Bushes Grow In the Strangest Places "To open yourself up to Knowledge , is to open yourself up to Pain ." There is no way we can understand these times and what's facing us without also' knowing who the President of United States is. This includes his family. Is he man thrust into the limelight of history? Or is he pre-positioned leader who is part of a master plan? Let's look at some history! On October 20, 1942, the US Alien Property Custodian, under the "Trading With the Enemy Act," seized the shares of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), of which Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder. The largest shareholder was E. Roland Harriman. ( Bush was also the managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, a leading Wall Street investment firm.) The UBC was established to send American capital to Germany to finance the reorganization of its industry under the Nazis. Their leading German partner was the notorious Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who wrote a book admitting much of this called " I Paid Hitler ."

Among the companies financed was the Silesian-American Corporation, which was also managed by Prescott Bush, and by his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, who supplied our current President with his name. The company was vital in supplying coal to the Nazi war industry . It too was seized as a Nazi-front on November 17, 1942. The largest company Bush's UBC helped finance was the German Steel Trust, responsible for between one-third and one-half of Nazi iron and explosives. Prescott Bush was also a director of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, (this one owned largely by Roland's brother, Averell Harriman), which owned about a third of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, the rest owned by Friedrich Flick, (a member of Himmler's "Circle of Friends" who donated to the S.S.). President Bush's great-grandfather, Bert Walker, helped organize the Harriman investment in the Hamburg-America Line of ships, of which grandfather Prescott became a director. It was seized on August 28, 1942 because it was used to give free passage to Nazi propaganda and propagandists, and had earlier shipped guns to the Nazi's private armies to assist their takeover of Germany. Further examples would be more tedious than shocking. But, given these financial dealings, how did Prescott later become a Republican Senator , and George H.W. become President ? Well, the two leading attorneys for these Bush-Han-iman-Nazi deals were John Foster Dulles, later Secretary of State under Eisenhower, and Alien Dulles, future head of the CIA. Prescott's father, Samuel P. Bush , owned Buckeye Steel Castings Co., which made parts for the Harriman brothers' father's (E.H. Harriman) railroads. Harriman's financing for the railroads came largely from William Rockefeller. These shipped the oil of his brother John D. Rockefeller , the founder of Standard Oil. (This was the origin of the two Georges' involvement in the oil business.) Samuel Bush became a leader in President Woodrow Wilson's "War Socialism" as director of small armaments and ammunition on the War Industries Board (which set up coercive price-fixing cartels over American industry during World War I). There, Bush assisted Percy Rockefeller (son of William) ii his takeover of small arms manufacturers. Our first President Bush , the 41st President, made his contribution both in time of war and in peace. Born in Milton Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924, he became a student leader a Phillips Academy in Andover. On his 18th birthday he enlisted in the armed forces. The youngest pilot in the Navy when hi received his wings, he flew 58 combat missions during World War II. On one mission over the Pacific as a torpedo bomb pilot he was shot down by Japanese antiaircraft fire and was rescued from the water by a U. S. submarine. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in action. In January 1945 he married Barbara Pierce. They had six children- George , Robin (who died as a child), John (known as Jeb), Neil , Marvin , and Dorothy .

At Yale University he excelled both in sports and in his studies he was captain of the baseball team and a member of Phi Bet; Kappa. After graduation Bush embarked on a career in the oil industry of West Texas. Like his father, Prescott Bush, who was elected a Senator from Connecticut in 1952, he became interested in public service and politics. He served two terms as a Representative to Congress from Texas. Twice he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate. There he was appointed to a series of high-level positions: Ambassador to the United Nations

Chairman of the Republican National Committee

Chief of the U. S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency In 1980 Bush campaigned for the Republican nomination for President. He lost, but was chosen as a running mate by Ronald Reagan . As Vice President, Bush had responsibility in several domestic areas, including Federal deregulation and anti-drug programs, and visited scores of foreign countries. In 1988 Bush won the Republican nomination for President and, with Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as his running mate, he defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the general election. Bush faced a dramatically changing world, as the Cold War ended after 40 bitter years, the Communist Empire broke up, and the Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union ceased to exist; and reformist President Mikhail Gorbachev, whom Bush had supported, resigned. While Bush hailed the march of democracy, he insisted on restraint in U. S. policy toward the group of new nations. In other areas of foreign policy, President Bush sent American troops into Panama to overthrow the corrupt regime of General Manuel Noriega, who was threatening the security of the canal and the Americans living there. Noriega was brought to the United States for trial as a drug trafficker. Bush's greatest test came when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, then threatened to move into Saudi Arabia. Vowing to free Kuwait, Bush rallied the United Nations, the U.S. people, and Congress and sent 425,000 American troops. They were joined by 118,000 troops from allied nations. After weeks of air and missile bombardment, the 100-hour land battle dubbed Desert Storm routed Iraq's million-man army. Despite unprecedented popularity from this military and diplomatic triumph, Bush was unable to withstand discontent at home from a faltering economy, rising violence in inner cities, and continued high deficit spending. In 1992 he lost his bid for reelection to Democrat William Clinton. George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn into office January 20, 2001. President Bush served for six years as the 46th Governor of the State of Texas, where he earned a reputation as a compassionate conservative who shaped public policy based on the principles of limited government, personal responsibility, strong families, and local control. President Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, and he grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas. He received a bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1968, then served as an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. President Bush received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975. After graduating, he moved back to Midland and began a career in the energy business. After working on his father's successful 1988 presidential campaign, he assembled the group of partners that purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989. He served as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers until he was elected Governor on November 8, 1994, with 53.5 percent of the vote. He became the first Governor in Texas history to be elected to consecutive four-year terms when he was re-elected on November 3, 1998, with 68.6 percent of the vote. President Bush is married to Laura Welch Bush , a former teacher and librarian, and they have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. Before we can go any further with the Bush family we've now got to understand another family that isn't as familiar to you, and their name is Warburg. This by far is at the same time one of the most incredible families in history in that two brothers, both Warburgs, were responsible, and at the same time, for the financing of both sides during World War II. That's right, you didn't read this wrong. Paul Warburg , head of the United States Federal Reserve, and an advisor to President Roosevelt, financed the United States and its allies . At the same time his brother.

Max Warburg, financed Nazi Germany and its allies . A quick examination of Paul Warburg's crucial role in establishing the Federal Reserve Bank shows also that he was intimately acquainted with European central banks, especially the Reichsbank. Paul didn't claim to originate new banking principles so much as import European practices. As with Max, Paul's older brother in Hamburg, Paul meshed spectacularly with his historical moment. Once again, a Warburg succeeded because of his contradictory status. As a Jew in a gentile world, a German immigrant confronting a new country, Paul was able to spot flaws in American finance to which native bankers had been blinded by familiarity. Along with many other bankers Paul Warburg was unhappy with the risk inherent in America's decentralized banking system. The central bank he envisioned for the United States I would insure against future "panics" and do away with much of the risk of banking. To this end, he played a key but secretive role in this project.

In November 1910, Senator Aldrich of Rhode Island, Paul Warburg, and four other experts sneaked off to discuss bank reform at a secret hideaway on Jekyll Island off the Georgia coast. With Democrats now in control of Congress and Progressives railing against Wall Street, the bankers had to travel incognito, lest they be accused of hatching a cabal. As part of the elaborate charade, the conference participants pretended to be sportsmen, outfitting themselves as duck hunters. But why was such secrecy was necessary if a central bank was really such a great idea? We are told, in effect, that Warburg and others hatched a cabal to avoid being accused of hatching a cabal. Because it was the product of a furtive conclave, and secrecy still surrounds many central bank decision-making activities, it is hardly surprising that there are so many dark suspicions and "banking conspiracy" theories involving the Federal Reserve Bank . Paul Warburg was the only person in America who understood how a central bank works. In 1912 and 1913, he drew up the basic plan for the Federal Reserve banking system, and he drafted the Federal Reserve Act . In December 1913 President Wilson signed the Act establishing the new central bank. If anyone can be called the father of the Federal Reserve Bank, the New York Times has rightly noted, it is Paul Warburg. The new central bank's board of governors — which for several years included Paul Warburg — became top-heavy with political appointees whose policy of loose credit set the stage for the Great Depression. America's economic collapse of the 1930s can be traced to the Federal Reserve's operation by incompetents and self-serving hacks, or by deliberate design. While Paul Warburg was making America safer for financiers, his older brother, Max, was busy in Hamburg helping finance construction of Germany's new merchant fleet through the HAPAG Company. Because the Warburg family fortune was built on financing international trade, Max Warburg naturally sought to encourage the growth of such trade. For the same reasons, international bankers encouraged the removal of tariffs and other trade barriers. The HAPAG Company, headed by another German Jew, Albert Ballin, played a major role in building Germany's mighty merchant and military fleets. Britain regarded the German challenge as a grave threat to its naval hegemony, and it was this rivalry that was a major contributing factor to the First World War. Max Warburg and Albert Ballin foresaw the catastrophe of world war in Germany's naval expansion, just as Paul Warburg saw that his creation was pursuing an unsound monetary policy. In each case the Warburgs were central players in the coming disaster.

Max Warburg's meshing with his historical moment cost the Hamburg branch of the family dearly. The Allied blockade of Germany during the First World War severely hurt the Warburg family bank, M. M. Warburg and Co. This, along with the disastrous postwar inflation, nearly mined the firm, which was I saved only with a large loan from Max's American brothers. Because Max Warburg was so familiar with international I finance, the postwar "Weimar Republic" government asked him to represent the German Treasury as a delegate in the war reparations negotiations. In spite of being Jews, the Warburg family did very well for itself in Germany until the mid-1930s. Indeed, Germany's Jews generally prospered until the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the National Socialists coming to power in 1933. During the interwar era, three-quarters of German Jewry were middle-class or richer. There were no legal barriers to Jewish advancement in any field, and Jews were rapidly assimilating through intermarriage. In the year just before Hitler came to power, more than half of Jews who married took non-Jewish spouses. None of this means, of course, that there weren't barriers to social mobility for Jews. But similar restrictions affected many non-Jews as well. Class barriers were a major feature of pre-Hitler Germany. What is remarkable though is not the degree of intolerance, but the extent to which Jews were tolerated and even encouraged in Germany. Jews were permitted to wield tremendous power and influence, even though so many of them, with the Warburgs at the forefront, were part of a mighty, supra-national Jewish network that was dedicated above all to its own particular interests. Members of this international Jewish elite cemented its ties through marriage. For example, Felix Warburg married Frieda Schiff , daughter of probably the most powerful Jew in America, the German-born Jacob Schiff. Felix's brother Paul married Nina Loeb , daughter of another prominent Jewish banker, Solomon Loeb. An international network of Jewish organizations and charities devoted to the well-being of Jewish communities around the world operated as a shadow government for this scattered, stateless population. As leading members of the "Jewish royalty," the Warburgs played an important role in resettling hundreds of thousands of Russian and eastern European Jews in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, underwriting the development of a Jewish cultural center in Palestine, and other projects. They also played a major role in domestic and international politics. During the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), Felix Warburg's father-in-law, Jacob Schiff, a fierce enemy of Tsarist Russia, helped finance the Japanese war effort. Driven by intense hatred of Russia's conservative, anti-Jewish government, Schiff kept Russia from obtaining Wall Street financing prior to the overthrow of the Tsarist regime and American entry into World War I. A little-known but very ambitious Warburg project between the wars was the "Agro-Joint." Established in 1924 and financed by Felix Warburg, Julius Rosenwald (of Sears, Roebuck), and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the "American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation" funneled millions of dollars into Soviet Russia to transplant hundreds of thousands of Jews to 215 farming colonies on two and a half million acres. "Agro-Joint" money purchased land, livestock, agricultural machinery and more than a thousand tractors. Four hundred trade schools were established to train Jews in metal, woodworking, printing and other skills. In 1927 Felix Warburg toured the Soviet republic, visiting 40 of the Jewish agricultural colonies in Ukraine and Crimea, including two named after him. At meetings in their community halls, an elated and inspired Warburg praised the colonists and their pioneering work. Back in United States, he responded to critics with a vigorous defense of the Communist regime. Felix Warburg was, "quick to note that the Soviet government was improving the economic lot of the Jews." The Utopian scheme lasted until 1937 when the Soviets double-crossed the American capitalists and absorbed the Jewish colonies into local Soviet agencies. The last "Agro-Joint" assets were transferred to the Soviet government in 1940. This channeling of money to Soviet Russia greatly upset Zionist leaders such as Stephen Wise and Chaim Weizmann, who grumbled that the millions should have been directed instead to building a Jewish presence in Palestine. Weizmann worked very hard to win Warburg family support for the establishment of a Jewish state there. The Warburgs were skeptical of Zionism, though, fearing that a Jewish state would supplant the traditional organizations, which they headed, as the nexus of Jewish political power. To reassure the reluctant Warburgs , Weizmann told them that the term "Jewish State" was only meant metaphorically. Back in Hamburg, Max Warburg was even less impressed than his American relations with Weizmann's efforts. Regarding himself as a German patriot, he felt that Germany's Jews should stay put, even though World War I had crippled his business and the ascension of the National Socialist party was driving away many of his clients. As the secular head of German-Jewry, he once referred to himself as the "god" of the Jews; much of his social status would be lost if the Jews emigrated. Even the Warburgs were not entirely immune from the infectious enthusiasm of Hitler's movement. In 1930 Siegmund Warburg told his cousin Karl that, the anti-Semitism aside, he saw some redeeming qualities in the National Socialist cause. "The Nazis are doubtless in part dreadfully primitive in human and political terms," he wrote in a letter. "On the other hand, one finds among a large part of them valuable, typically German strengths, which are indeed incredible in a political connection, but show strong feeling for social and national duties..." When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Max Warburg was Germany's most prominent Jewish banker. He headed the most important private banking firm, and was a member of the "general council" of the nation's central bank. In March 1933 he approved Hitler's decision to name Dr. Hjalmar Schacht as president of the Reichsbank . The document naming Schacht to this post is signed by Chancellor Hitler and President von Hindenburg , as well as the eight members of the Reichsbank "general council," including the Jews Mendelssohn , Wassermann and Warburg . Schacht's skill during the 1920s in curing runaway inflation and getting the German economy back on an even keel earned him world renown as a financial wizard. A conservative, old school banker, he never joined the National Socialist party. Tried by the Nuremberg Tribunal as a "major war criminal," he was acquitted. At a meeting in July 1934, Hitler asked Schacht if he would also head up the German Economics Ministry. "Before I take office I should like to know how you wish me to deal with the Jewish question?" Schacht asked. "In economic matters, the Jews can carry on exactly as they have done up to now," replied Hitler . In 1936, for example, three years after Hitler took power, the M. M. Warburg bank in Hamburg was still profitable. Among other lucrative connections, it was still disbursing interest payments to bondholders for the giant Friedrich Krupp company of Essen. As Siegmund Warburg wrote in July 1936: "M. M. W. and Co. are still remarkably untouched by the Nazi situation and the business is doing well." Even in 1938 the Warburg bank was turning a profit. Max Warburg opposed the international Jewish boycott of German goods, particularly because his bank derived most of its income from international trade. And M.M. Warburg and Co. played an important role in facilitating the " Haavara " or "transfer" agreement. Through this remarkable arrangement , concluded in 1933 between Hitler's government and the Zionist leadership, property of Jews immigrating to Palestine was used to purchase German-made goods, which were shipped to Palestine and sold there. Money from the sale of these goods went to the migrating Jews. About ten percent of German Jewry emigrated through the " Haavara " deal, which benefited Jewish emigrants, helped overcome the anti-German boycott, and immensely strengthened the Zionist community in Palestine. Moreover, it enriched Max Warburg's bank, which served as conduit for three-fourths of "Haavara" funds. Until 1938, Max Warburg benefited from his cordial personal relationship with Dr. Schacht . But as Schacht's influence with Hitler waned, so did Warburg's position in German business. As German corporations were "Aryanized," Warburg was forced to substitute a trusted non-Jewish company employee for himself on the hundred or so corporate boards on which he held a seat. When the Warburg bank itself was Aryanized in May 1938, an era that began in 1798 seemingly came to an end. The firm was turned over to a non-Jewish employee, Rudolf Brinckmann, and Max Warburg left his Hamburg office for the last time. A short while later he left Germany forever, dying in 1946 in the United States. The firm's traditional name lingered until 1941, when it was changed to Brinckmann, Wirtz and Co. As I'm not writing a history book, but telling a story, I'm going to spare you page after page of mind numbing facts, people, places, and dates. There are many other books on the subject matter of banking, including the families behind the money. What I am trying to show you are the connections that exist between our present President , our former President , and their connections going back to the early part of the 20th Century. And it is important to realize that when you look at the Bush family , including our President, you are seeing a dynasty that has not only foreseen these times we live in today, but are part of a network of people and organizations that have made our history. Back to Index