by James Stew­art Mar­tin
1950, Lit­tle, Brown 326 pages
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American-linked Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions were piv­otal in financ­ing the polit­i­cal ascen­sion of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. In addi­tion, the car­tel agree­ments between cor­po­rate indus­trial giants on both sides of the Atlantic were instru­men­tal in giv­ing Ger­many access to vital strate­gic raw mate­ri­als and tech­nolo­gies, while restrict­ing that access for the Allies. Dur­ing World War II, the job of inter­dict­ing the Trans-Atlantic car­tel rela­tion­ships between Ger­man and Amer­i­can firms fell to the Eco­nomic War­fare Sec­tion of the Antitrust Divi­sion of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice. Headed by James Stew­art Mar­tin, this group was titled “The Bomb­ing Boys” because they helped to gen­er­ate tar­get selec­tion for the strate­gic aer­ial bom­bard­ment of Ger­man indus­try. After the war, Mar­tin served as the point man in the unsuc­cess­ful attempt at dis­solv­ing the Trans-Atlantic finan­cial and indus­trial access and de-cartelizing Germany.

Martin’s All Hon­or­able Men doc­u­ments the man­ner in which pow­er­ful eco­nomic inter­ests in the United States frus­trated attempts at de-cartelization, thereby ensur­ing the post­war per­pet­u­a­tion of glob­al­ized “busi­ness as usual” for both Ger­many and the United States. As Mar­tin points out, these com­mer­cial inter­ests were able to suc­cess­fully manip­u­late the net­works through which gov­ern­ment oper­ates, and direct it to their own nefar­i­ous ends. In addi­tion to lob­by­ing in Con­gress and wag­ing a vig­or­ous pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign against de-cartelization, the Amer­i­can part­ners of the Ger­man car­tels suc­cess­fully placed their own per­son­nel in posi­tions of respon­si­bil­ity for the post­war eco­nomic “recon­struc­tion” of Germany.

One of the most impor­tant aspects of Martin’s elo­quent book is his warn­ing for the future. Hav­ing wit­nessed first­hand how eas­ily the Amer­i­can busi­ness inter­ests were able to sub­vert the eco­nomic restruc­tur­ing of Ger­many, Mar­tin feared for the future of the United States. Not­ing that eco­nomic con­cen­tra­tion in Ger­many had made it pos­si­ble for a small num­ber of pow­er­ful inter­ests to put Hitler in power, Mar­tin noted the same pat­tern of eco­nomic con­cen­tra­tion becom­ing evi­dent in the United States as of the late 1940’s. He offered a stark warn­ing for future gen­er­a­tions of Americans.

“The ecopo­lit­i­cal mas­ters of Ger­many boosted Hitler and his pro­gram into the driver’s seat at a time when the tide in the polit­i­cal fight between the Nazis and the sup­port­ers of the Weimar Repub­lic was swing­ing against the Nazis. All of the men who mat­tered in bank­ing and indus­trial cir­cles could quickly agree on one pro­gram and throw their finan­cial weight behind it. Their sup­port won the elec­tion for the Nazis. We must assume that the same thing is not yet true in the United States. We do have eco­nomic power so con­cen­trated that it would lie in the power of not more than a hun­dred men—if they could agree among themselves—to throw the same kind of com­bined eco­nomic weight behind a sin­gle pro­gram. They have not agreed yet. . . . If the United States should run into seri­ous eco­nomic dif­fi­cul­ties, how­ever, most of the con­di­tions for a re-enactment of the Ger­man drama would already exist on the Amer­i­can stage. The slight dif­fer­ences within the camp of the fra­ter­nity then may be the only real bar­rier to the kind of inte­gra­tion of the finan­cial and indus­trial com­mu­nity behind a sin­gle repres­sive pro­gram, like that which the financiers and indus­tri­al­ists of Ger­many exe­cuted through Hitler. Are we safe in assum­ing that it would take a grave eco­nomic cri­sis to pre­cip­i­tate the dan­gers inher­ent in eco­nomic con­cen­tra­tion? The basic inte­gra­tion of the finan­cial and indus­trial groups in the United States is evi­dent when we look at the increase of con­cen­tra­tion in the past few years. . . .”

(All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; p. 295.)

“ . . . The moral of this is not that Ger­many is an inevitable men­ace, but that there are forces in our own coun­try which can make Ger­many a men­ace. And, more impor­tantly, they could cre­ate a men­ace of their own here at home, not through a delib­er­ate plot to bring about a polit­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe but as a calm judg­ment of ‘busi­ness neces­sity.’ The men who would do this are not Nazis, but busi­ness­men; not crim­i­nals, but hon­or­able men. [This is the last para­graph of the book!—D.E.]”

(Ibid.; p. 300.)