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Fascism, Globalization and Money Laundering: Review of the Bush Family Tree

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COMMENT: In the wake of the Jim DiEu­ge­nio inter­views, we found our­selves absorbed by a cou­ple of the many, many con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant items pre­sent­ed by the author in his mas­ter­work. In FTR #‘s 1058, 1059 and 1060–a series com­posed large­ly of review, we are flesh­ing out the con­cept of the Chris­t­ian West, World War II-era geopo­lit­i­cal con­struct that was sup­pos­ed­ly hypo­thet­i­cal. In fact, we have come to believe that it was, in fact real­ized. As expressed in AFA #37: ” . . . . When it became clear that the armies of the Third Reich were going to be defeat­ed, it opened secret nego­ti­a­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the West­ern Allies. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on both sides belonged to the transat­lantic finan­cial and indus­tri­al fra­ter­ni­ty that had active­ly sup­port­ed fas­cism. The thrust of these nego­ti­a­tions was the estab­lish­ment of The Chris­t­ian West. Viewed by the Nazis as a vehi­cle for sur­viv­ing mil­i­tary defeat, ‘The Chris­t­ian West’ involved a Hitler-less Reich join­ing with the U.S., Britain, France and oth­er Euro­pean nations in a transat­lantic, pan-Euro­pean anti-Sovi­et alliance. In fact, The Chris­t­ian West became a real­i­ty only after the ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties. The de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many was abort­ed. Although a few of the more obvi­ous and obnox­ious ele­ments of Nazism were removed, Nazis were returned to pow­er at vir­tu­al­ly every lev­el and in almost every capac­i­ty in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. . . .”

Cen­tral to under­stand­ing the con­cept of the actu­al real­iza­tion of the essence of the Chris­t­ian West–the merg­ing of the U.S. with Nazi Ger­many in an anti-Sovi­et alliance–is the under­stand­ing of what glob­al­iza­tion real­ly is and how it pre­cip­i­tat­ed fas­cism and the Sec­ond World War. ” . . . . Some of the books pre­sent­ed here illus­trate the extent to which fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices. Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive ‘reg­u­la­tion’ here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as ‘glob­al­iza­tion.’ . . . . It was this cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing the con­flict. . . .”

 Also cen­tral to an under­stand­ing of the real­iza­tion of the Chris­t­ian West–the con­sum­mate real­iza­tion of both glob­al­iza­tion and fascism/Nazism–is analy­sis of the machi­na­tions of the Bush fam­i­ly. The hero­ic Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tor (lat­er author) John Lof­tus delin­eat­ed the Bush fam­i­ly’s role in the laun­der­ing of Nazi funds between the Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, N.V. and the Union Bank in the U.S.

The net­work­ing of the Bush fam­i­ly with the Thyssens, the Schroed­ers and the Rock­e­fellers, in turn, is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the coa­les­cence and oper­a­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work, high­lighed in FTR #305, among oth­er pro­grams.

The fol­low­ing arti­cle, the main focal point of FTR #370, this arti­cle war­rants more intense scruti­ny, both because of the increase in the dynam­ics of both glob­al­iza­tion and con­cen­tra­tion of wealth since 2002 and in the con­text of the Chris­t­ian West and the links of Clay Shaw to the forces dis­cussed here.

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

  1. The cor­po­rate mask­ing effect­ed by the Thyssens and their Amer­i­can asso­ciates, George Her­bert Walk­er, Prescott Bush, Aver­ill Har­ri­man and Allen Dulles. ” . . . . Thyssen did not need any for­eign bank accounts because his fam­i­ly secret­ly owned an entire chain of banks. He did not have to trans­fer his Nazi assets at the end of World War II, all he had to do was trans­fer the own­er­ship doc­u­ments – stocks, bonds, deeds and trusts–from his bank in Berlin through his bank in Hol­land to his Amer­i­can friends in New York City: Prescott Bush and Her­bert Walk­er. Thyssen’s part­ners in crime were the father and father-in-law of a future Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. The allied inves­ti­ga­tors under­es­ti­mat­ed Thyssen’s reach, his con­nec­tions, his motives, and his means. The web of finan­cial enti­ties Thyssen helped cre­ate in the 1920’s remained a mys­tery for the rest of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, an almost per­fect­ly hid­den under­ground sew­er pipeline for mov­ing dirty mon­ey, mon­ey that bankrolled the post-war for­tunes not only of the Thyssen indus­tri­al empire…but the Bush fam­i­ly as well. . . .”
  2. The role in this cor­po­rate shell game of Baron Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza, who mar­ried into the Hun­gar­i­an nobil­i­ty and whose daugh­ter Francesca mar­ried Karl von Haps­burg. ” . . . . Fritz Thyssen joined the Nazis in 1923; his younger broth­er mar­ried into Hun­gar­i­an nobil­i­ty and changed his name to Baron [Hein­rich] Thyssen-Borne­misza. The Baron lat­er claimed Hun­gar­i­an as well as Dutch cit­i­zen­ship. In pub­lic, he pre­tend­ed to detest his Nazi broth­er, but in pri­vate they met at secret board meet­ings in Ger­many to coor­di­nate their oper­a­tions. If one broth­er were threat­ened with loss of prop­er­ty, he would trans­fer his hold­ings to the oth­er. To aid his sons in their shell game, August Thyssen had estab­lished three dif­fer­ent banks dur­ing the 1920’s — The August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart in Rot­ter­dam, and the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York City. To pro­tect their cor­po­rate hold­ings, all the broth­ers had to do was move the cor­po­rate paper­work from one bank to the oth­er. This they did with some reg­u­lar­i­ty. When Fritz Thyssen ‘sold’ the Hol­land-Amer­i­can Trad­ing Com­pa­ny for a tax loss, the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York bought the stock. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Bush fam­i­ly invest­ed the dis­guised Nazi prof­its in Amer­i­can steel and man­u­fac­tur­ing cor­po­ra­tions that became part of the secret Thyssen empire. . . .”
  3. The dual role of Allen Dulles as cor­po­rate lawyer and col­lab­o­ra­tor with the Thyssens, Bush­es, Shroed­ers et al and his work as the head of the Bern (Switzer­land) OSS office. ” . . . . If the inves­ti­ga­tors real­ized that the US intel­li­gence chief in post­war Ger­many, Allen Dulles, was also the Rot­ter­dam bank’s lawyer, they might have asked some very inter­est­ing ques­tions. They did not know that Thyssen was Dulles’ client as well. Nor did they ever real­ize that it was Allen Dulles’s oth­er client, Baron Kurt Von Schroed­er who was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen com­pa­nies which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch. The Rot­ter­dam Bank was at the heart of Dulles’ cloak­ing scheme, and he guard­ed its secrets jeal­ous­ly. . . . As soon as Berlin fell to the allies, it was time to ship the doc­u­ments back to Rot­ter­dam so that the ‘neu­tral’ bank could claim own­er­ship under the friend­ly super­vi­sion of Allen Dulles, who, as the OSS intel­li­gence chief in 1945 Berlin, was well placed to han­dle any trou­ble­some inves­ti­ga­tions. . . .”
  4. Prince Bern­hard of the Nether­lands–SS offi­cer, I.G. Far­ben spy and nom­i­nal head of the Dutch “resis­tance” super­vised a mis­sion to retrieve poten­tial­ly incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments from the August Thyssen Bank in Berlin: ” . . . . Prince Bern­hard com­mand­ed a unit of Dutch intel­li­gence, which dug up the incrim­i­nat­ing cor­po­rate papers in 1945 and brought them back to the “neu­tral” bank in Rot­ter­dam. The pre­text was that the Nazis had stolen the crown jew­els of his wife, Princess Juliana, and the Rus­sians gave the Dutch per­mis­sion to dig up the vault and retrieve them. Oper­a­tion Juliana was a Dutch fraud on the Allies who searched high and low for the miss­ing pieces of the Thyssen for­tune. . . .”
  5. Both the head of the Rot­ter­dam Bank, who dis­cov­ered the true Nazi own­er­ship of his insti­tu­tion trav­eled to New York to protest to Prescott Bush. He was found dead of a “heart attack.” ” . . . . In 1945, the for­mer Dutch man­ag­er of the Rot­ter­dam bank resumed con­trol only to dis­cov­er that he was sit­ting on a huge pile of hid­den Nazi assets. In 1947, the man­ag­er threat­ened to inform Dutch author­i­ties, and was imme­di­ate­ly fired by the Thyssens. The some­what naive bank man­ag­er then fled to New York City where he intend­ed to talk to Union Bank direc­tor Prescott Bush. As Gowen’s Dutch source recalled, the man­ag­er intend­ed ‘to reveal [to Prescott Bush] the truth about Baron Hein­rich and the Rot­ter­dam Bank, [in order that] some or all of the Thyssen inter­ests in the Thyssen Group might be seized and con­fis­cat­ed as Ger­man ene­my prop­er­ty.’ The manager’s body was found in New York two weeks lat­er. . . .”
  6. A sim­i­lar fate befell Eddie Roev­er, a Dutch reporter who attempt­ed to inter­view Baron Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza in 1996. ” . . . . Sim­i­lar­ly, in 1996 a Dutch jour­nal­ist Eddy Roev­er went to Lon­don to inter­view the Baron, who was neigh­bors with Mar­garet Thatch­er. Roever’s body was dis­cov­ered two days lat­er. Per­haps, Gowen remarked dry­ly, it was only a coin­ci­dence that both healthy men had died of heart attacks imme­di­ate­ly after try­ing to uncov­er the truth about the Thyssens. . . .”
  7. Of para­mount impor­tance is the role of the two insti­tu­tions in which Prescott Bush served–Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man and the Union Bank–as a fun­da­men­tal vehi­cle for laun­der­ing mon­ey from the con­sum­mate­ly pow­er­ful Rock­e­feller fam­i­ly and relat­ed inter­ests in Nazi Ger­many. ” . . . . But what did the Bush fam­i­ly know about their Nazi con­nec­tion and when did they know it? As senior man­agers of Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man, they had to have known that their Amer­i­can clients, such as the Rock­e­fellers, were invest­ing heav­i­ly in Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Thyssen’s giant Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke. As not­ed his­to­ri­an Christo­pher Simp­son repeat­ed­ly doc­u­ments, it is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Brown Brother’s invest­ments in Nazi Ger­many took place under the Bush fam­i­ly stew­ard­ship. . . . It should be recalled that in Jan­u­ary 1937, he hired Allen Dulles to ‘cloak’ his accounts. But cloak from whom? Did he expect that hap­py lit­tle Hol­land was going to declare war on Amer­i­ca? The cloak­ing oper­a­tion only makes sense in antic­i­pa­tion of a pos­si­ble war with Nazi Ger­many. If Union Bank was not the con­duit for laun­der­ing the Rockefeller’s Nazi invest­ments back to Amer­i­ca, then how could the Rock­e­feller-con­trolled Chase Man­hat­tan Bank end up own­ing 31% of the Thyssen group after the war? It should be not­ed that the Thyssen group (TBG) is now the largest indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate in Ger­many, and with a net worth of more than $50 bil­lion dol­lars, one of the wealth­i­est cor­po­ra­tions in the world. TBG is so rich it even bought out the Krupp fam­i­ly, famous arms mak­ers for Hitler, leav­ing the Thyssens as the undis­put­ed cham­pi­on sur­vivors of the Third Reich. Where did the Thyssens get the start-up mon­ey to rebuild their empire with such speed after World War II? . . . . A for­tune this size could only have come from the Thyssen prof­its made from rearm­ing the Third Reich, and then hid­den, first from the Nazi tax audi­tors, and then from the Allies. The Bush­es knew per­fect­ly well that Brown Broth­ers was the Amer­i­can mon­ey chan­nel into Nazi Ger­many, and that Union Bank was the secret pipeline to bring the Nazi mon­ey back to Amer­i­ca from Hol­land. The Bush­es had to have known how the secret mon­ey cir­cuit worked because they were on the board of direc­tors in both direc­tions: Brown Broth­ers out, Union Bank in. . . .”
  8. Note that Paul Man­ning also came across the Bush, Thyssen, Nether­lands link: ” . . . . Sev­er­al decades after the war, inves­tiga­tive reporter Paul Man­ning, Edward R. Murrow’s col­league, stum­bled across the Thyssen inter­ro­ga­tions in the US Nation­al Archives. Man­ning intend­ed to write a book about Nazi mon­ey laun­der­ing. Manning’s man­u­script was a dag­ger at Allen Dulles’ throat: his book specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart by name, albeit in pass­ing. . . .”

“How the Bush Fam­i­ly Made Its For­tune from the Nazis” by John Lof­tus; accessed at Jim Craven’s Blog; 9/27/2000.

For the Bush fam­i­ly, it is a lin­ger­ing night­mare. For their Nazi clients, the Dutch con­nec­tion was the moth­er of all mon­ey laun­der­ing schemes. From 1945 until 1949, one of the length­i­est and, it now appears, most futile inter­ro­ga­tions of a Nazi war crimes sus­pect began in the Amer­i­can Zone of Occu­pied Ger­many. Multi­bil­lion­aire steel mag­nate Fritz Thyssen-the man whose steel com­bine was the cold heart of the Nazi war machine-talked and talked and talked to a joint US-UK inter­ro­ga­tion team. For four long years, suc­ces­sive teams of inquisi­tors tried to break Thyssen’s sim­ple claim to pos­sess nei­ther for­eign bank accounts nor inter­ests in for­eign cor­po­ra­tions, no assets that might lead to the miss­ing bil­lions in assets of the Third Reich. The inquisi­tors failed utter­ly.

Why? Because what the wily Thyssen deposed was, in a sense, true. What the Allied inves­ti­ga­tors nev­er under­stood was that they were not ask­ing Thyssen the right ques­tion. Thyssen did not need any for­eign bank accounts because his fam­i­ly secret­ly owned an entire chain of banks. He did not have to trans­fer his Nazi assets at the end of World War II, all he had to do was trans­fer the own­er­ship doc­u­ments – stocks, bonds, deeds and trusts–from his bank in Berlin through his bank in Hol­land to his Amer­i­can friends in New York City: Prescott Bush and Her­bert Walk­er. Thyssen’s part­ners in crime were the father and father-in-law of a future Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

The allied inves­ti­ga­tors under­es­ti­mat­ed Thyssen’s reach, his con­nec­tions, his motives, and his means. The web of finan­cial enti­ties Thyssen helped cre­ate in the 1920’s remained a mys­tery for the rest of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, an almost per­fect­ly hid­den under­ground sew­er pipeline for mov­ing dirty mon­ey, mon­ey that bankrolled the post-war for­tunes not only of the Thyssen indus­tri­al empire…but the Bush fam­i­ly as well. It was a secret Fritz Thyssen would take to his grave.

It was a secret that would lead for­mer US intel­li­gence agent William Gowen, now push­ing 80, to the very doorstep of the Dutch roy­al fam­i­ly. The Gowens are no strangers to con­tro­ver­sy or nobil­i­ty. His father was one of Pres­i­dent Roosevelt’s diplo­mat­ic emis­saries to Pope Pius XII, lead­ing a futile attempt to per­suade the Vat­i­can to denounce Hitler’s treat­ment of Jews. It was his son, William Gowen, who served in Rome after World War II as a Nazi hunter and inves­ti­ga­tor with the U.S. Army Counter Intel­li­gence Corps. It was Agent Gowen who first dis­cov­ered the secret Vat­i­can Rat­line for smug­gling Nazis in 1949. It was also the same William Gowen who began to uncov­er the secret Dutch pipeline for smug­gling Nazi mon­ey in 1999.

A half-cen­tu­ry ear­li­er, Fritz Thyssen was telling the allied inves­ti­ga­tors that he had no inter­est in for­eign com­pa­nies, that Hitler had turned on him and seized most of his prop­er­ty. His remain­ing assets were most­ly in the Russ­ian Occu­pied Zone of Ger­many (which he knew were a write-off any­way). His dis­tant (and dis­liked) rel­a­tives in neu­tral nations like Hol­land were the actu­al own­ers of a sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of the remain­ing Ger­man indus­tri­al base. As inno­cent vic­tims of the Third Reich, they were lob­by­ing the allied occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ments in Ger­many, demand­ing resti­tu­tion of the prop­er­ty that had been seized from them by the Nazis.

Under the rules of the Allied occu­pa­tion of Ger­many, all prop­er­ty owned by cit­i­zens of a neu­tral nation which had been seized by the Nazis had to be returned to the neu­tral cit­i­zens upon prop­er pre­sen­ta­tion of doc­u­ments show­ing proof of own­er­ship. Sud­den­ly, all sorts of neu­tral par­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Hol­land, were claim­ing own­er­ship of var­i­ous pieces of the Thyssen empire. In his cell, Fritz Thyssen just smiled and wait­ed to be released from prison while mem­bers of the Dutch roy­al fam­i­ly and the Dutch intel­li­gence ser­vice reassem­bled his pre-war hold­ings for him.

The British and Amer­i­can inter­roga­tors may have grave­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed Thyssen but they nonethe­less knew they were being lied to. Their sus­pi­cions focused on one Dutch Bank in par­tic­u­lar, the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, in Rot­ter­dam. This bank did a lot of busi­ness with the Thyssens over the years. In 1923, as a favor to him, the Rot­ter­dam bank loaned the mon­ey to build the very first Nazi par­ty head­quar­ters in Munich. But some­how the allied inves­ti­ga­tions kept going nowhere, the intel­li­gence leads all seemed to dry up.

If the inves­ti­ga­tors real­ized that the US intel­li­gence chief in post­war Ger­many, Allen Dulles, was also the Rot­ter­dam bank’s lawyer, they might have asked some very inter­est­ing ques­tions. They did not know that Thyssen was Dulles’ client as well. Nor did they ever real­ize that it was Allen Dulles’s oth­er client, Baron Kurt Von Schroed­er who was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen com­pa­nies which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch. The Rot­ter­dam Bank was at the heart of Dulles’ cloak­ing scheme, and he guard­ed its secrets jeal­ous­ly.

Sev­er­al decades after the war, inves­tiga­tive reporter Paul Man­ning, Edward R. Murrow’s col­league, stum­bled across the Thyssen inter­ro­ga­tions in the US Nation­al Archives. Man­ning intend­ed to write a book about Nazi mon­ey laun­der­ing. Manning’s man­u­script was a dag­ger at Allen Dulles’ throat: his book specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart by name, albeit in pass­ing. . . .

. . . . And so the Dutch con­nec­tion remained unex­plored until 1994 when I pub­lished the book The Secret War Against the Jews. As a mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty, I men­tioned that Fritz Thyssen (and indi­rect­ly, the Nazi Par­ty) had obtained their ear­ly financ­ing from Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man, and its affil­i­ate, the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. Union Bank, in turn, was the Bush family’s hold­ing com­pa­ny for a num­ber of oth­er enti­ties, includ­ing the “Hol­land Amer­i­can Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.”

It was a mat­ter of pub­lic record that the Bush hold­ings were seized by the US gov­ern­ment after the Nazis over­ran Hol­land. In 1951, the Bush’s reclaimed Union Bank from the US Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an, along with their “neu­tral” Dutch assets. I did not real­ize it, but I had stum­bled across a very large piece of the miss­ing Dutch con­nec­tion. Bush’s own­er­ship of the Hol­land-Amer­i­can invest­ment com­pa­ny was the miss­ing link to Manning’s ear­li­er research in the Thyssen inves­tiga­tive files. In 1981, Man­ning had writ­ten:

“Thyssen’s first step in a long dance of tax and cur­ren­cy frauds began [in the late 1930’s] when he dis­posed of his shares in the Dutch Hol­lan­dis­che-Amerikanis­che Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion to be cred­it­ed to the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, N.V., Rot­ter­dam, the bank found­ed in 1916 by August Thyssen Senior.”

In this one obscure para­graph, in a lit­tle known book, Man­ning had unwit­ting­ly doc­u­ment­ed two intrigu­ing points: 1) The Bush­es’ Union Bank had appar­ent­ly bought the same cor­po­rate stock that the Thyssens were sell­ing as part of their Nazi mon­ey laun­der­ing, and 2) the Rot­ter­dam Bank, far from being a neu­tral Dutch insti­tu­tion, was found­ed by Fritz Thyssen’s father. In hind­sight, Man­ning and I had uncov­ered dif­fer­ent ends of the Dutch con­nec­tion.

After read­ing the excerpt in my book about the Bush’s own­er­ship of the Hol­land-Amer­i­can trad­ing Com­pa­ny, retired US intel­li­gence agent William Gowen began to put the pieces of the puz­zle togeth­er. Mr. Gowen knew every cor­ner of Europe from his days as a diplomat’s son, an Amer­i­can intel­li­gence agent, and a news­pa­per­man. William Gowen deserves sole cred­it for uncov­er­ing the mys­tery of how the Nazi indus­tri­al­ists hid their mon­ey from the Allies at the end of World War II.

In 1999, Mr. Gowen trav­eled to Europe, at his own expense, to meet a for­mer mem­ber of Dutch intel­li­gence who had detailed inside infor­ma­tion about the Rot­ter­dam bank. The scrupu­lous Gowen took a writ­ten state­ment and then had his source read and cor­rect it for error. Here, in sum­ma­ry form, is how the Nazis hid their mon­ey in Amer­i­ca.

After World War I, August Thyssen had been bad­ly burned by the loss of assets under the harsh terms of the Ver­sailles treaty. He was deter­mined that it would nev­er hap­pen again. One of his sons would join the Nazis; the oth­er would be neu­tral. No mat­ter who won the next war, the Thyssen fam­i­ly would sur­vive with their indus­tri­al empire intact. Fritz Thyssen joined the Nazis in 1923; his younger broth­er mar­ried into Hun­gar­i­an nobil­i­ty and changed his name to Baron [Hein­rich] Thyssen-Borne­misza. The Baron lat­er claimed Hun­gar­i­an as well as Dutch cit­i­zen­ship. In pub­lic, he pre­tend­ed to detest his Nazi broth­er, but in pri­vate they met at secret board meet­ings in Ger­many to coor­di­nate their oper­a­tions. If one broth­er were threat­ened with loss of prop­er­ty, he would trans­fer his hold­ings to the oth­er.

To aid his sons in their shell game, August Thyssen had estab­lished three dif­fer­ent banks dur­ing the 1920’s — The August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart in Rot­ter­dam, and the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York City. To pro­tect their cor­po­rate hold­ings, all the broth­ers had to do was move the cor­po­rate paper­work from one bank to the oth­er. This they did with some reg­u­lar­i­ty. When Fritz Thyssen “sold” the Hol­land-Amer­i­can Trad­ing Com­pa­ny for a tax loss, the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York bought the stock. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Bush fam­i­ly invest­ed the dis­guised Nazi prof­its in Amer­i­can steel and man­u­fac­tur­ing cor­po­ra­tions that became part of the secret Thyssen empire.

When the Nazis invad­ed Hol­land in May 1940, they inves­ti­gat­ed the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart in Rot­ter­dam. Fritz Thyssen was sus­pect­ed by Hitler’s audi­tors of being a tax fraud and of ille­gal­ly trans­fer­ring his wealth out­side the Third Reich. The Nazi audi­tors were right: Thyssen felt that Hitler’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies would dilute his wealth through ruinous war infla­tion. He had been smug­gling his war prof­its out through Hol­land. But the Rot­ter­dam vaults were emp­ty of clues to where the mon­ey had gone. The Nazis did not know that all of the doc­u­ments evi­denc­ing secret Thyssen own­er­ship had been qui­et­ly shipped back to the August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, under the friend­ly super­vi­sion of Baron Kurt Von Schroed­er. Thyssen spent the rest of the war under VIP house arrest. He had fooled Hitler, hid­den his immense prof­its, and now it was time to fool the Amer­i­cans with same shell game.

As soon as Berlin fell to the allies, it was time to ship the doc­u­ments back to Rot­ter­dam so that the “neu­tral” bank could claim own­er­ship under the friend­ly super­vi­sion of Allen Dulles, who, as the OSS intel­li­gence chief in 1945 Berlin, was well placed to han­dle any trou­ble­some inves­ti­ga­tions. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the August Thyssen Bank had been bombed dur­ing the war, and the doc­u­ments were buried in the under­ground vaults beneath the rub­ble. Worse, the vaults lay in the Sovi­et Zone of Berlin.

Accord­ing to Gowen’s source, Prince Bern­hard com­mand­ed a unit of Dutch intel­li­gence, which dug up the incrim­i­nat­ing cor­po­rate papers in 1945 and brought them back to the “neu­tral” bank in Rot­ter­dam. The pre­text was that the Nazis had stolen the crown jew­els of his wife, Princess Juliana, and the Rus­sians gave the Dutch per­mis­sion to dig up the vault and retrieve them. Oper­a­tion Juliana was a Dutch fraud on the Allies who searched high and low for the miss­ing pieces of the Thyssen for­tune.

In 1945, the for­mer Dutch man­ag­er of the Rot­ter­dam bank resumed con­trol only to dis­cov­er that he was sit­ting on a huge pile of hid­den Nazi assets. In 1947, the man­ag­er threat­ened to inform Dutch author­i­ties, and was imme­di­ate­ly fired by the Thyssens. The some­what naive bank man­ag­er then fled to New York City where he intend­ed to talk to Union Bank direc­tor Prescott Bush. As Gowen’s Dutch source recalled, the man­ag­er intend­ed “to reveal [to Prescott Bush] the truth about Baron Hein­rich and the Rot­ter­dam Bank, [in order that] some or all of the Thyssen inter­ests in the Thyssen Group might be seized and con­fis­cat­ed as Ger­man ene­my prop­er­ty. The manager’s body was found in New York two weeks lat­er.

Sim­i­lar­ly, in 1996 a Dutch jour­nal­ist Eddy Roev­er went to Lon­don to inter­view the Baron, who was neigh­bors with Mar­garet Thatch­er. Roever’s body was dis­cov­ered two days lat­er. Per­haps, Gowen remarked dry­ly, it was only a coin­ci­dence that both healthy men had died of heart attacks imme­di­ate­ly after try­ing to uncov­er the truth about the Thyssens.

Nei­ther Gowen nor his Dutch source knew about the cor­rob­o­rat­ing evi­dence in the Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an archives or in the OMGUS archives. Togeth­er, the two sep­a­rate sets of US files over­lap each oth­er and direct­ly cor­rob­o­rate Gowen’s source. The first set of archives con­firms absolute­ly that the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York was owned by the Rot­ter­dam Bank. The sec­ond set (quot­ed by Man­ning) con­firms that the Rot­ter­dam Bank in turn was owned by the Thyssens.

It is not sur­pris­ing that these two Amer­i­can agen­cies nev­er shared their Thyssen files. As the not­ed his­to­ri­an Bur­ton Hersh doc­u­ment­ed:

“The Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an, Leo Crow­ley, was on the pay­roll of the New York J. Hen­ry Schroed­er Bank where Fos­ter and Allen Dulles both sat as board mem­bers. Fos­ter arranged an appoint­ment for him­self as spe­cial legal coun­sel for the Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ing [Ger­man] inter­ests against the cus­to­di­an.” 

. . . .  He [Man­ning] was very close to uncov­er­ing the fact that the Bush’s bank in New York City was secret­ly owned by the Nazis, before dur­ing and after WWII. Once Thyssen own­er­ship of the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion is proven, it makes out a pri­ma facie case of trea­son against the Dulles and Bush fam­i­lies for giv­ing aid and com­fort to the ene­my in time of war.

PART TWO

The first key fact to be proven in any crim­i­nal case is that the Thyssen fam­i­ly secret­ly owned the Bush’s Bank. Apart from Gowen’s source, and the twin Amer­i­can files, a third set of cor­rob­o­ra­tion comes from the Thyssen fam­i­ly them­selves. In 1979, the present Baron Thyssen-Borne­misza (Fritz Thyssen’s nephew) pre­pared a writ­ten fam­i­ly his­to­ry to be shared with his top man­age­ment. A copy of this thir­ty-page tome enti­tled “The His­to­ry of the Thyssen Fam­i­ly and Their Activities”was pro­vid­ed by Gowen’s source. It con­tains the fol­low­ing Thyssen admis­sions:

“Thus, at the begin­ning of World War II the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart had become the hold­ing of my father’s com­pa­nies – a Dutch firm whose only share­hold­er was a Hun­gar­i­an cit­i­zen. Pri­or to 1929, it held the shares of .the August Thyssen Bank, and also Amer­i­can sub­sidiaries and the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, New York. The shares of all the affil­i­ates were [in 1945] with the August Thyssen Bank in the East Sec­tor of Berlin, from where I was able to have them trans­ferred into the West at the last moment”

“After the war the Dutch gov­ern­ment ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion into the sta­tus of the hold­ing com­pa­ny and, pend­ing the result, appoint­ed a Dutch for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of my father who turned against our fam­i­ly.. In that same year, 1947, I returned to Ger­many for the first time after the war, dis­guised as a Dutch dri­ver in mil­i­tary uni­form, to estab­lish con­tact with our Ger­man direc­tors”

“The sit­u­a­tion of the Group grad­u­al­ly began to be resolved but it was not until 1955 that the Ger­man com­pa­nies were freed from Allied con­trol and sub­se­quent­ly dis­en­tan­gled. For­tu­nate­ly, the com­pa­nies in the group suf­fered lit­tle from dis­man­tling. At last we were in a posi­tion to con­cen­trate on pure­ly eco­nom­ic prob­lems — the recon­struc­tion and exten­sion of the com­pa­nies and the expan­sion of the orga­ni­za­tion.”

“The bank­ing depart­ment of the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, which also func­tioned as the Group’s hold­ing com­pa­ny, merged in 1970 with Ned­er­landse Credi­et­bank N.V. which increased its cap­i­tal. The Group received 25 percent.The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank holds 31%. The name Thyssen-Borne­misza Group was select­ed for the new hold­ing com­pa­ny.”

Thus the twin US Archives, Gowen’s Dutch source, and the Thyssen fam­i­ly his­to­ry all inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm that Pres­i­dent Bush’s father and grand­fa­ther served on the board of a bank that was secret­ly owned by the lead­ing Nazi indus­tri­al­ists. The Bush con­nec­tion to these Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions is a mat­ter of pub­lic record. What no one knew, until Gowen’s bril­liant research opened the door, was that the Thyssens were the secret employ­ers of the Bush fam­i­ly.

But what did the Bush fam­i­ly know about their Nazi con­nec­tion and when did they know it? As senior man­agers of Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man, they had to have known that their Amer­i­can clients, such as the Rock­e­fellers, were invest­ing heav­i­ly in Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Thyssen’s giant Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke. As not­ed his­to­ri­an Christo­pher Simp­son repeat­ed­ly doc­u­ments, it is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Brown Brother’s invest­ments in Nazi Ger­many took place under the Bush fam­i­ly stew­ard­ship.

When war broke out was Prescott Bush strick­en with a case of Wald­heimers dis­ease, a sud­den amne­sia about his Nazi past? Or did he real­ly believe that our friend­ly Dutch allies owned the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion and its par­ent bank in Rot­ter­dam? It should be recalled that in Jan­u­ary 1937, he hired Allen Dulles to “cloak” his accounts. But cloak from whom? Did he expect that hap­py lit­tle Hol­land was going to declare war on Amer­i­ca? The cloak­ing oper­a­tion only makes sense in antic­i­pa­tion of a pos­si­ble war with Nazi Ger­many. If Union Bank was not the con­duit for laun­der­ing the Rockefeller’s Nazi invest­ments back to Amer­i­ca, then how could the Rock­e­feller-con­trolled Chase Man­hat­tan Bank end up own­ing 31% of the Thyssen group after the war?

It should be not­ed that the Thyssen group (TBG) is now the largest indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate in Ger­many, and with a net worth of more than $50 bil­lion dol­lars, one of the wealth­i­est cor­po­ra­tions in the world. TBG is so rich it even bought out the Krupp fam­i­ly, famous arms mak­ers for Hitler, leav­ing the Thyssens as the undis­put­ed cham­pi­on sur­vivors of the Third Reich. Where did the Thyssens get the start-up mon­ey to rebuild their empire with such speed after World War II?

The enor­mous sums of mon­ey deposit­ed into the Union Bank pri­or to 1942 are the best evi­dence that Prescott Bush know­ing­ly served as a mon­ey laun­der­er for the Nazis. Remem­ber that Union Banks’ books and accounts were frozen by the U.S. Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an in 1942 and not released back to the Bush fam­i­ly until 1951. At that time, Union Bank shares rep­re­sent­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of indus­tri­al stocks and bonds were unblocked for dis­tri­b­u­tion. Did the Bush fam­i­ly real­ly believe that such enor­mous sums came from Dutch enter­pris­es? One could sell tulip bulbs and wood­en shoes for cen­turies and not achieve those sums. A for­tune this size could only have come from the Thyssen prof­its made from rearm­ing the Third Reich, and then hid­den, first from the Nazi tax audi­tors, and then from the Allies.

The Bush­es knew per­fect­ly well that Brown Broth­ers was the Amer­i­can mon­ey chan­nel into Nazi Ger­many, and that Union Bank was the secret pipeline to bring the Nazi mon­ey back to Amer­i­ca from Hol­land. The Bush­es had to have known how the secret mon­ey cir­cuit worked because they were on the board of direc­tors in both direc­tions: Brown Broth­ers out, Union Bank in.

More­over, the size of their com­pen­sa­tion is com­men­su­rate with their risk as Nazi mon­ey laun­der­ers. In 1951, Prescott Bush and his father in law each received one share of Union Bank stock, worth $750,000 each. One and a half mil­lion dol­lars was a lot of mon­ey in 1951. But then, from the Thyssen point of view, buy­ing the Bush­es was the best bar­gain of the war.

The bot­tom line is harsh: It is bad enough that the Bush fam­i­ly helped raise the mon­ey for Thyssen to give Hitler his start in the 1920’s, but giv­ing aid and com­fort to the ene­my in time of war is trea­son. The Bush’s bank helped the Thyssens make the Nazi steel that killed allied sol­diers. As bad as financ­ing the Nazi war machine may seem, aid­ing and abet­ting the Holo­caust was worse. Thyssen’s coal mines used Jew­ish slaves as if they were dis­pos­able chem­i­cals. There are six mil­lion skele­tons in the Thyssen fam­i­ly clos­et, and a myr­i­ad of crim­i­nal and his­tor­i­cal ques­tions to be answered about the Bush family’s com­plic­i­ty.

 

Discussion

2 comments for “Fascism, Globalization and Money Laundering: Review of the Bush Family Tree”

  1. I’ve always won­dered why Man­ning thanks Dulles at the begin­ning of his book. Clear­ly, Man­ning was naive about the input of Dulles giv­en his moti­va­tion for keep­ing tabs on the unknow­ing author. Cana­da has had to deal with at least one of the ten­ta­cles of the Thyssen octo­pus in the form of Karl Heinz Schreiber. A great account of this can be read in Ste­vie Cameron’s The Last Ami­go. On pages 194 and 195 are tan­ta­liz­ing ref­er­ences to Ilse Sko­rzeny, wife of Nazi com­man­do Otto, when Schreiber was meet­ing with her in Feb­ru­ary, 1990.

    Posted by Brad | March 3, 2019, 6:48 am
  2. Here’s a rather sad update on a legal case of art stolen by the Nazis that wound up in the col­lec­tion of Baron Hans-Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza. The sto­ry also high­lights how Swiss and Span­ish law is quite use­ful for what amounts to art laun­der­ing. The case cen­ters around an attempt from the heirs of Lil­ly Cas­sir­er, a Ger­man Jew who was forced to sell at a pal­try price a valu­able paint­ing by Camille Pis­sar­ro in order to secure her safe pas­sage out of Ger­many. The paint­ing had long been assumed lost by her heirs, until a friend came across the paint­ing in a Span­ish gov­ern­ment-run muse­um. That muse­um pur­chased the entire art col­lec­tion of Hans-Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza in 1993 for around $350 mil­lion and named the muse­um after him.

    Thyssen-Borne­misza, in turn, pur­chased the paint­ing in 1976. The Cas­sir­er fam­i­ly in the US is suing for the return of the piece on the grounds that when Thyssen-Borne­misza bought the piece there were rea­sons to believe that it was stolen art and he did­n’t do ade­quate due dili­gence. Accord­ing to Span­ish law, the sale of stolen art is legal as long as the pur­chasers makes the pur­chase in good faith with­out real­iz­ing it’s stolen and does ade­quate due dili­gence.

    So this case as been mov­ing up through US courts for years and now a US fed­er­al judge ruled that the Span­ish muse­um that acquired the stolen art when it pur­chased Thyssen-Borne­misza does­n’t have to return the paint­ing to the Cas­sir­er fam­i­ly because the muse­um did­n’t know the paint­ing was stolen when they pur­chased. The judge did crit­i­cize Thyssen-Borne­misza for not doing ade­quate due dili­gence when he bought it in 1976. The judge also crit­i­cized the Span­ish gov­ern­ment for its deci­sion to keep the paint­ing which is incon­sis­tent with inter­na­tion­al agree­ments that Spain has signed. But accord­ing to Span­ish law, the muse­um can keep the stolen art and that’s what the US fed­er­al judge was forced to rule, although the judge also indi­cat­ed that an appeal could still be pos­si­ble::

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    LA judge rules Span­ish muse­um can keep Nazi-loot­ed paint­ing

    By JOHN ROGERS
    April 30, 2019

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — A fed­er­al judge in Los Ange­les ruled Tues­day that a Span­ish muse­um that acquired a price­less, Nazi-loot­ed paint­ing in 1992 is the work’s right­ful own­er, and not the sur­vivors of the Jew­ish woman who sur­ren­dered it 80 years ago to escape the Holo­caust.

    Although U.S. Dis­trict Judge John F. Wal­ter crit­i­cized Baron Hans-Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza, the Ger­man indus­tri­al­ist whose name now graces the Madrid muse­um where the paint­ing by Camille Pis­sar­ro hangs, for not doing all of the due dili­gence he could have when he acquired it in 1976, he found no evi­dence the muse­um knew it was loot­ed art when it took pos­ses­sion in 1993.

    Under Span­ish law, he ruled, the paint­ing is legal­ly the museum’s, although he also crit­i­cized Spain, call­ing its deci­sion to keep it “incon­sis­tent” with inter­na­tion­al agree­ments that it and oth­er coun­tries have signed “based upon the moral prin­ci­ple that art and cul­tur­al prop­er­ty con­fis­cat­ed by the Nazis from Holo­caust (Shoah) vic­tims should be returned to them or their heirs.”

    The museum’s U.S. attor­ney, Thad­deus Stauber, said he believes the deci­sion final­ly puts an end to a bit­ter legal fight that has pit­ted the fam­i­ly of Lil­ly Cas­sir­er against the muse­um for 20 years.

    ...

    Wal­ter, who has seen the case returned to court twice by appeals and con­duct­ed the tri­al Stauber men­tioned last Decem­ber, indi­cat­ed in his 34-page rul­ing that anoth­er appeal still could be pos­si­ble. A lawyer for Lil­ly Cassirer’s great-grand­son, David Cas­sir­er of San Diego, didn’t say whether the fam­i­ly plans to appeal.

    “We respect­ful­ly dis­agree that the court can­not force the King­dom of Spain to com­ply with its moral com­mit­ments,” attor­ney Steve Zack said.

    The paint­ing at issue, Pissarro’s “Rue St.-Honore, Apres-Midi, Effet de Pluie,” is a stun­ning oil-on-can­vas work depict­ing a rainy Paris street scene the artist observed from his win­dow in 1897.

    It was pur­chased direct­ly from Pissarro’s art deal­er in 1900 by the father-in-law of Lil­ly Cas­sir­er, who even­tu­al­ly inher­it­ed it and dis­played it in her home for years. When she and her fam­i­ly fled the Holo­caust in 1939 she trad­ed it for pas­sage out of the coun­try.

    For years the fam­i­ly thought it was lost, and the Ger­man gov­ern­ment paid her $13,000 in repa­ra­tions in 1958.

    Then in 1999 a friend of her grand­son, Claude, who had seen pho­tos of the paint­ing, dis­cov­ered it was in the Thyssen-Borne­misza. It had been hang­ing there since short­ly after a non­prof­it foun­da­tion fund­ed by Spain bought the baron’s entire col­lec­tion for $350 mil­lion and named the muse­um for him.

    The paint­ing had been sold and resold after Cas­sir­er and her fam­i­ly fled Ger­many. The baron, a Ger­man indus­tri­al­ist who set­tled lat­er in Spain, bought it from a U.S. deal­er for $300,000 in 1976.

    The baron nev­er hid the paint­ing, putting it on exhi­bi­tion often.

    “The court finds that there were suf­fi­cient sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances or ‘red flags’ which should have prompt­ed the baron to con­duct addi­tion­al inquires as to the seller’s title,” the judge said.

    Still, despite miss­ing and torn prove­nance labels, the judge con­clud­ed that the baron and the muse­um foun­da­tion did not know the work was loot­ed, and under Span­ish law that allows the muse­um to keep it.

    ———

    “LA judge rules Span­ish muse­um can keep Nazi-loot­ed paint­ing” by JOHN ROGERS; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 04/30/2019

    “Although U.S. Dis­trict Judge John F. Wal­ter crit­i­cized Baron Hans-Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza, the Ger­man indus­tri­al­ist whose name now graces the Madrid muse­um where the paint­ing by Camille Pis­sar­ro hangs, for not doing all of the due dili­gence he could have when he acquired it in 1976, he found no evi­dence the muse­um knew it was loot­ed art when it took pos­ses­sion in 1993.”

    It’s a rather trag­ic rul­ing: Yes, Baron Hans-Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza neglect­ed to do due dili­gence when he pur­chased the paint­ing in 1976, but there’s no evi­dence the muse­um had rea­son to believe it was stolen art when it bought the col­lec­tion in 1993 and accord­ing to Span­ish law that means the muse­um can keep the art. As the judge not­ed, this goes against inter­na­tion­al treaties that Spain signed:

    ...
    Under Span­ish law, he ruled, the paint­ing is legal­ly the museum’s, although he also crit­i­cized Spain, call­ing its deci­sion to keep it “incon­sis­tent” with inter­na­tion­al agree­ments that it and oth­er coun­tries have signed “based upon the moral prin­ci­ple that art and cul­tur­al prop­er­ty con­fis­cat­ed by the Nazis from Holo­caust (Shoah) vic­tims should be returned to them or their heirs.”
    ...

    And note how Thyssen-Borne­misza nev­er hid the fact that he bought the paint­ing and often put it on exhi­bi­tion. And that’s despite that the court found that there were suf­fi­cient ‘red flags’ that this was stolen work. But those red flags don’t inval­i­date the muse­ums sub­se­quent pur­chase of the art accord­ing to Span­ish law:

    ...
    Then in 1999 a friend of her grand­son, Claude, who had seen pho­tos of the paint­ing, dis­cov­ered it was in the Thyssen-Borne­misza. It had been hang­ing there since short­ly after a non­prof­it foun­da­tion fund­ed by Spain bought the baron’s entire col­lec­tion for $350 mil­lion and named the muse­um for him.

    The paint­ing had been sold and resold after Cas­sir­er and her fam­i­ly fled Ger­many. The baron, a Ger­man indus­tri­al­ist who set­tled lat­er in Spain, bought it from a U.S. deal­er for $300,000 in 1976.

    The baron nev­er hid the paint­ing, putting it on exhi­bi­tion often.

    “The court finds that there were suf­fi­cient sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances or ‘red flags’ which should have prompt­ed the baron to con­duct addi­tion­al inquires as to the seller’s title,” the judge said.

    Still, despite miss­ing and torn prove­nance labels, the judge con­clud­ed that the baron and the muse­um foun­da­tion did not know the work was loot­ed, and under Span­ish law that allows the muse­um to keep it.
    ...

    Now, to get a bet­ter idea of the ‘red flags’ that Thyssen-Borne­misza was ignor­ing when he made the pur­chase in 1976, here’s an arti­cle from Decem­ber that gives some more details on the case. The arti­cle notes that the muse­um is run by the Span­ish gov­ern­ment and that the US fed­er­al court was placed in an unusu­al sit­u­a­tion where it had to make its rul­ing based on Span­ish law and rule on whether or not the muse­um was act­ing as an acces­so­ry in the theft of the paint­ing. That was the legal bar for get­ting the paint­ing returned under Span­ish law. So the case hinged on find­ing that Thyssen-Borne­misza knew it was stolen when he pur­chased it in 1976 and the muse­um knew it was stolen when they pur­chased the col­lec­tion in 1993. And in terms of the evi­dence that Thyssen-Borne­misza knew it was stolen, the plain­tiffs point­ed out that Thyssen-Borne­misza was a sophis­ti­cat­ed art buy­er who used experts to exam­ine works. More impor­tant­ly, when he bought the paint­ing it still had a label iden­ti­fy­ing it as part of the Cas­sir­er Gallery in Berlin. It’s wide­ly known in the art world that the Cas­sir­er paint­ings had been loot­ed by the Nazis:

    The Mia­mi Her­ald

    Mia­mi lawyer leads legal charge against Spain to return Pis­sar­ro paint­ing loot­ed by Nazis

    BY DAVID OVALLE
    NOVEMBER 30, 2018 07:00 AM, UPDATED DECEMBER 02, 2018 05:55 PM

    Gaz­ing through the win­dow of his Paris hotel room in 1897, influ­en­tial Impres­sion­ist artist Camille Pis­sar­ro paint­ed a dreamy street scene alive with suit­ed men, horse-drawn car­riages and bustling shops. More than a cen­tu­ry lat­er, the St. Hon­oré St., After­noon, Effect of Rain now hangs as a sig­na­ture piece in Spain’s Thyssen-Borne­misza Muse­um.

    But the oil-on-can­vas mas­ter­piece has a dark past: the Nazis strong-armed it away from Lil­ly Cas­sir­er, whose promi­nent Jew­ish fam­i­ly owned an art gallery in Ger­many in the 1930s.

    After years of legal bat­tles, the Cas­sir­er fam­i­ly — with help from promi­nent Mia­mi lawyer Steve Zack — next week will final­ly get a chance to con­vince a fed­er­al judge to order Spain to return the price­less work of art. Monday’s tri­al in a Los Ange­les fed­er­al court will be close­ly watched in the art world, and for those who have fought for decades to return art loot­ed by the Nazis dur­ing the Holo­caust.

    For Zack, a for­mer Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion and Flori­da Bar pres­i­dent, the case has spe­cial res­o­nance. He is Jew­ish. And Zack and his fam­i­ly were forced to flee Cuba by the island’s Com­mu­nist author­i­tar­i­an regime.

    “This is impor­tant in dif­fer­ent ways to many com­mu­ni­ties,” Zack said of the case. “Jew­ish and Cuban fam­i­lies suf­fered, from the Nazis and the Cas­to regime. When we took on this case, it had a sig­nif­i­cant mean­ing far beyond just one case.”

    Track­ing down Nazi-loot­ed art has been a pri­or­i­ty for world lead­ers, who this month cel­e­brat­ed the 20th anniver­sary of the Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples, a treaty aimed at return­ing the pieces to their right­ful own­ers.

    The Nazi regime stole an esti­mat­ed 600,000 paint­ings before and dur­ing World War II, Stu­art E. Eizen­stat, a U.S. State Depart­ment advis­er who helped estab­lish the treaty, said at the con­fer­ence ear­li­er this month. He told the con­fer­ence that at least 100,000 paint­ings remain unre­cov­ered, accord­ing to the New York Times, and sin­gled out five coun­tries, includ­ing Spain, for resist­ing efforts to return art stolen by Hitler’s hench­men.

    As U.S. deputy sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury under the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, Eizen­stat urged Spain to return the Cas­sir­er family’s paint­ing to no avail.

    The odyssey of the Pis­sar­ro paint­ing began in 1900, when his exclu­sive agent sold the work to the Cas­sir­ers, who owned a promi­nent gallery in Berlin. Lil­ly Cas­sir­er inher­it­ed the piece in 1926, and dis­played it her par­lor. By 1939, as the Nazis were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly destroy­ing Jew­ish soci­ety and prepar­ing to unleash their war machine on Europe, Cas­sir­er was forced to sell them the paint­ing for a pal­try sum in exchange for safe pas­sage out of Ger­many.

    Dur­ing the war, the Nazis sold the paint­ing to an anony­mous buy­er. For decades, the Cas­sir­ers believed the paint­ing was lost, until a fam­i­ly friend in 2000 spot­ted it at the Thyssen-Borne­misza muse­um.

    So what hap­pened? The paint­ing — today val­ued at at least $40 mil­lion — wound up in the hands of Baron Hans Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza, a mem­ber of the famous Ger­man indus­tri­al­ist fam­i­ly. Records show he had pur­chased the paint­ing in 1976 from St. Louis col­lec­tor Syd­ney Schoen­berg through the Stephen Hahn Gallery in New York.

    Spain lat­er bought Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art col­lec­tion for dis­play at the gov­ern­ment-run muse­um that bears his name. The baron died in 2002. For years after the paint­ing was spot­ted, the Cas­sir­er fam­i­ly repeat­ed­ly asked the muse­um to return the paint­ing.

    ...

    In an unusu­al court room sce­nario, the Los Ange­les fed­er­al judge must rule under Span­ish legal stan­dards. Spain and the muse­um will argue that Thyssen-Borne­misza bought the mas­ter­piece in good faith — that the baron nev­er knew the paint­ing was ripped off from the fam­i­ly by the Nazis.

    “No evi­dence of bad faith can be found in the Baron’s own­er­ship of the paint­ing – dur­ing which time the paint­ing was pub­li­cized and pub­licly exhib­it­ed in inter­na­tion­al tours between 1979 and 1986, and in the 1988 mag­a­zine Archi­tec­tur­al Digest,” the museum’s legal team, head­ed by Thad­deus Stauber, wrote in court doc­u­ments.

    Stauber declined to com­ment before the tri­al.

    The Cas­sir­er family’s legal team must prove that muse­um was an encubrador — in Span­ish law, an acces­so­ry to the theft of the art decades ear­li­er.

    They point out that Thyssen-Borne­misza was a sophis­ti­cat­ed art buy­er who employed a cadre of experts to exam­ine works. When he bought the paint­ing in New York, it still had a label iden­ti­fy­ing it as part of the Cas­sir­er Gallery in Berlin. With­in the art world, it was wide­ly known that the Cas­sir­er paint­ing had been tar­get­ed by the Nazis.

    “It was easy to find out this was loot­ed,” Boies said.

    In the years after the pur­chase, Thyssen-Borne­misza also fudged details of the pur­chase to try and hide that he knew the Pis­sar­ro was a stolen work of art, accord­ing to the lawyers.

    The tri­al is before U.S. Dis­trict Judge John Wal­ter, and is expect­ed to last at least three days.

    ———-

    “Mia­mi lawyer leads legal charge against Spain to return Pis­sar­ro paint­ing loot­ed by Nazis” by DAVID OVALLE; The Mia­mi Her­ald; 11/30/2018

    In an unusu­al court room sce­nario, the Los Ange­les fed­er­al judge must rule under Span­ish legal stan­dards. Spain and the muse­um will argue that Thyssen-Borne­misza bought the mas­ter­piece in good faith — that the baron nev­er knew the paint­ing was ripped off from the fam­i­ly by the Nazis.”

    So the case has to be ruled under Span­ish legal stan­dards, and that means the Cas­sir­er fam­i­ly must prove that the muse­um was an acces­so­ry to the crime that took place years ear­li­er. And that’s despite the fact that there appears to be com­pelling evi­dence that Thyssen-Borne­misza knew it was stolen at the time of his pur­chase since it still had a label iden­ti­fy­ing as part of the Cas­sir­er Gallery in Berlin, a Gallery that was wide­ly known in the art world to have been loot­ed by Nazis:

    ...
    The Cas­sir­er family’s legal team must prove that muse­um was an encubrador — in Span­ish law, an acces­so­ry to the theft of the art decades ear­li­er.

    They point out that Thyssen-Borne­misza was a sophis­ti­cat­ed art buy­er who employed a cadre of experts to exam­ine works. When he bought the paint­ing in New York, it still had a label iden­ti­fy­ing it as part of the Cas­sir­er Gallery in Berlin. With­in the art world, it was wide­ly known that the Cas­sir­er paint­ing had been tar­get­ed by the Nazis.

    “It was easy to find out this was loot­ed,” Boies said.

    In the years after the pur­chase, Thyssen-Borne­misza also fudged details of the pur­chase to try and hide that he knew the Pis­sar­ro was a stolen work of art, accord­ing to the lawyers.
    ...

    Beyond that, accord­ing to the fol­low­ing arti­cle, when Thyssen-Borne­misza bought the paint­ing in 1976 for $275,000, that was half the price one would have expect­ed to pay at the time, sug­gest­ing that the low price was paid because both the buy­er and sell­er knew it was stolen:

    Art­sy

    Appeals Court Revives 16-Year Law­suit over $40 Mil­lion Nazi-Loot­ed Pis­sar­ro

    Isaac Kaplan
    Jul 10, 2017 7:06 pm

    On Mon­day, a fed­er­al appeals court in San Fran­cis­co revived a 16-year-long Nazi resti­tu­tion dis­pute cen­tered on an Impres­sion­ist paint­ing by Camille Pis­sar­ro, the val­ue of which could exceed $40 mil­lion.

    Cur­rent­ly held by Madrid’s Thyssen-Borne­misza Muse­um, Rue Saint-Hon­oré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie (1897) was orig­i­nal­ly owned by Ger­man-Jew Lil­ly Cas­sir­er, who sold the work to a Nazi func­tionary in 1939 for rough­ly $360. Assert­ing the trans­ac­tion was a forced sale, Cassirer’s heirs filed a peti­tion in 2001 in Spain seek­ing the work’s return after they learned where it was being held. When the peti­tion was denied, Cassirer’s grand­son and great-grand­chil­dren sued the Span­ish muse­um in 2005.

    In June of 2015, a low­er court dis­missed the suit, rul­ing the muse­um held the rights to the paint­ing under Span­ish law.

    But Monday’s rul­ing by the U.S. 9th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals found that while Span­ish law does apply, a tri­al is required to deter­mine whether or not the muse­um knew the paint­ing was stolen when it was acquired in 1993 from Baron Hans Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza as part of a $338 mil­lion pur­chase of his col­lec­tion.

    “We’re obvi­ous­ly very pleased,” Stephen Zack, a Boies, Schiller & Flexn­er part­ner rep­re­sent­ing the Cas­sir­ers, told Reuters in a phone inter­view. “This has been a scar they’ve had to deal with for gen­er­a­tions.”

    As is typ­i­cal in Holo­caust resti­tu­tion cas­es, the work’s prove­nance stretch­es across mul­ti­ple con­ti­nents. The baron bought the Pis­saro work in 1976 from New York’s Stephen Hahn Gallery and then took it to Switzer­land where it remained until 1992.

    Unlike U.S. law, under Swiss law, title to a stolen art­work can pass if a pur­chas­er act­ed in good faith and did not know the work was stolen. But the appeals court not­ed a good faith trans­ac­tion wouldn’t occur if the pur­chas­er “failed to exer­cise the dili­gence required by the cir­cum­stances.”

    The Cas­sir­er heirs have long assert­ed that there was rea­son to sus­pect the work’s prove­nance. One exam­ple is that in pur­chas­ing the piece from Stephen Hahn Gallery, the Baron paid $275,000—what an expert for the heirs tes­ti­fied “was approx­i­mate­ly half of what would have been expect­ed in a deal­er sale, and that there is no rea­son­able expla­na­tion for this price oth­er than dubi­ous prove­nance.”

    “After review­ing the record devel­oped before the dis­trict court, we con­clude that there is a tri­able issue of fact as to the Baron’s good faith,” the appel­late deci­sion reads, not­ing the muse­um “has not estab­lished, as a mat­ter of law, that it did not have actu­al knowl­edge the [Pis­sar­ro] was stolen prop­er­ty.”

    Thad­deus Stauber, a lawyer for the foun­da­tion which runs the muse­um, dis­put­ed the find­ings, telling Reuters that the pur­chase was made in good faith and that he was “con­fi­dent that the foun­da­tion’s own­er­ship of the paint­ing will once again be con­firmed.”

    ...

    Broad­ly, the Cas­sir­er case exem­pli­fies the com­plex and some­times con­flict­ing nature of the law and ethics when it comes to Holo­caust resti­tu­tion cas­es. Nei­ther par­ty dis­putes the piece passed into Nazi hands through “forced sale,” or one made for dimin­ished val­ue under coer­cive cir­cum­stances. But the muse­um notes that they had noth­ing to do with how the work was tak­en, and asserts that under Swiss and Span­ish law they hold good title to the Pis­saro.

    “This isn’t a case where peo­ple dis­agree about whether the art was stolen,” said Nicholas O’Donnell, art lawyer and author of A Trag­ic Fate: Law and Ethics in the Bat­tle over Nazi-Loot­ed Art. “And yet here we are.”

    ———-

    “Appeals Court Revives 16-Year Law­suit over $40 Mil­lion Nazi-Loot­ed Pis­sar­ro” by Isaac Kaplan; Art­sy; 07/10/2017

    “The Cas­sir­er heirs have long assert­ed that there was rea­son to sus­pect the work’s prove­nance. One exam­ple is that in pur­chas­ing the piece from Stephen Hahn Gallery, the Baron paid $275,000—what an expert for the heirs tes­ti­fied “was approx­i­mate­ly half of what would have been expect­ed in a deal­er sale, and that there is no rea­son­able expla­na­tion for this price oth­er than dubi­ous prove­nance.””

    As we can see, the evi­dence that Thyssen-Borne­misza knew this was stolen when he made the pur­chase is pret­ty com­pelling. But under Span­ish and Swiss law (the paint­ing was tak­en to Switzer­land after the 1976 pur­chase), whether or not Thyssen-Borne­misza knew it was stolen when he made the pur­chase is beside the point as long as the muse­um isn’t found to have had a rea­son to also believe it was stolen when it bought his col­lec­tion. And yet today the muse­um does­n’t deny that paint­ing was stolen. So even when the plain­tiffs and defen­dants are both in agree­ment that the art was stolen, the muse­um can still hold good title to the art accord­ing to Span­ish and Swiss law because as long as the muse­um can make the case that id did­n’t think it was stolen at the time:

    ...
    As is typ­i­cal in Holo­caust resti­tu­tion cas­es, the work’s prove­nance stretch­es across mul­ti­ple con­ti­nents. The baron bought the Pis­saro work in 1976 from New York’s Stephen Hahn Gallery and then took it to Switzer­land where it remained until 1992.

    Unlike U.S. law, under Swiss law, title to a stolen art­work can pass if a pur­chas­er act­ed in good faith and did not know the work was stolen. But the appeals court not­ed a good faith trans­ac­tion wouldn’t occur if the pur­chas­er “failed to exer­cise the dili­gence required by the cir­cum­stances.”

    ...

    Broad­ly, the Cas­sir­er case exem­pli­fies the com­plex and some­times con­flict­ing nature of the law and ethics when it comes to Holo­caust resti­tu­tion cas­es. Nei­ther par­ty dis­putes the piece passed into Nazi hands through “forced sale,” or one made for dimin­ished val­ue under coer­cive cir­cum­stances. But the muse­um notes that they had noth­ing to do with how the work was tak­en, and asserts that under Swiss and Span­ish law they hold good title to the Pis­saro.

    “This isn’t a case where peo­ple dis­agree about whether the art was stolen,” said Nicholas O’Donnell, art lawyer and author of A Trag­ic Fate: Law and Ethics in the Bat­tle over Nazi-Loot­ed Art. “And yet here we are.”

    So is there any evi­dence that the muse­um had rea­son to believe this paint­ing was stolen when they made the pur­chase in 1993? Well, accord­ing to the fol­low­ing arti­cle from 2017 about the fed­er­al appeals court rul­ing that revived the law­suit, the appeals court found that it was an open ques­tion whether or not the muse­um knew the pain­ing was stolen. Why? Because the price $338 mil­lion price paid for Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art col­lec­tion was far below its esti­mat­ed val­ue of $1–2 bil­lion. The US appeals court found that the price dis­crep­an­cy, as well as the below-mar­ket val­ue paid for the paint­ing in 1976, was enough to reopen the case accord­ing to Span­ish law:

    Reuters

    Madrid muse­um must face heirs’ claim in Nazi art case: U.S. appeals court

    Jonathan Stem­pel
    July 10, 2017 / 1:12 PM

    REUTERS — A fed­er­al appeals court on Mon­day revived a law­suit seek­ing to force a Madrid muse­um to return an Impres­sion­ist mas­ter­piece to the fam­i­ly of a Jew­ish woman who was com­pelled to sell it to a Nazi art apprais­er for $360 in 1939 so she could flee Ger­many.

    The 9th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals said two of Lil­ly Cassirer’s great-grand­chil­dren may sue the Thyssen-Borne­misza Muse­um for the return of Camille Pissarro’s 1897 depic­tion of a Paris street scene, “Rue Saint-Hon­oré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie.”

    Monday’s deci­sion revived a 16-year legal bat­tle that began after the Cas­sir­ers learned that the Pis­sar­ro, whose val­ue may exceed $40 mil­lion, was on dis­play in the Madrid muse­um, its home since 1992.

    Apply­ing Span­ish law, the appeals court said it was an open ques­tion whether the muse­um knew the paint­ing was stolen when it acquired it in 1993 in a $338 mil­lion pur­chase of Baron Hans Hein­rich Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art col­lec­tion.

    It said that price was well below the collection’s esti­mat­ed $1 bil­lion to $2 bil­lion val­ue, and the baron may have known he also got a bar­gain when he bought the Pis­sar­ro from a New York art deal­er for $275,000 in 1976.

    “The Cas­sir­ers have cre­at­ed a tri­able issue of fact whether (the Thyssen-Borne­misza Col­lec­tion) knew the paint­ing was stolen from Lil­ly when TBC pur­chased the paint­ing from the Baron,” Cir­cuit Judge Car­los Bea wrote. “There is a tri­able issue of fact as to the Baron’s good faith.”

    Bea also said Lil­ly Cas­sir­er did not waive her own­er­ship rights when Germany’s gov­ern­ment paid her 120,000 marks for the loss of the paint­ing in 1958, when its where­abouts were unknown.

    ...

    ———–

    “Madrid muse­um must face heirs’ claim in Nazi art case: U.S. appeals court” by Jonathan Stem­pel; Reuters; 07/10/2017

    “Monday’s deci­sion revived a 16-year legal bat­tle that began after the Cas­sir­ers learned that the Pis­sar­ro, whose val­ue may exceed $40 mil­lion, was on dis­play in the Madrid muse­um, its home since 1992.”

    So that 2017 appeals court deci­sion reopens the case. And it reopened the case by not­ing that the ques­tion of whether or not both the muse­um and Thyssen-Borne­misza had rea­son to believe the works were stolen when they made their respec­tive pur­chas­es. And in both cas­es the big clue was the fact that they were get­ting real­ly good deals far below mar­ket val­ues:

    ...
    Apply­ing Span­ish law, the appeals court said it was an open ques­tion whether the muse­um knew the paint­ing was stolen when it acquired it in 1993 in a $338 mil­lion pur­chase of Baron Hans Hein­rich Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art col­lec­tion.

    It said that price was well below the collection’s esti­mat­ed $1 bil­lion to $2 bil­lion val­ue, and the baron may have known he also got a bar­gain when he bought the Pis­sar­ro from a New York art deal­er for $275,000 in 1976.
    ...

    That’s part of what makes the final rul­ing so sad. Not only is there strong evi­dence that Thyssen-Borne­misza knew he was get­ting stolen art, but that same kind of evi­dence applies to the muse­um’s pur­chase of the whole art col­lec­tion.

    And since it was­n’t just that paint­ing but the entire col­lec­tion that was sold at a heavy dis­count to the muse­um, that rais­es how much of the rest of the art in that col­lec­tion was also stolen. So beyond the ques­tion of whether or not this case gets anoth­er appeal, it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see if this is the last law­suit brought against that muse­um.

    So now you know, if you have some stolen Nazi art to sell, take it to Switzer­land or Spain and make sure every­one plays real­ly dumb.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 3, 2019, 12:56 pm

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