bank oper-
ated in close contact with the Morgan and
Rockefeller groups.
In the years between the two world wars,
T.G. Farben concluded a number of production
and marketing agreements with the Rockefel-
ler, Mellon and duPont interests, covering a
number of key war materials. The directors of
I.G. Farben's American branch, American I.G.
Chemical Corp., included Walter Teagle, pres-
ident of Standard Oil (New Jersey), Edsel
Ford (son of Ilenry Ford), and Paul Warburg,
representing the big banking house of Kuhn,
Loeb & Co.
In June 1943, at the height of the war, at a
meeting of Standard Oil shareholders, the
chairman was asked whether he was prepared
to give an assurance that Standard Oil would
not resume its association with I.G. Farben
after the war, or would do so only under pres-
sure of the American government. The reply
was: "No, sir, I am not prepared to give such
an assurance."
Allen Dulles spent the war years. in Switzer-
land as'heed of theAmerican intelligence net-
work in Europe. One of his principal tasks was
to build up contact with German political and
military leaders who had lost faith in a nazi
victory and were inclined to conclude a sepa-
rate peace with the United States and Britain
and organize a "common front" against the
Soviet Union. It is an open secret now that
towards the end of the war this group was
secretly joined by certain influential West-Ger-
man monopoly tycoons closely associated with
Adenatier and the Deutsche Bank. At a time
when American soldiers were being shot down
by German bullets, the American monopolies
were keeping up their connections with the
German munitions barons.
The plants of the top German monopolies
had practically been exempt from U.S. and
RAF air attacks. That was learned immedi-
ately after the war, together with the fact that
the U.S. occupation administration in West-
ern Germany was no more than an agency
acting for American war monopolies linked
with the Deutsche Bank group. General Dra-
per, of Dillon, Read, the bank that had made
big loans to the Rulir steel concerns, was
placed at the head of the economic division of
the U.S. military administration and in 1952
was appointed special U.S. representative at
NATO headquarters to direct allocation of
U.S. military "aid." A former Dillon, Read
vice-president, Paul Nitze, is now director of
the policy planning staff at the U.S. State
Department. General Lucius D. Clay, now a
director of General Motors, the big duPont-
Morgan war-industrial concern, was appointed
head of the American military administration
in Western Germany.
John J. McC1oy, who was appointed U.S.
High Commissioner in Western Germany in
1949, is now chairman of the Rockefeller Chase
National Bank. Mrs. McCloy is a cousin of
Dr. Adenauer's first wife: Dr. Adenauer's
brother-in-l,aw, John S. Zinsser, is direc-
for of a Morgan bank in New York and vice-
president of Merck & Co., the big Philadelphia
chemical concern which is a branch of the
Darmstadt firm of the same name. Another
Merck director is J~ciward Green, from the
Dulles law firm of Sullivan' & Cromwell.
McClov's deputy in WesternGiermany was
Benjamin Buttenwieser of Kuhn, Loeb, which
is closely associated with a number of Amer-
ican and German war monopolies, notably the
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Westinghouse and Harriman groups and I.G.
_ arben. Kuhn, Loeb is now represented in
Western Germany by the Hamburg banking
use of Brinckmann, Wirtz & Co., whose
li~ad, Rudolf Brinckmann, ranks high in the
fi-iancial policy-making group and is vice-
c airman of the German-American Economic
1 pion.
In the nine years 1945-54, the U.S. occupa-
t on authorities in Western Germany founded
d consolidated the Adenauer regime and
evented the destruction of the nazi war
onopolies-in violation of the obligations
dertaken by the Western Powers during the
ar. But they did more than that: they nursed
t ese e monopolies back to life and securely tied
t em again to the big American munitions in-
t rests, thereby laying the foundations of the
merican-Bonn oligarchy, now the driving
I rce behind Western European Union, which
t e British and French monopolists are like-
ise helping to build.
Of course, the German monopolists play sec-
id fiddle in this combination. Their American
artners have taken advantage of their dom-
i ant position to plunder Germany and snatch
a very sizable portion of the property of the
German concerns. Billions of marks in German
ssets have passed to Wall Street. And if the
onn plutocrats consent to such an arrange-
ent and are prepared to accept a junior part-
ership, they do so with ia very definite pur-
ose: they hope to win positions which under
t e present circumstances they could otherwise
ardly hope to secure.
In 1948, Hermann Abs, head of the Deutsche
ank, was appointed chairman of the newly-
Dunded Reconstruction Credit Bank which
I andled the disbursement of all American cred-
i s in Western Germany. This virtually made
e Deutsche Bank Wall Street's official
ashier, and its agents were appointed to key
conomic and political positions in the Bonn
eich. Deutsche Bank men sat on the "deccn-
alization" commission, that is, in the agency
hich directed the re-establishment of the
erman trusts, in the German-French heavy
dustrv liaison committees, and similar boil-
s. Abs, Pferdmenges and Henle represented
onn on the Schuman plan committee: Henle
was made an executive member of the Ger-
man United Europe council; Abs took over the
chairmanship of the German-American Eco-
nomic Union and this year also became chair-
man of the Council of Europe's Economic
Committee; Pferdmenges is chairman of the
committee for promotion of tnade with
America.
Significantly enough, a Franco-American
financier, Jean Monnet, was chosen to ne-
gotiate the formation of a Franco-German
heavy industry syndicate. Monnet's partner,
Georges Murn:ane, has an interest in the New
York Lazard Brothers Bank and is a trustee of
one of the Rockefeller "charitable" foundations.
In other words, the American billionaires who
have injected new life into the Bonn war mo-
nopolies have brought them into close contact
with French monopoly interests.
In 1946 British capital made a very strong
bid for mastery of the Ruhr, which is part of
the British occupation zone. Its plan was to
set up an Anglo-German heavy industry al-
liance, ia sort of Birmingham-Ruhr axis, with
Birmingham, of course, holding the whip hand.
That plan, on which the British pinned great
hopes, failed. And though British capitalists
still have an interest in a number of Bonn in-
dustrial and financial enterprises, their in-
fluence on the central, key group of war mo-
nopolies is incomparably smaller than that of
the Americans. British capital has been pushed
down to third place in Western Germany, but,
since the British war monopolies and their pol-
itical representatives in the British government
are pledged to support. Western European
Union and Bonn remilitarization, they have
presumably been promised a slice of the ar-
maments pie and probably a wider margin in
some of the munitions markets.
In a brief three years, 1948-1950, 42,800 mil-
lion marks were. invested in West-German in-
dustry. Today the sum has probabltopped
the 100,000 million level, of which no-loss than
70,000 million have gone into industries cap-
iable of producing for war. In 1952 it was
established that nearly 42 per cent of all the
capital stock in Western Germany was con-
trolled, directly or indirectly, by foreign in-
terests, with U.S. interests controlling 36.8
per cent of the total.
The old Stinnes concern had been converted
into pan American firm in which a leading- part
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of America's biggest aircraft monopolies. The
Opel concern has become part of General
Motors (Morgan-cluPont), whose former pres-
ident, Charles Wilson, is now U.S. Secretary
of Defence. The big AEG combine is control-
led by General Electric (Morgan), whose vice-
president, William Herod, was appointed co-
ordinator of military production at NATO
headquarters in 1951. It is apparently with his
blessing that AEG has already resumed output
of military items. Several other West-German
electrical firms are now the property of Inter-
national Telephone and Telegraph (Morgan),
and are headed by Gerhard Westrick-nazi
war criminal, personal friend of John Foster
Dulles and representative of the Dulles law
firm in Western Germany. Gerhard's brother,
Ludger Westrick, was a close friend of Goring,
special war-industry representative under Hit-
ler, and since 1951 has been Secretary of State
at the Bonn Ministry of Economy. Through the
Westricks, the Morgan and Rockefeller groups
(represented by the Dulles brothers), were
able to regain their influence over the Lorenz
concern, which had connections with the Focke-
Wulf aircraft interests.
It comes as no surprise that German in-
dustrial firms intimately linked with the Amer-
ican monopolies have been able to increase
their profits so substantially. Last year's profits
of the Opel company (a General Motors sub-
sidiary) were so high that Handelsblatt,
mouthpiece of the Ruhr industrialists, en-
ar ec a they wouict soonamoun
to over 150 per cent of the company's capital
stock. Another West-German firm, Phonix,
which is closely associated with the American
Firestone firm, has raised its 1954 dividends
by one third. Higher profits are also reported
by Mix & Genest (International Telephone and
Telegraph), Stinnes, and many other com-
panies.
These facts cast a lurid light on the real
nature of Bonn-U.S. relations and on the
backstage deals that are being concluded be-
tween the war monopoly groups of the two
countries. Indeed, it is in their interests that
the Paris agreements were concluded, and that
their ratification is being pushed through with
such unholy haste, so as to build up a new
nazi-type army in the heart of Europe. It is
estimated in Bonn that over 100,000 million
marks will have to be spent in the first three
years Malone to finance the remilitarization
program. The prospect for the European death
merchants has never looked so rosy. The West-
German war-industrial trusts, revitalized by
dollar increments, are prepared to sow death
in Europe for the sake of still higher profits.
That plan was conceived by the billionaire
death merchants long ago and has been care-
fully worked out. Who can prevent its realiza-
tion?
The people, the common people, whom the
munitions barons choose to disregard. It will
be thwarted by the nations of Europe sand the
world, for they do not want another war
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