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The International Chamber of Commerce: A Rockefeller-Morgan-Founded Global "Davos" Decades Older than Bilderberg; Congresses Hosted by Hitler and Mussolini; Tied to Stalin

By: Joel v.d. Reijden | Date: Jan. 24, 2023 | Last update: Jan. 3, 2024 | HISTORICAL MEMBERS LIST

"Mussolini was the favored candidate of the plutocracy ... the Vatican [and the] monarchy..."

1938, Angelo Tasca, Mussolini's former colleague at the socialist Avanti! newspaper, citing fascist MP Dr. Giorgio Alberto Chiurco. 1 Mussolini opened the ICC's 1923 international congress in Rome, four months after his fascist coup. Hitler hosted the 1937 ICC congress in Berlin.

Contents

    Intro
  1. When Wikipedia fails

  2. The origins of globalism, decades before Bilderberg
  3. The usual founders: Rockefeller, Morgan
  4. Versailles 1919: birthplace of RIIA, CFR, ICC
  5. Early U.S. interests: Standard Oil, Morgan, Harriman, GE, Du Pont, GM

    Interwar controversy
  6. The ICC's "Merchants of Peace": Nazi-financing, New Deal-hating, union-busting robber barons
    Post-WWII
  7. Globalism rebooted: from the ICC to Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and Davos

  8. Source documents

  9. Notes

"We all hate Hitler and want to stop him [but] then we must cease furnishing war supplies to the axis--not only as a government but as businessmen--and this includes Standard Oil and subsidiaries. ... How about the shipments to the Axis from [Standard Oil's] Humble's Aruba? What has been the activities of Standard Vacuum in the Orient in fueling the bombers of the Japanese aggressors...? Does Mr. Rockefeller disclaim all liability in connection with the operation of Standard Societa Italo-Americana Pel Petrolio [funding Mussolini's conquests]? [Or the] Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft [funding Hitler]?"

May 1, 1941, Congressional Record, p. A2054, Congressman Bernard J. Gehrmann of Wisconsin, 'Rockefeller's Anguish'. Standard Oil was a key founder in 1919-1920 of the ICC, with Rockefeller inlaw Winthrop Aldrich respresenting the Rockefeller fortune in the ICC throughout the 1930s and 1940s as honorary president and chairman.


"World Peace! ... I wholeheartedly admire [Mr. Josef Stalin's] unselfish, untiring efforts to raise the standards of living of the 160,000,000 people within the confines of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union [where] there exists natural resources far greater in value than the known natural resources of the balance of Europe. ...

"I revisited Russia... I could find nowhere anyone who knew of or said he believed in any organized resistance against the Soviet Government throughout the Russian land. ... The penal system of the Soviets has abolished all punitive elements. The whole method of detention is educational and correctional."

Nov. 24, 1933, American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, American words spoken, months before Stalin's "Great Purge". (PDF) ICC committee member Averell Harriman sat on the board, as well as the dais that night, alongside the heads of J. P. Morgan & Co. and countless corporations looking to invest in Russia.


"The totalitarian state which has shocked the conscience of America is the product of economic concentration through the corporation... If you seek the reason for the appearance of dictators like of Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin you will find it in this precise fact: that under the corporate system, unregulated, there has developed an economic concentration which has made the creature more powerful than the creator."

Dec. 29-30, 1938, Handbook of the Association of American Law Schools, p. 121.


Intro: When Wikipedia fails

The International Chamber of Commerce, an innocuous sounding name, isn't it? Boring even. Very boring. So boring the name alone is in danger of putting you to sleep right now. Then there are the "skeptics", and not even just the paid-for "rent-a-skeptics", going:

"Oh, look, they have a Wikipedia page! Look at how well-sourced and extensive it is!"

It must be said, at a respectable 3,400 words with 28 endnotes at the moment of this writing the International Chamber of Commerce certainly does have a Wikipedia page that *appears* to be that way. It even has the "guts" to always list the latest chairman of the group:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ International_Chamber_of_Commerce

How on Earth can there be a conspiracy here? A conspiracy of silence? It just doesn't seem possible...

Okay, a challenge: As of October 2022, looking at web.archive.org, it has been 19 years since the ICC's Wikipedia page was first created. Plenty of time to add some of the finer details, one would think. So try searching the page for the following names:

  1. Standard Oil's A.C. Bedford.
  2. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s brother-in-law, Winthrop Aldrich.
  3. David Rockefeller.
  4. Bilderberg co-founder Jack Heinz.
  5. Morgan banker Thomas W. Lamont.
  6. Morgan banker Dwight Morrow.
  7. Morgan banker Nelson Dean Jay.
  8. IBM founder Thomas Watson.
  9. Du Pont chieftain John Jacob Raskob.
  10. William Averell Harriman.
  11. Adolf Hitler.
  12. Hermann Goering.
  13. Hjalmar Schacht.
  14. Baron Kurt von Schroeder.
  15. Ernst Poensgen.
  16. "Il Duce" Benito Mussolini.
  17. Ettore Conti.
  18. Alberto Pirelli.
  19. Mitsubishi's Junnosuke Inouye (assassinated).
  20. Mitsui's Takuma Dan (assassinated).

For a second there some of you readers may have thought to have found a name by spelling "Goering" as "Goring". But nope, it went to "cateGORies" instead. Too bad!

Fact is, not one of these names is to be found on the ICC's Wikipedia page. And that is strange considering these names involve the founders, historical committee members, historical participants and official hosts of the ICC. The names and connections here form an incredible important aspect of understanding 20th political history. Yet, basically nothing is to be found about it, anywhere.

It took a few weeks to find, confirm and organize these names, but it has led to some fascinating narratives not to be found on the ICC's "official" Wikipedia page.


The origins of globalism, decades before Bilderberg

While writing the Bilderberg article, this author slowly came to the conclusion that one of the things that makes Bilderberg unique is that it was the first of its kind when it was founded in 1954: a transatlantic, privately-funded conference that on an annual basis brought together leading businessmen, politicians and experts, for the most part really to set up and coordinate supranational structures - the European Union and NATO being the earliest and still very important examples.

Of course, in 1973 the Trilateral Commission was founded in extension of Bilderberg, the major difference being the inclusion of Japan in the negotiations. In between and since then, additional transatlantic groups have been founded, although arguably still none more important than either Bilderberg or the Trilateral Commission.

Looking a little deeper though, it turns out Bilderberg wasn't really the first transatlantic group of its kind. Scrolling back in ISGP's very unique Index of NGOs, a key one that has to be acknowledged is the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), founded in June 1920 in Paris. Not only was it a precursor to Bilderberg, it also was to the 1973-founded Trilateral Commission and even the 1971-founded World Economic Forum in Davos. Why? Because the International Chamber of Commerce, right from the start in 1920:

  • brought together primarily businessmen, but also financial experts, diplomats, politicians and representatives of supranational bodies as the League of Nations;
  • held not annual, but certainly biennial, global meetings; 2
  • held annual national committee meetings; 3
  • held additional regional meetings, whenever they were required to streamline international business treaties; 4
  • was focused on integration of the global economy;
  • and had a knack of seeing their political proteges take top government positions.

In fact, the effort to "give business a voice", because "the world sorely needs a check" on the advice of "amateur economists" ranging from heads of state to congressmen and diplomats, started in 1906 with international congresses of various separate international Chambers of Commerce. These congresses ran until World War I broke out in 1914. After the war ended in 1918, it was realized that whatever advice and lobbying came out of these international congresses did not have any staying power.5

As a result, leaders within this movement started looking for a more permanent body. That is when the International Chamber of Commerce came into being in 1920. Using the slogan "Businessmen for peace" and promoting a kind of supranational "businessmen's peace", the ICC's constitution read:

"[Our purpose is] to facilitate the commercial intercourse of countries, to secure harmony of action on all international questions affecting finance, industry and commerce, to encourage progress and to promote peace and cordial relations among countries and their citizens by the cooperation or businessmen and organizations." 6

Eventually, in its own sanctioned biography, the ICC started referring to itself as "merchants of peace", 7 with international ICC president Thomas Watson talking about "World peace through world trade" in relation to the purpose of the ICC. 8 An official history of the ICC explained the group's purpose as follows:

"Recognizing that the world can produce enough raw materials and manufactured goods to supply all the people of all countries with the necessities and comforts of life, the Chamber's objective is stability and fairness in international economic relations which would ensure for all peoples a fair distribution of raw materials, food and other products. The Chamber believes that lasting political stability and the settlement of outstanding economic issues are necessarily interdependent." 9

The countries coordinating the founding of the International Chamber of Commerce were the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy. Immediately invitations were extended not just to other European countries, but really to much of the world. Considering most countries did not have a coherent existing business lobby suitable for the ICC, these first had to be organized in each country into a national committee. 10 Within a year most of the invited countries had joined the International Chamber of Commerce, creating an organization with membership that ranged from the United States to the Congo, from Denmark to Peru, and from Turkey to Japan. Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), India, Mexico, Brazil and Uruguay.

What is fascinating about that is that many of these countries are not part of Bilderberg, and barely even of the Trilateral Commission, to this day - and yet, they already were part of the International Chamber of Commerce by the early 1920s, in an era that oceans were still traversed by steamboat. Granted, colonialism played an important role in many of these non-Western regions, but still, they *were* represented. And that is not something that was repeated until Davos came along in 1971 and started to expanded globally into the 1980s and 1990s. In 1973 the Trilateral Commission brought Japan back into the same multinational, supranational structure. Granted, the ICC never went anywhere all this time, making it all the more intriguing what exactly its influence has been on the policies of these more well-known, more prestigious NGOs.

In March 1923, three years after the founding of the ICC, U.S. vice president Calvin Coolidge, a political protege of founding ICC member Dwight Morrow of the Morgan bank 11, was elected into office as U.S. president, remaining in this position until March 1929. Herbert Hoover, among the earliest ICC members, would serve as Coolidge secretary of Commerce throughout the 20s and take over the presidential office in March 1929, just before the stock market collapsed and the Great Depression began. Such a scenario was on nobody's mind though in the early 1920s. With these elections and appointments, certainly for the members of the American section of the International Chamber of Commerce, the "Roaring Twenties" with all its social change and rampant stock market speculation were off with a bang.

The usual founders: Rockefeller, Morgan

The origin story of the International Chamber of Commerce is interesting in no small part because the predictable Rockefeller and Morgan interests took the lead in it.

At founding meetings in Paris and Atlantic City, both in 1919, A.C. Bedford, the chair and CEO of the Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey; and J.P. Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont, were key organizers of the ICC, as was French steel magnate Eugene Schneider II and emerging French diplomat Andre Francois-Poncet 12, whose progenies would appear in Bilderberg in the 1980s. In June 1920 A.C. Bedford went back to Paris to partake in the official launch of the ICC. 13 Subsequently he was appointed vice president for the United States on the ICC's International Council and concurrently chairman of the American National Committee. 14

Versailles 1919: birthplace of RIIA, CFR, ICC

Official ICC histories very notably mention the name of the ICC's founding international president in 1920, Etienne Clementel. 15 The trouble with Etienne Clementel is that, despite serving as French minister of commerce during most of World War I (1914-1918) and during the entire Versailles Peace Conference negotiations (1918-1919), he's a virtually forgotten character in history. In fact, it seems impossible to explicitly, with an indisputable source, place Clementel at the Paris Peace Conference, despite the fact that he represented France's (largely rejected) international trade positions during World War I and Versailles. 16

That's not just a problem of Clementel, but also due to dispersion and general lack of sources as to who (read: business elites and those affiliated) exactly attended the Paris Peace Conference negotiations during the 8 months that they were going on: from late November 1918 until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. 17 With some effort and knowing roughly who to look for, a lot of names can be retrieved from the American side 18, immediately also revealing the enormous influence of the Morgan bank and related financial interests on the proceedings here. 19 From the British side it already is much harder to get a (close to) complete picture 20, and from the French side it seems completely impossible. Even anno 2023 the English Wikipedia page is an absolute joke when it comes to mentioning names along these lines. Names as the Dulles brothers, Thomas W. Lamont, and basically anyone else are not mentioned on the page. The French Wikipedia page is even shorter in length and substance.

Ironically, the whole idea of placing Clementel at Versailles didn't even come up until more than six weeks into researching and writing this article on the ICC. Only at that point did the author learn that Clementel had a most interesting key aide from 1915 until the proceedings at Versailles were finished. Namely, a certain Jean Monnet, a.k.a. "The founder of Europe". 21 Not only that, in April 1919, Monnet was a key liaison between American visitors of the Versailles Peace Conference, including Thomas W. Lamont and Edward G. Miner 22, looking to establish the ICC, and Etienne Clementel. 23 In no small part though through Monnet, a group of British, German and French businessmen and political representatives - including the earlier-mentioned Eugene Schneider II and Andre Francois-Poncet - visited the United States to establish the International Chamber of Commerce, the expenses of the trip paid for by the American Chamber of Commerce. 24

This is quite important information, because the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and the Council on Foreign Relations both tie their earliest joint history to a May 30, 1919 meeting between American and British participants of the Versailles Peace Conference at the Hotel Majestic in Paris. 25 In this very same period the same elites were busy setting up the International Chamber of Commerce. We can't talk in much more than general terms, because the details of meetings except the one on May 30, 1919 are not available. We can make a few obvious connections though:

  1. Key ICC founder Thomas Lamont also was a founding member of the CFR.

  2. ICC co-founder Jean Monnet first got to know John Foster Dulles and his younger brother Allen Dulles - both college friends of David Rockefeller 26 - at Versailles, where they were working as staffers. 27 John too was a founding member of the CFR. Allen Dulles joined the CFR in 1927, rising to the position of CFR president in later years.

  3. Together with his friend Sir Arthur Salter, in 1916, Monnet, on behalf of his superior Etienne Clementel, created the first inter-governmental supranational structures, culminating in 1917 in the Inter-Allied Maritime Transport Council, which came to oversee allied shipping during the last part of World War I. 28 Salter ended up at the Versailles Peace Conference as secretary of the Supreme Economic Council under chairman Lord Robert Cecil. Cecil was active in this position with other "Round Table" members here, such as the 11th Marquess of Lothian and Lionel Curtis, in establishing what would become RIIA and the CFR. 29 Salter too was part of this "Round Table Network", which played an important role on the American side as well in establishing RIIA and the CFR. 30 By the 1930s Salter became involved in the Pilgrims Society.

  4. In January 1920, Salter and Monnet went on to play key roles in creating the similarly supranational League of Nations. Monnet, refusing the position of secretary general, according to Lamont 31, became founding deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations, with Salter becoming founding secretary. In 1923 Salter, representing the League of Nations, was present at the biannual Rome congress of the ICC, hosted by Italy's newest dictator, Mussolini. 32

  5. Professor James T. Shotwell, as a representative of the Carnegie Endowment, was one of nine Americans attending the May 30, 1919 meeting that led to the eventual founding of RIIA and the CFR. 33 Shotwell joined the CFR in 1924, collaborated with the ICC in the mid 1930s through his Carnegie Endowment ("for International Peace"), was a speaker at the ICC's 1937 congress in Berlin alongside international pro-Nazi businessmen, Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering and Hjalmar Schacht 34; and wrote the foreword of 1959 semi-official ICC history 'Merchants of Peace'.

What we see here is that there's a lot of overlap between the creation of RIIA, the CFR, the ICC and the League of Nations, all tying back to series of obscure and even completely unknown meetings at the Versailles Peace Conference among elite businessmen, bankers, aristocrats, diplomats and politicians.

While Monnet is not known to have had any significant subsequent role in the ICC, his life may be pertinent to summarize here further. Already before becoming Clementel's aide in 1915 35, Monnet was plugged into the Hudson Bay's and Lazard interests through his family's liquor business. Versailles is where he became really close to the Dulles brothers for the rest of his life. 36 In 1935 John Foster Dulles and Dulles' law firm Sullivan & Cromwell financed the founding of Monnet, Murnane & Co., the investment bank of Monnet and CFR member George Murnane. 37 By that time, Monnet's close "Round Table Network" friend, Sir Arthur Salter, had written his 1929 essay 'The "United States of Europe" Idea' (published in expanded book form in 1933), advocating for a federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations. Monnet's later idea for the European Union would closely mirror the proposals in this work.

Eventually, in 1953, John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, respectively became Eisenhower's secretary of state and CIA director, through which they became major pushers of European unification. Already before that, in 1948, Allen Dulles, alongside a variety of Rockefeller elites, was founding vice chairman of the National Security Council-, CIA-, Ford Foundation- and Rockefeller Foundation-funded American Committee on United Europe (ACUE). 38 In 1955 the ACUE helped rally support at the highest levels for Jean Monnet's newly-established Action Committee for the United States of Europe 39, stacked with emerging Bilderberg and Trilateral elites 40 and with some of the funding coming from the Ford Foundation. 41

These ties explain, of course, how Monnet was able to become "the founder of Europe" and "primarily from behind the scenes ... influenced generations of major actors on the world stage," including a long list of international heads of state. 42 In that sense Jean Monnet could be compared to Joseph Retinger, a generally unknown front man and middle man for elite interests who has been credited with founding Bilderberg.

Early U.S. interests: Standard Oil, Morgan, Harriman, GE, Du Pont, GM

After so much Monnet discussing, where were we? We were at the Morgan and Rockefeller interests setting up the ICC in 1919-1920, respectively through Thomas W. Lamont and A. C. Bedford. Interestingly, subsequently Lamont was nowhere to be found on membership rolls for 1921-1922, despite eventually becoming American chairman in 1928 43. His place on the founding American National Committee was taken though by another key Morgan bank partner and Versailles Peace Conference participant: Dwight Morrow.

The American ICC in 1921. For sources on other names, look at ISGP's list of names and bios for the ICC.

When we look at an early/founding American National Committee list of the ICC, consisting of about 60-something names, we find many recognizable persons, generally due to earlier research into the Pilgrims Society and the Council on Foreign Relations. Without going into every single name, let's select some of the more elite names and the ties that they had. For practical reasons, we do add a number of important ICC board members who joined some time in either the 1920s or 1930s, such as those to be found on a 1938 international and national committees list. Under all circumstances, we stick to the pre-World War II era here.

  1. A. C. Bedford: Involved in setting up the ICC in 1919 and 1920. Founding U.S. vice president on the ICC's international council and founding chair and executive of the ICC's American National Committee.

    Employee of the Rockefellers' Standard Oil of New Jersey from 1882-, brought in by his uncle E. T. Bedford, who was a co-founder and partner of Standard Oil. Another uncle, F. H. Bedford also was involved in Standard Oil, ultimately as a director, and had been invited to the Pilgrims Society by 1907. A. C. served as Standard Oil's treasurer 1882-, president and CEO 1916-1917, and chair and CEO 1917-1925. Pilgrim by 1920, until his death in 1925.



  2. Winthrop W. Aldrich: Honorary president and U.S. Committee member over at least 1936-1949, president/chair 1944-1947

    Son of Senator Nelson Aldrich, who helped the Rockefeller, Morgan, Schiff and Warburg banking families establish the Federal Reserve in 1913. Brother-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Senior legal executive to Equitable Trust Company from about 1919, secretly representing the largest shareholder, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., followed in 1921 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Member CFR 1926-. Member Pilgrims Society from about 1939, followed by positions as vice president and a member of the executive committee. When Equitable Trust merged with Chase National Bank in 1930, the Rockefellers became majority shareholders in Chase. President of Chase National Bank 1930-1934, chair 1934-1953 (John J. McCloy took over as chair of Chase in 1953, also became chair of the CFR and became David Rockefeller's mentor in both). Member, vice president and exec. committee Pilgrims Society from about 1940.



  3. Thomas W. Lamont: Involved in setting up the ICC in 1919. Later chair of the ICC's American National Committee, apparently beginning in 1928.

    Pilgrim from at least 1908. Partner J.P. Morgan & Co. 1911-. Founding member CFR 1921-.



  4. Dwight Morrow: Member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921.

    Partner J.P. Morgan & Co. 1913-1927. Henry Luce co-founded Time with Briton Hadden (Skull & Bones 1920) in 1923 with the help of J.P. Morgan partners Thomas Lamont and Dwight Morrow. Member CFR 1923-. Youth friend and political kingmaker of 1923-1929 U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, who stacked his administration with Morgan men. Pilgrim from about 1925. Ambassador to Mexico 1927-1930. U.S. Senator 1930-1931. Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. Trustee of the Carnegie Endowment 1925-1930. Close to Charles Lindbergh and the Du Ponts.



  5. Nelson Dean Jay: Involved in the ICC's International Finance Committee since at least 1921. Still a member of the U.S. Committee anno 1938.

    Head of J.P. Morgan & Co.'s Paris branch 1920-1941, and again after WWII from 1945 to 1955 (then known as Morgan & Cie., Inc.). Director J.P. Morgan & Co., Inc. 1945-. Member CFR 1942-. Founding Bilderberg visitor in 1954. Visited Bilderberg a second and last time in May 1956.



  6. Thomas J. Watson: The ICC's international president from June 1937, appointed at the ICC's Berlin congress where he was awarded by Hitler, until 1939.

    Founder IBM. Member CFR 1924-. Trustee Carnegie Endowment 1934-1951. Member of the Pilgrims Society by 1933, alongside the Rockefellers, Warburgs and Rothschilds, with younger family members joining in later decades. Not a Bilderberg or Commission member, although IBM's Louis Gerstner, Jr. represented the firm there, with IBM's Jacques Maisonrouge prominently representing IBM at the first Davos meeting in 1971. His sons Thomas, Jr. and Arthur were members of Prince Bernhard's 1001 Club, alongside the British and French Rothschilds, David and Laurance Rockefeller, the Bechtels, various other royal houses of Europe and a variety of curious intelligence-tied individuals.



  7. Owen D. Young: Executive member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921. Chair of the ICC's American National Committee 1925-1928.

    Lawyer who became chief counsel to General Electric in 1912. Founder Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1919, under General Electric auspices, and first chair of RCA 1919-1929. Member of delegations to international conferences on economic matters, including the Dawes and Young (written by him) reparations committees for Germany and Italy, 1920-1930. Founding member CFR 1921-, director 1927-1940. Chair General Electric 1922-1939. Director of German General Electric (AEG) in the 1930s. Director General Motors anno 1920, alongside the Du Ponts and John J. Raskob. Pilgrim by 1924. Director Federal Reserve Bank of New York 1923-1938, chair 1938-1940. Trustee Rockefeller Foundation 1928-1939.



  8. Gerard Swope (1872-1957): Member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921.

    Jewish. President General Electric 1921-1940, 1942-1945. Member CFR 1924-. Director of German General Electric (AEG) in the 1930s. Major supporter of labor rights and increased the working conditions of his employees, which was considered radical in his days. Chair of The Business Council in 1933. Held various positions in the FDR government during the Great Depression in support of the New Deal. Older brother of reporter Herbert Swope, the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1917, and a lifelong Pilgrim from the 1930s on.



  9. Clark H. Minor: Alternate member U.S. committee anno 1938.

    Vice president International General Electric Co. 1924-1925, president 1925-1945, chair 1945-1947. Director of German General Electric (AEG) in the 1930s. Member CFR 1933-. Member Pilgrims Society by 1936.



  10. E. Arthur Baldwin (1874-1947): Alternate member U.S. committee anno 1938.

    President for Europe, International General Electric. Director of German General Electric (AEG) in the 1930s. President of the American Chamber of Commerce 1934-1937.



  11. John J. Raskob: Member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921.

    Personal secretary of Pierre S. du Pont 1901-, who himself served as vice president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours under 1902-1915 president T. Coleman du Pont, a first cousin who was a member of the Pilgrims Society no later than 1920 and a founding member of the CFR in 1921.

    Raskob became assistant treasurer of DuPont 1911-1914, treasurer 1914-1918, vice-president for finance of both Du Pont and the DuPont-owned General Motors 1918-. Director General Motors anno 1920-1928, alongside the Du Ponts, Owen D. Young, Imperial Chemical Industries chair Sir Harry McGowan and Arthur Chamberlain. By 1922 Arthur (!) Chamberlain also sat on the board of GM. Chair Democratic National Committee (DNC) 1928-1932. Major opponent of FDR's New Deal, supporting labor busting groups as the American Liberty League. Treasurer Knights of Malta.



  12. William Averell Harriman: Member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921.

    Son of Edward Henry Harriman (1848-1909), a railroad tycoon financed by the Rockefellers who in the final years of his life sat on the board the Standard Oil-fueled National City Bank, with William Rockefeller, the younger brother of John D. Rockefeller Sr.; Rockefeller-inlaws the Stillmans, who controlled the bank; J.P. Morgan Jr., Jacob Schiff and scores of Pilgrims Society members. The largest bank of its time, its fraudulent practices would later be identified as a major cause of the Great Depression that began with the 1929 stock market crash. Averell's mother was a founding trustee of the Rockefeller- and Carnegie-dominated Institute for Government Research - the early Brookings Institution - in 1916-1917.

    Averell himself was Yale Skull & Bones 1913. Vice President of purchase and supplies at Union Pacific Railroad 1915-1917. Director of the Guaranty Trust 1916-1941. Formed the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation in 1917 and headed it until 1925. Formed and headed W.A. Harriman & Co., Inc. 1920-1927. Already involved in the Pilgrims Society at the time of his founding involvement in the ICC in 1920, this through earlier membership of his grandfather Oliver Harriman and cousin Joseph Wright Harriman.

    Averell became acquainted with Fritz Thyssen during his trip to Germany in 1922. Member CFR 1923-, director CFR 1950-1955. Traded with the Soviets during the 1925-1929 period. In 1927 his brother E. Roland Harriman joined W.A. Harriman & Co., Inc. and the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company. Chairman executive committee of the Illinois Central Railroad Co., 1931-1942, director 1915-1946. In 1931 Harriman Brothers & Company merged with Brown Brothers & Co., creating Brown Brothers Harriman.


  13. Herbert Hoover: Member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921.

    Trustee Carnegie Institution for Science 1920–1949. U.S. commerce secretary 1921-1928 under U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, a political protege of the J.P. Morgan partner Dwight Morrow. Hoover and Coolidge did little to curb stock market speculation during the latter half of "Roaring Twenties". Trustee of the Rockefeller- and Carnegie-dominated Institute for Government Research - the early Brookings Institution - 1920-1925. U.S. president March 1929 - March 1933. Continued to be warned that stock market speculation needed to be curbed, but left economic policy to the privately-ran Federal Reserve. In late October 1929, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 began, initiating the Great Depression, for which Hoover was attacked. Major critic of FDR's New Deal from 1933 on. Member CFR 1938-. Member of the Bohemian Grove no later than 1964.



  14. Charles M. Schwab: Member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921.

    President of Carnegie Steel 1897-1901, secretly negotiating its sale to J.P. Morgan in 1901. President of the new Morgan-owned company U.S. Steel 1901-1903. Took over and headed Bethlehem Steel 1903-. Pilgrim from at least 1907 until his death 1939. In 1908, Bethlehem Steel began producing the H-beam that made possible the age of the skyscraper. The production was a risk, but turned Bethlehem Steel into the second-largest steel company in the world.

    Described as a "master hustler" by Thomas Edison. Notorious union buster who kept unions out of Bethlehem Steel throughout his life. Greatly opposed FDR's New Deal. Bribed his way around the world.



  15. Fred I. Kent (1869-1954): Member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921.

    Vice president Bankers Trust 1909-, still anno 1921, director from at least 1920 to 1941. Deputy governor Federal Reserve Bank of New York 1917-1918. U.S. delegation member at the Organisation Committee of Reparations Commission in Paris in 1919. Founding member CFR 1921-. Trustee of The Conference Board. Chairman of the commerce and marine commission of the American Bankers Association. Chairman of the council of New York University.



  16. Silas H. Strawn: Chair U.S. committee from 1930 for a number of years.

    Partner in Winston & Strawn, Chicago. President United States Golf Association 1911-1912. Trustee of the Rockefeller- and Carnegie-dominated Institute for Government Research - the early Brookings Institution - 1925-1930. Trustee Carnegie Endowment 1926-1946. Member CFR 1928-. President United States Chamber of Commerce during the early years of the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939. Strenuously opposed the extension of unemployment benefits to the unemployed and the New Deal in general.



  17. W. Fellowes Morgan (1860-1943): Member of the ICC's American National Committee by 1921.

    Unrelated to the famous Morgan banking family. Founder and president Brooklyn Bridge Freezing and Cold Storage Company 1887-. Chair Merchants' Refrigerating Co. Director Chemical Bank & Trust Co., Citizens' Central National Bank of New York, Bank for Savings and Savannah Sugar Refining. Pilgrim from at least 1914 on. President of the Merchants’ Association of New York 1915-1922. Secretary and treasurer of the United States Golf Association.

There are other interesting names on the 1921 ICC list, ranging from Cornelius F. Kelley, chairman of Anaconda Copper; to Crawford Ellis, the vice president of United Fruit. Both companies were tied to big business CIA coups from the 1950s to the 1970s. Both companies also had their representatives in the Pilgrims Society and CFR. Neither of these men were invited to either group though.

Early dominant interests: CFR, Pilgrims, Rockefeller, Morgan, GE, GM, Du Pont, IBM, Harriman, etc.

Looking at the above names - the most noteworthy in old ICC lists as far as we have them - we find the following American banks and corporations the most often represented pre-World War II. To get a more complete picture of the establishment of the time, let's also count the number of CFR and Pilgrims Society members we encounter.

  1. CFR: 13 out of 17.

  2. Pilgrims: 11.5 out of 17. (John Jacob Raskob's Du Pont mentor being a Pilgrim gives him half a point)

  3. General Electric:
    • Owen D. Young
    • Gerard Swope
    • Clark H. Minor
    • E. Arthur Baldwin

  4. Carnegie Endowment:
    • Dwight Morrow
    • Thomas J. Watson
    • Silas Strawn
    • Really also: Dr. James Shotwell, a trustee between 1925-1951 and also president.
    • Really also: Eliot Wadsworth, a trustee between 1937-1951.

  5. J.P. Morgan & Co.:
    • Thomas W. Lamont
    • Dwight Morrow
    • Nelson Dean Jay

  6. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Equitable Trust/Chase and the Rockefeller Foundation:
    • A.C. Bedford
    • Winthrop Aldrich
    • Owen D. Young

  7. Du Pont / General Motors:
    • John Jacob Raskob
    • Owen D. Young

  8. The Federal Reserve:
    • Owen D. Young
    • Fred I. Kent

  9. (Brown Brothers) Harriman: William Averell Harriman.

  10. IBM: Thomas J. Watson.

  11. Anaconda Copper: Cornelius F. Kelley.

  12. United Fruit: Crawford Ellis.

These interests represented the core of the ICC in the pre-World War II era.


PART II:

The ICC's "Merchants of Peace": Nazi-financing, New Deal-hating, union-busting robber barons

A lot of readers who see some of the above corporate names will likely quickly go, "Didn't these corporations finance fascism?" That is correct. But before we get to that subject, let's first take a look at what these "merchants of peace" were funding domestically.

LABOR UNION BUSTING: THE NAM

The Rockefellers, especially after the 1914 Ludlow Massacre; Charles Schwab of Bethlehem Steel 44, the Du Ponts and the Du Pont-controlled General Motors were among the most notorious union busters, using intimidation, violence, and infiltration of the workforce to keep workers underpaid. Du Pont and General Motors were the two biggest funders of the union-busting National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), with Bethlehem Steel, the Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Morgan's U.S. Steel all within the top 15 as well. The H. J. Heinz Corporation, Anaconda Copper and IBM followed at positions 25, 43 and 45 respectively. General Electric, a firm of the apparently moderate George Swope, was a funder as well, at least in Ohio; used the Pinkerton detective agency to spy on workers; and had Owen D. Young serving as chairman of NAM's National Industrial Relations Committee. 45

Conclusion? The ICC's "merchants of peace" did not like labor unions.

STOCK MARKET MANIPULATION AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION

U.S. president Calvin Coolidge (in office 1923-1929), an old friend and later political protege of Morgan partner and founding ICC member Dwight Morrow 46; and his secretary of commerce (1921-1928) and future U.S. president (1929-1933) Herbert Hoover, a founding ICC member, played an important role in setting the stage for the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until well into the 1930s.

Another important role was played by Andrew W. Mellon, America's treasury secretary from 1921 until his fall from grace in 1932. Mellon was literally a robber baron occupying public office, looking to limit taxes on the wealthy in every possible way (the highest rate went from 73% in 1921 to just 25% in 1925) and getting away with enormous conflicts of interest. 47 A member of both the Pilgrims and the CFR, Mellon is also known to have given at least one speech at the 1931 international congress of the ICC in Washington D.C. 48 and to have referred to resolutions the ICC implemented at its 1929 international congress in Amsterdam. 49 The details of how close Mellon was involved in the ICC have been lost in history for the time being. Among the few other things we know is that Mellon's first deputy secretary of the treasury from 1921 to 1925, Eliot Wadsworth, was a U.S. Committee member for the ICC by 1938. Wadsworth was part of the Morgan-dominated 1917 American Red Cross War Council, which was liaisoning with the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce; and a member of the CFR since 1933, but otherwise seems little more than a henchman.

Granted, the main guilt for Coolidge and Hoover simply was to not oppose a monopolistic clique of bankers occupying the boards of the Federal Reserve and Standard Oil-fueled National City Bank, whose policies stood at the center of the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve, a rather recently banker-founded institution at the time, suffered from internal competition and made a number of crucial mistakes that were only admitted by eventual Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke in 2002. 50 The main (easy-to-confirm) issue with National City Bank was that it propped up the stock market to unprecedented heights six months before the eventual crash in order to correct a collapse initiated after a public warning of the Federal Reserve that too much stock market speculation was taking place. 51

The thing is, the Federal Reserve and the National City Bank were just so completely loaded with Pilgrims Society and CFR members, including J. P. Morgan Jr., Jacob Schiff and the Rockefellers, that it makes little sense to discuss the Great Depression in any detail here, especially because none of these bankers - apart form Standard Oil in general - can be tied to the ICC at this point.

The main takeaway here might be that founding ICC U.S. national committee member Herbert Hoover purely had a "business friendly" policy with regard to the Great Depression. Initially he applied the usual 101 fixes to the economic crisis: convince business and workers to keep faith, in part by not slashing wages and in that manner also preventing strikes; increase corporate spending on construction; stabilize farmer's output through the Federal Farm Board; and lower the interest rate. In addition, he cut immigration numbers and increased Latino repatriations to free up work for whites.

All these measures failed to produce a result. The unemployment rate was 12 percent by late 1930. At that point banks started going bust left and right, sending the economy into a nosedive that may not have been as deep and steep without the bank crisis. In 1931 the unemployment rate reached 15 percent. It hit 23 percent by early 1932, with almost twice as many banks collapsing as in the panic of late 1930.

Even at that point, with a 23 percent unemployment rate and the country being littered with "Hoovervilles" - shantytowns filled with recently fired, homeless workers - Hoover refused to introduce any form of social security. In the same period Hoover did make sure to put banks and corporations on the "dole" with the July 1932-founded Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). This wasn't necessarily social security, as it involved (low-interest) loans, but the contrast with the lack of measures taken for homeless workers is striking - and wasn't lost on either the public or comedians of the era. 52 Predictably, the RFC was a big business idea, dreamed up by Eugene Meyer 53, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the publisher of the Washington Post, a partner in the Lazard Freres bank and a CFR member since 1930. Meyer became the RFC's first chairman. After World War II, he was the World Bank's first president.

With the June 1932 Revenue Act, Hoover did increase the highest tax rate from 25% to 63%, back to what it had been right after World War I. This was out of sheer necessity though, considering the large budget deficit the government was running. A month later his Emergency Relief and Construction Act was enacted, to start public works across the country. This action was very late as well, and just a few months before the elections - which Hoover would lose with just 39.6% of the vote, supported only by a handful of the richest states in America's North-East. FDR, as governor of New York State, had implemented these public works, in combination with social security, in 1931 already.

After coming in as U.S. president in March 1933, FDR famously went to work on his two-part New Deal that introduced the following measures:

  • Provided social welfare for the unemployed.
  • Put millions of unemployed to work in road, bridge, building and park construction.
  • Banned child labor.
  • Introduced minimum wages.
  • Introduced a maximum number of working hours of 40 hours per week.
  • Organized a bank holiday on March 6, 1933 to prevent additional bank runs and audit the banks in this period to see if they were solvent. This ended the crisis of banks collapsing left and right.
  • Under the 1933 Banking Act insured the bank deposits of citizens with banks part of the Federal Reserve network.
  • Established the SEC in 1934 to get rid of stock manipulation and various related fraudulent and semi-fraudulent practices, in that manner rebuilding confidence in the stock market.

Ironically, the latest, massive round of bank collapses from November 1932 to March 6, 1933, was caused by speculators buying up gold in (correct) anticipation that FDR would get off the gold standard, devaluing the dollar. The Federal Reserve made mistakes here as well with regard to the interest rate, later admitting this, as well as, with some reluctance, that FDR's policy of getting off the gold standard had been the correct one. 54

Conclusion? ICC-tied big business and politicians helped cause and certainly worsen and extend the effects of the Great Depression by only looking at "business-friendly" solutions. It was the candidate they didn't want that fixed most of their problems.

OPPOSITION TO FDR'S NEW DEAL

An out of office Herbert Hoover, replaced by FDR, continued to campaign against the New Deal. Predictably, the New Deal was not popular either among the earlier mentioned ICC-tied industrialists and bankers financing the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Within the ICC it appears that only General Electric's Gerard Swope - who was investing in Nazi Germany at the same time - was supportive of the measures.

On the other end of the spectrum was ICC council member John Jacob Raskob, representing the Du Pont fortune, who, despite being a Democrat in name, set up an additional group in 1934 called the American Liberty League, just to campaign against the New Deal. General Motors' Alfred Sloan, Jr., J. P. Morgan & Co.'s chief attorney and then-Rockefeller Foundation trustee John W. Davis, Jay Gould and Harriman lawyer Elihu Root and Grayson M. P. Murphy of Anaconda Copper, Guaranty Trust and Bethlehem Steel were important co-founders, as was Irenee du Pont. 55

Despite a handful of overlapping names and corporations, it must be said that once again the CFR and Pilgrims are more relevant here than the ICC: The Du Ponts under T. Coleman du Pont were Pilgrims and founding members of the CFR. Davis was founding president of the CFR and also a president of the Pilgrims. Root was honorary founding chairman of the CFR and a vice president of the Pilgrims. Sloan was a member of the CFR by 1932, eventually becoming a Pilgrim as well. Murphy was a CFR member from 1926, with his son being a life-long Pilgrim by 1940.

Ironically, Hoover refused to join American Liberty League, complaining the "bipartisan" group included Democrats, including John Jacob Raskob and Hoover's Democrat opponent in 1928, Governor Al Smith, who "had financed the smearing campaign against me during the whole time I was in the White House. Unbelievable as it may be, Raskob wrote asking me to join." 56 In another instance Hoover complained in relation to the American Liberty League that he had "no more confidence in the Wall Street model of human liberty, which this group so well represents, than I have in the Pennsylvania Avenue model upon which this country now rides." 57

This author hasn't been the only one to raise an eyebrow over these comments 58, considering the American Liberty League exactly represented Hoover's stances on the New Deal, "property rights", and "19th century liberalism" and against FDR. Hoover may have held some personal grudges, but the group also was thought to only increase the popularity of FDR, who attacked it for the wealthy industrialists and bankers attacking it. We also shouldn't forget that Hoover was deeply involved with Raskob in the ICC since the early 1920s, would join the Wall Street-dominated CFR in 1938 and would become a member of the Bohemian Grove.

Conclusion? The ICC's "merchants of peace" did not like having to implement basic labor rights.

REPARATIONS FOR WORLD WAR I

ICC members had a lot of involvement in the Dawes (1923) and Young (1929) plans that forced Germany to pay reparations for World War I on top of paying back new large loans from American corporations to build up its industrial capacity.

Founding ICC member Herbert Hoover appointed founding ICC member Owen D. Young (of General Electric and soon also the Rockefeller Foundation) as one of two U.S. representatives at the Dawes Plan meeting, with founding ICC member Alberto Pirelli - also a connection established through the ICC 59 - becoming one of two representatives from Italy. The Pilgrim Lord Robert Kindersley, of Lazard and the Bank of England, was a British delegate. 60

Young, as chairman; and Pirelli again were represented at the 1929 (Owen) Young Plan, along with Morgan partner and ICC co-founder Thomas W. Lamont, J.P. Morgan, Jr. himself and Reichsbank governor Hjalmar Schacht, a later host of the 1937 ICC congress in Berlin. 61 Other ties of these reparations committees run through the CFR and Pilgrims Society.

While it definitely is beyond the scope of this article to research exactly how the terms of the reparations influenced Germany's (convenient) hyperinflation, subsequent capital flight among German elites as Fritz Thyssen and Hugo Stinnes 62, the "passive resistance" in the Ruhr to the reparations, and the rise of fascism funded by these same elements, these names do make it clear that big business in the form of J. P. Morgan & Co., General Electric, the Rockefellers and Alberto Pirelli played a curiously dominant role in these negotiations between countries. In fact, in 1928 Fritz Thyssen was involved in the negotiations on the German side, coming across as a rather unpleasant, combative individual. 63 Of course, at that point Thyssen already was funding Hitler's attempted coups in Germany for five years, this from the moment that militant World War I general Erich Ludendorff told Thyssen to meet Hitler, one of Ludendorff's Reichswehr intelligence assets who took over the Thulist German Worker's Party (DAP) on his behalf.

In general it seems that to this day there is very limited information available on everything involved surrounding the politics of reparations, also in between the years 1923 and 1929 that the Dawes and Young plans were negotiated. What does seem to have been the case is that while Hitler halted reparation payments in 1933, that interest payments on loans extended by major western banks - certainly anything tied to the Bank for International Settlements - continued unhindered, also during World War II. 64

It's actually the Young Plan, based on an idea originally pitched by Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht to Owen Young 65, that was responsible for the establishment of the Bank for International Settlements in 1930. Stacked with German Nazis and Nazi sympathizers as Bank of England governor Montagu Norman 66 (and two of his proteges), the bank became controversial from the late 1930s on, and during World War II, as it accepted German gold that had been looted by the Nazis from Austria 67, Czechoslovakia 68, and from other central banks of countries conquered by the Nazis. 69 Worse, the BIS accepted that the voting shares of these central banks in the BIS, a total of 64.7%, fell into Nazi hands 70, putting "the controlling stock ... under Hitler's control." 71 Board meetings were suspended 72, but annual meetings and business continued. 73 Of course, questions were asked as well about gold passing through the BIS and the Swiss banking system in general that was stolen from Jews and resmelted by the Nazis. 74

This author initially concluded this section by writing, "At the moment though, the bank cannot be strongly tied to ICC boards or conferences, so this element too will have to be skipped." Well, while looking for the proper articles to use as sources, one was found about 1940-1946 BIS president Thomas H. McKittrick, considered extremely notorious at the time of World War II, also by FDR's treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. 75, for his extensive dealings with Nazi businessmen throughout the war 76, not to mention possibly being the only American wholeheartedly welcome in Franco's Spain and Mussolini's Italy. 77

McKittrick had an early career at the Rockefeller's National City Bank, was mentored by Marcus Wallenberg, Sr. in the 1930s, joined the Rockefeller's Chase National Bank after his years at the BIS, was invited to the CFR in 1943 and to the Pilgrims Society sometime between 1948 and 1954.

Once again there is overlap with the ICC, in whose international committee and gatherings McKittrick played an important role no later than 1947, also becoming vice chairman of the U.S. national committee. It is quite possible, if not likely, that McKittrick was involved earlier in the ICC, considering he was a director of the American Chamber of Commerce in London from 1930 to 1939, and also because former ICC president Thomas Watson - the IBM founder awarded by Hitler at Berlin's 1937 ICC gathering - organized a luncheon for McKittrick in New York City in 1943, at a time when the FDR administration refused to allow McKittrick to return to Switzerland for his BIS duties. 78 Whether this was under ICC auspices is not clear to this author.

Ironically, McKittrick's Who's Who also reveals he was a "mem. advisory group to N.A.M. Committee on Internat. Economic Relations, 1947". That is a reference to the National Association of Manufacturers, mentioned earlier here as a hub of CFR, Pilgrims and ICC activity to squash the organized labor movement in the United States. We keep going in circles.

Conclusion? The ICC played an important role in reparations negotiations pre-World War II and the BIS during and immediately after World War II.

ITALIAN ICC FUNDED THE RISE OF MUSSOLINI

In the previous section we mentioned that prominent ICC member and committee member Thomas McKittrick, while president of the controversial Bank of International Settlements from 1940 to 1946, possibly was the only American welcome in Franco's Italy, Mussolini's Italy and, maybe less unique, among Nazi Germany's business men. There are more ties to the ICC here.

For starters, Benito Mussolini was the keynote speaker at the ICC's March 1923 Rome congress 79, organized just 4.5 months after Mussolini's successful "March on Rome" in which he was able to take over as prime minister and fascist dictator. How was this possible? Well, big business support. A brief history:

Until about September-October 1914 Mussolini was a committed socialist editor at Avanti!, the official publication of the Italian Socialist Party. A series of articles he wrote in August 1914 actually were instrumental in causing a nation-wide labor strike. The socialists - who weren't necessarily immune to nationalistic warpride - took a stance against involvement in World War I on the side of Great Britain and France, a side Italy took purely for selfish reasons having to do with territorial control over regions located in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After coming together with a group of early "Fasci", Mussolini broke with the socialists, set up his rival newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia in November 1914 and became a relentless pro-war agitator. In December 1914 he founded the equally pro-war action group Fascio d'Azione Rivoluzionaria, a merger with a related fascist group. In order to keep the newspaper afloat, from the start Mussolini was backed in these efforts by Banca Commerciale Italiana, an important lender to the steel industry; and the munitions cartel Ansaldo, with names as Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat, upcoming ICC co-founder Alberto Pirelli and future ICC member Ettore Conti also having been named as those buying up early advertising space. 80

For sources on other names, look at ISGP's list of names and bios for the ICC.

Conti, apart form his electricity interests, in part through the Edison company, served as a director of Banca Commerciale Italiana (BCI) from July 1918, serving under president the Jewish president Giuseppe Toeplitz, who was primarily tied to the funding of Mussolini's Il Popolo d'Italia. Conti became vice president of BCI in March 1920, serving as president from 1930 to 1945. In 1920 and 1921 he was president of the General Confederation of Italian Industry, better known as Confindustria, a group we will run into on many occasions in relation to Mussolini and the ICC. In 1915 Confindustria - dominated by names as Agnelli, Pirelli and Conti 81 - also took an official position in favor of joining World War I. 82

It should be clear that the reasons for big business funding Mussolini's small Il Popolo d'Italia was to suppress socialism and-or to profit from Italy's entry into World War I on the side of the Entente / Allies. It's fascinating though how ultra-obscure the details on this subject are. Over the past two decades this author already noticed how little information could be found on this incredibly important subject in terms of specific names. And without having ICC membership lists to look at, it is likely that that would have remained that way.

When Italy actually did declare war on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in May 1915, many of the early "Fasci" ceased their activism and joined the war. Mussolini was drafted in August 1915. He fought from September 1915 to February 1917, at which point he got injured. After his dismissal from the hospital in August 2017, Mussolini retook the reigns of his newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia.

This is where things start to become particularly interesting. Certainly from the moment Mussolini rejoined his old newspaper, he received about $35,000 a month (in 2023 dollars) from British intelligence service MI5. The purpose was to keep spreading his anti-labor and pro-war propaganda in order to keep Italy fighting on the side of Britain and France, and also to prevent any labor unrest that could undermine Italy's war effort. 83 At the same time over a dozen major industrial concerns and banks, all benefiting from the war, kept buying copious amounts of advertising space in Il Popolo d'Italia, which really was, and always remained, a very small publication. 84

After World War I, on 23 March 1919, Mussolini and his clique founded their action group Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, renamed in 1921 to the National Fascist Party. About fifty men were part of the initial meeting, whose organizing meeting at the the Piazza San Sepolcro, once again, was sponsored by "Milanese businessmen". 85 These businessmen have never been identified, but likely suspects, as they were backing Mussolini's newspaper at the time and were operating from Milan, include early ICC members Alberto Pirelli and Ettore Conti at the Banca Commerciale Italiana. Milan was dominant business center of its time.

At the founding Milan meeting, Mussolini's espoused political positions that were a mix of liberal socialism, pro-democracy, anti-colonialism and colonialism, moderate corporatism, all with the usual right-wing penchant of appeasing "war heroes":

  1. "The Bolshevik experience, far from abolishing classes, entails a ferocious dictatorship. We are strongly opposed to all forms of dictatorship..."

  2. "[Fascism] is opposed to any eventual Italian imperialism... [It ] accepts the supreme postulate of a League of Nations, which presupposes the integrity of each nation – integrity which ... must be realized in the Alps and along the Adriatic through her claim to Fiume and Dalmatia [in the Balkans]."

  3. "We demand universal suffrage [i.e. voting rights] for both men and women..."

  4. "We favour a republic [over] a monarchy..."

  5. "The [elitist] Senate must be abolished."

  6. "If Bolshevism could prove to us that it guarantees a people’s greatness and that its regime is better than others, we wouldn’t be frightened by it. But it has now been demonstrated beyond a doubt that Bolshevism has ruined the economic life of Russia. ... Famine and hunger prevail there]."

  7. "We favor national syndicalism [of labor] and reject state intervention..."

  8. "We intend to ... attract the proletariat away from the official Socialist party. ... We must approach the workers returning from the trenches, because it would be odious and Bolshevik not to recognize the rights of those who had fought in the war. We must, therefore, accept the demands of the working classes. Do they want an eight-hour day? Tomorrow will the miners and laborers who work at night demand six hours? Sickness and old-age insurance? Worker control over industry? We shall support these demands, partly because we want the workers to get accustomed to responsibilities of management and to learn as a result that it isn’t easy to operate a business successfully." 86

Similar to what Hitler told a group of industrialists about the "socialist" and "worker" part of his National Socialist Party, "don't be bothered" by the words spoken in public. 87 The same went for Mussolini, and maybe just about any politician.

It is interesting to note that if Pirelli indeed was a financier of this founding fascist meeting as well, that his younger brother, Piero, at that very moment was part of the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference's Supreme Economic Council under Lord Robert Cecil and subsequently became part of the League of Nations Economic Committee. 88 This clearly put the Pirellis in close touch with Jean Monnet and the elements who founded the ICC, including Pirelli, as well of course the same elements who founded RIIA and the CFR.

November 1919 was election time. To illustrate just how fringe Mussolini, his "Fasci" and his newspaper were at the time, Mussolini only received 5,000 votes total versus 190,000 for the socialists in Milan alone. Even in Mussolini's home village of Predappio, not a single person voted for him. Mussolini was mocked by his former socialist allies who paraded a coffin with his name on it past his house, symbolizing his political death.

Mussolini's sulking did not last too long, because as 1920 progressed millions of peasants and factory workers held increasingly virulent strikes. Workers would barricade themselves inside factories or get rid of their superiors and run the factory by themselves. To illustrate just how bad the situation became for big business: "Fiat president Giovanni Agnelli was forced to march through a cordon of red flags to his office, and then to kiss a portrait of Lenin that had replaced that of the King." 89 The country was at risk of turning fully communist and the only political element that did not shun violence against against union headquarters and striking workers were Mussolini's "Blackshirts".

Even though Mussolini and been wildly unpopular in elections, over the course of 1920 he and his Blackshirts did engage in a covert alliance with newly-elected prime minister Giovanni Giolitti, who had been prime minister four times before and was close to big business magnates. ICC-involved businessmen as Alberto Pirelli and Gino Olivetti, the latter a key founder and first managing director of Confindustria from 1910 to 1934, were involved in brokering this alliance. 90 It appears Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat, a decades-long ally of Giolitti, played a role as well 91, even more so because Agnelli was a supporter of fascism. 92

Giolitti and the business magnates used the fascists to suppress communist and socialist activism. As a result, Mussolini and his Blackshirts received anything from trucks to arms from the police and the army to carry out their raids, enjoying a lot of judicial protection in the process. In the run up to the May 1921 elections, Giolitti set up the National Blocs, a coalition of right-wing parties aimed at suppressing the Italian Socialist Party with Mussolini representing his "Fasci" as the "extreme right wing" of the National Blocs, concerned with 'imperialism' and 'national expansion'. This time his party received 7% of the vote, with another pro-fascist party receiving about 2%.

Unrest continued after the May 1921 elections, with the "anti-fascists" as communists and socialists continuing to protest, while the growing army of fascists, supported by many regular business owners, suppressing them. The headquarters of Socialist newspaper Avanti! was repeatedly attacked, bombed and burned down in these years. Eventually, on October 28, 1922, Mussolini led his famous "March on Rome", flanked by and his army of Blackshirts and fellow fascists took place on October 28, 1922. The liberal Party prime minister, Luigi Facta, asked King Victor Emmanuel III di Savoi to sign a declaration that martial law would be imposed, followed by an army to stop Mussolini's fascist army. The king, whose signature was crucial to martial law, refused. Facta resigned and on October 30 and King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini as Italy's new prime minister.

The only reason Mussolini was able to "march on Rome" and seize power though was, once again, due to widespread support among elites. And once again all kinds of emerging ICC names were singled out as covert protagonists:

"There were lively discussions between Mussolini [ICC 1923], the prefect Lusignoli and the leaders of the General Confederation of Industry [Confindustria], the deputies A. Stefano Benni [ICC board anno 1923] and Gino Olivetti [ICC board anno 1929]. The heads of the Banking Association, who had financed the march on Rome to the tune of twenty millions, the heads of the Confederation of Industry [Confindustria] and of the Confederation of Agriculture telegraphed to Rome to tell Salandra that a Mussolini government was the only possible way out. Senator Ettore Conti, a great electricity magnate [who was ICC-involved in 1923 and a board member anno 1938-1939] ... telegraphed to Facta, asking him to request the king to entrust Mussolini with the formation of a ministry." 93

And that's how it went. Mussolini's term as prime minister and dictator of Italy would last from 31 October 1922 to 25 July 1943, after which "Il Duce" headed his short-lived, Nazi-allied "Italian Social Republic" in the north of Italy until 25 April 1945.

MORGAN-ROCKEFELLER-MELLON SUPPORT FOR MUSSOLINI

With Mussolini in power, big business support continued, also from overseas. The 1923 ICC congress in Rome hosted by Mussolini is just one example of that, despite us not knowing most of the roughly 1,500 delegates that attended, similar to the 1937 meeting hosted by Hitler in Berlin in 1937.

In those pre-FDR days, American support for the Mussolini regime included the American government. An important example of that is 1921-1932 U.S. treasury secretary Andrew Mellon, who continued to moonlight as a oil and aluminum robber baron in office and participated in one or more ICC meetings. As an almost universal theme among business magnates, Mellon was a major fan of Mussolini for his repression of communists, socialists and labor unions. 94

In 1926 it was the Morgan bank - with all its earlier-discussed influence on the administrations that Mellon was part of - who extended a $100 million loan to Mussolini, with partner Thomas W. Lamont - there this key ICC founder and chair of the ICC is again - being the most intimately involved in this project, also with giving PR tips to Mussolini in an attempt to make his regime more acceptable domestically and overseas. 95

Founding ICC board member Alberto Pirelli, who helped fund Mussolini from the moment he switched from socialism to fascism in late 1914, along with his younger brother Piero, came to play a key role in representing Mussolini overseas during the interwar years 96, also in war debt negotiations alongside J. P. Morgan and partners of his bank 97, while also domestically serving as one of Mussolini's closest allies in business. 98 He also was a key founder in 1934 of the (Italian) Institute for International Political Studies / Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, a Mussolini-backed RIIA- and CFR-clone. 99

Because Pirelli was so close to the Morgan bank, his company, similar to Fiat of Giovanni Agnelli, benefited from the $100 million Morgan loan to Mussolini in a direct manner as well, with some of the money going to their companies in the form of loans. 100 After World War II, Pirelli and Agnelli's grandson, Gianni, continued as founding visitors of Bilderberg.

Similar to the Morgan bank, the Rockefellers played a key but almost undiscussed role in Mussolini's Italy as well. Their influence ran through the Societa Italo-Americana Pel Petrolio (SIAP), a wholly-owned Standard Oil of New Jersey subsidiary since its founding in Venice in 1891 with John D. Rockefeller, Sr. attending. 101 From 1972 on it has been known as Esso Italiana, similar to how Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G. (DAPAG) also came to fall under the Esso brand post-World War II.

Standard's role, through SIAP, in funding the rise of Mussolini is unknown. What we do know is that by 1928 it "supplied nearly half of Italy's gasoline and kerosene and large percentages of other major products" 102 and that in 1934 SIAP at the very least was not disadvantaged by tariff and license regulations for the oil industry implemented by Mussolini. 103

What we also know is that by 1935 Mussolini had his eyes on conquering Ethiopia due to what was (falsely) suspected to be vast, untapped oil riches. On August 31, 1935 word got out of a secret "Rickett concession" in which Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie handed over "more than half his empire" in a 75-year lease to Standard Oil in order to protect himself from a looming Italian invasion. 104 Already on September 3, 1935 the agreement fell apart when the new anti-Wall Street U.S. president FDR refused to accept it as legitimate, got his secretary of state to tell Standard Oil to back out 105, and informed reporters a day later that, "dollar diplomacy is no longer recognized by the United States Government." 106

By the end of September the same "Mr. Rickett" who negotiated the failed backdoor deal with Emperor Haile Selassie met with his "old friend" 107 Mussolini in Rome. 108 Secret deals were made 109, and also as a result of the "Rickett concession" having fallen apart, a month later, on October 3, 1935, Mussolini began his conquest of Ethiopia.

As western countries boycotted Italy, Standard Oil was pressured to stop supplying oil to the country, which both Mussolini 110 and Nazi Germany's I.G. Farben scientists 111 recognized was absolutely crucial in allowing Italy to continue the invasion of Ethiopia. Standard Oil refused, only agreeing to not increase oil deliveries over what they had been the previous year. 112 For some reason, apparently to keep the door open to negotiations, FDR agreed with this policy 113, but this token appeasement of the international community obviously led to a lot of criticism. 114

In early December 1935 news started going round of a "gentlemen's agreement" that had been negotiated between Standard Oil and Mussolini, apparently by the same Mr. Francis Rickett in the days before the Ethiopian invasion. 115 The "gentlemen's agreement" involved Standard Oil, through its Societa Italo-Americana Pel Petrolio, arranging for Mussolini to circumvent any upcoming League of Nations oil embargo on Italy by continuing to supply oil from wells outside the United States. Oil to Italy would come from Romania, through Hungary and Austria; and oil to Eritrea and Somaliland for Italy's war effort would come from the Middle East. In return, Standard Oil expected a 30-year monopoly on oil deliveries to Italy. It also agreed to float a one billion gold lire (about $50 million at the time) loan to Italy to pay for oil deliveries. 116

The existence of this scheme was denied by interested parties as Standard Oil chief Walter Teagle and the Italian government, but at the same time it was observed that "more and more tankers with Standard petroleum came to Italy, the warehouses filled up again [and] the danger of the oil squeeze seemed averted." 117

Apparently, the agreement between Standard Oil and the Mussolini government would only go into effect officially from the moment that the League of Nations oil embargo became active, a move that was to be anticipated beforehand. This never happened though, in part because the Standard deal would have made it ineffective and apparently also because competitors as Shell and Sinclair started lobbying to prevent the embargo from becoming active from the moment they heard about Standard's "gentleman's agreement". 118

In any case, Standard continued to supply oil to the Mussolini regime throughout the Ethiopian campaign. As the FDR government would demonstrate, it even lied that it had not vastly increased the amount of oil delivered to the war effort. 119 In the same period the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the precursor to BP tied to the later coup of Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadeq, was refueling Italian warships 120, all contributing to the idea of sanctions being pointless and Mussolini attaining the pinnacle of prestige for his regime with the conquest of Ethiopia in 1937. The amount of oil found here turned out to be a huge letdown, but that is another discussion.

It shouldn't be forgotten that this episode occurred less than a decade after the secret 1928 "Achnacarry Agreement", in which Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon), Shell, and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (BP) agreed to form a cartel to fix oil prices, which in subsequent years was expanded to Mobil Oil, Gulf Oil, Texaco and Standard Oil of California. 121 FDR and World War II is what largely put a stop to such global cartel agreements.

Speaking of World War II, it appears that Standard Oil's Societa Italo-Americana Pel Petrolio (SIAP) continued to supply oil to Mussolini throughout 1940 and 1941 while it was an Axis country at war with all of western Europe, eventually most notably Great Britain. 122 This policy did not change until SIAP's assets were seized soon after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor 123, with the company given back to Standard Oil in 1946.

U.S. ICC CORPORATIONS FUNDED NAZI GERMANY

This aspect will only be summarized quickly here, because so much of this information has already been discussed in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article, of which, alongside the CFR, so many of the key players were members. Various bits and pieces of U.S. corporate ties with Nazi Germany are also mentioned and sourced throughout this article, including the upcoming chapter.

In summary: the Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Du Pont, General Motors, General Electric, Brown Brothers Harriman and IBM - all companies prominently involved in the ICC - all became notorious for having explored their "free market aspirations" by setting up cartels with German corporations that became major benefactors of the Nazi war machine: Fritz Thyssen entities as the Vereinigte Stahlwerke, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart and the Union Banking Corporation; the Hamburg-Amerika Line, I.G. Farben, Opel, Dehomag, Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G. (DAPAG), the Allgemeine Elektrizitaets Gesellschaft (AEG) and other corporations. 124

GERMAN ICC's TIED TO HITLER AND I.G. FARBEN

The German Committee of the ICC contained more than a few Hitler financiers. Anno 1937-1938 we find Ernst Poensgen, board chairman of Fritz Thyssen's Vereinigte Stahlwerke; the infamous Baron Kurt von Schroeder, part of the family running the J. H. Stein banking firm and I.G. Farben; and Carl Luer, a director of the Deutsche Reichsbank, Dresdner Bank, and the General Motors-owned Opel A.G. The first two, along with Thyssen, played very important roles in bringing Hitler to power 125, while Opel played a major role in building and maintaining the German war machine. 126

For sources on other names, look at ISGP's list of names and bios for the ICC.

Georg von Schnitzler, a member of the ICC's German national committee anno 1937, was an inlaw of Baron Kurt von Schroeder and part of family of generational I.G. Farben directors, as well as the J. H. Stein banking house. Despite being extensively cited in a 1945 senate report detailing the activities of I.G. Farben during the run up to World War II and during it, the details of the activities of both in the modern era are quite obscure.

First, Von Schnitzler van part of the secret February 20, 1933 meeting of industrialists at Hermann Goering's office at the Reichstag, in which Hitler denounced communism and, through Hjalmar Schacht, suggested setting up an election fund. 127 This was seven days before the Reichstag fire, used by Hitler to acquire dictatorial powers to counter the communist threat. Subsequently, Von Schnitzler, as member of the central committee of I.G. Farben's managing board and as chairman of the company's commercial committee, played a key role in preparing Germany for war.

From 1933 and especially since 1936 I.G. Farben was fully partnered with the Nazi government and army in the production of every possible chemical needed for war. I.G. Farben would actually carry out much of its own research in this regard, selling its ideas and products for more effective war to the army, in that way serving as the army primary research and development arm for anything having to do with chemical. Already in the mid 1930s, I.G. Farben was preparing for war by carrying out war games, which by the late 1930s became standard for the steel industry as well. 128

In line with this, from 1938 on, Schnitzler funded a propaganda campaign to drum up support for the annexation of the Sudetenland, the German-dominated area in neighboring Czechoslovakia. 129 When subsequently invasions started taking place, such as Poland in 1939, "Baron Georg von Schnitzler was right behind the troops, carrying IG's wishlist, entitled 'The Most Important Chemical Plants in Poland', with him." 130 I.G. Farben would completely take over the chemical industries of any country conquered by the Nazis and in that manner build its own corporate empire. As Schnitzler himself acknowledged:

"The development of I. G. during the last 12 years can't be separated from the Government's foreign policy." 131

Despite the central role of him and his family in everything that transpired during World War II, at Nuremberg, in 1948, Schnitzler was sentenced to just five years prison. From there, it was Germany's high commissioner, David Rockefeller mentor John McCloy, who arranged a "good conduct" early Christmas release for Schnitzler on December 20, 1949. 132 Eventually Schnitzler became president of the 1954-founded German-Latin America Society / Deutsch-Ibero-Amerikanische Gesellschaft. 133

August von Knieriem, another known member of the ICC 134, was among the I.G. Farben directors fully acquitted at Nuremberg, went back to becoming supervisory board chairman of IG-Farben-Industrie in Frankfurt am Main 135 and helped to reconstruct BASF. 136 His son 137, Jurgen, was a member of the board of directors of BASF from at least 1966 to 1972. 138

The acquittals were in no small part because the Nuremberg judges decided that I. G. Farben's board members were mostly innocent bystanders of the Nazi regime, and thus not personally liable for the company's utilization of slave labor 139 at its more than 300 facilities in Germany - including Auschwitz - and the occupied territories. 140

One would think if the I.G. Farben directors were so opposed to a massive world war, slave labor and that other "open secret" in company corridors, the extermination program, they would just have resigned and gone to work for other, less problematic German corporations. Hence, there was criticism of the light sentences. That obviously involved the prosecutor, but, controlled opposition as it all too often is, also one judge at Nuremberg dissented from the wholesale acquittal by stating:

"The record does not establish by any substantial credible proof that any of the defendants were actually opposed to the governmental solution of the manpower problems...

"On the contrary, the record shows that Farben willingly cooperated and gladly utilized each new source of manpower as it developed. Disregard of basic human rights did not deter these defendants. ... I conclude from the record that Farben accepted and frequently sought the forced workers, including compulsory foreign workers, concentration-camp inmates and prisoners of war for armament work because there was no other solution to the manpower needs. Farben and these defendants wanted to meet production quotas in aid of the German war effort. In fact, the production quotas of Farben were largely fixed by Farben itself because Farben was completely integrated with the entire German program of war production. ...

"That they would have preferred not to commit a crime is no defense to its commission. The important fact is that Farben's Vorstand [management board] willingly cooperated in utilizing forced labor. They were not forced to do so." 141

These words are actually somewhat mild still. During the war, I. G. Farben produced all or almost all of Nazi Germany's synthetic rubber, lubricating oils, methanol, plastics, poison gas, explosives, high octane airplane fuel, etc. 142 This was no coincidence, because starting in 1933, right after Hitler had become dictator of Germany, with support of I. G. Farben, Thyssen, Krupp and other major industries, it started to prepare Germany for war by making it independent of foreign imports. A lack of bauxite was compensated with magnesium development, natural rubber with synthetic rubber, pyrites with gypsum, and natural oil with coal-based processes. 143 Already in 1934-1935 I. G. Farben plants were prepared for war through the implementing of war games. 144

Through first-of-a-kind lobbying of the U.S. government on a voluntary basis by its cartel partner Standard Oil, owned by the Rockefellers, I. G. Farben was able to produce and import tetraethyl lead 145, shaving off many years of dangerous research, and increasing the horsepower of Nazi Germany's jetfighters with a whopping 67% percent. 146 Without that development, Germany would not have had a competitive air force by the time it was forced to go to war. "Forced" is the proper word here, because Germany's extreme rearmament campaign required plunder and annexation on a massive scale to prevent the country's economy from imploding.

Then there was the aspect of I. G. Farben selling its ideas and research to the army 147 and, with Von Knieriem's commercial committee at I. G. Farben demanding absolute loyalty to the Nazi party and I. G. Farben's own (post-war) "New Order" 148, serving as a global front for Nazi spy and propaganda operations. 149 As a December 1945 senate report summarized:

"I. G. Farben performed tremendous services for the Nazis in financing and disseminating propaganda designed to create disunity among various foreign nations and among various political, religious, and racial groups within such countries. I. G. Farben performed equally great services for the Nazis in undermining the war potential of foreign countries by means of its cartel agreements, monopoly position, and its penetration of the chemical and related industries throughout the world. ...

"The investigation ... has confirmed what heretofore have been mere speculations; and has uncovered a wealth of evidence proving conclusively (1) that without I. G.’s immense productive facilities, its intensive research, and vast international affiliations, Germany’s prosecution of the war would have been unthinkable and impossible; (2) that Farben not only directed its energies toward arming Germany, but concentrated on weakening her intended victims...

"Thousands of [I. G. Farben's] important files were, according to the testimony of its responsible officials, destroyed just prior to the advent of the Allied troops." 150

Yet another ICC-tied director of I.G. Farben during World War II, as well as a director of Deutsche Bank over 1938-1945, was Hermann Abs. Under arrest from January to April 1946, Abs too walked away scot-free, despite the fact that he was part of board meetings at I. G. Farben discussing the use of slave labor. 151 Abs release came in handy, because that way, over 1948-1951, he could run the Flick Group in trust for the Nuremberg-convicted Friedrich Flick, the only Nazi industrialist in the elite Keppler Circle who had direct, private access to Heinrich Himmler. 152 Flick received an early release from prison by Rockefeller man John McCloy in September 1950. 153 Abs, in the mean time, continued as chairman of Deutsche Bank, was invited to David Rockefeller's Bilderberg group in 1958, 1961 and 1966, was invited to become chairman of the second Davos conference in 1972, and in addition is known to have participated in meetings of the International Chamber of Commerce in the 1950s and 1960s, in 1966 alongside his close ally David Rockefeller.

We have to make a few observations here at this point in relation to the releases of Nazi war criminals. Schnitzler wasn't the only one released that December 20, 1949. Among the others was Emil Puhl, notorious for having been involved in the operation to strip Holocaust victims of gold that subsequently was deposited at the equally notorious Bank for International Settlements 154, of which Puhl served as a director. 155 Just a few sections ago we discussed the BIS in relation to the CFR, Pilgrims Society, ICC and accusations of pro-Nazism among western bankers and businessmen. The September 1950 early release of Nazi businessman Friedrich Flick and remaining I. G. Farben directors, due to even more enthusiastic clemency measures, caused such an uproar that an otherwise supportive State Department told McCloy to inform it beforehand what war criminals were about to be released. 156

The way these Nazi businessmen were dealt with is fascinating. It kind of underscores just how friendly the ties were between elites of the CFR, Pilgrims and ICC with all their "Axis" counterparts, as well as that there was a sense of impunity. Apart from the fact that they all received suspiciously lenient sentences, arguably there was very little practical sense to releasing these Nazi businessmen early, as it saved them a few days to a few months of prison at the most. Yet David Rockefeller mentor John McCloy did so anyway. With David Rockefeller soon inviting some of these elements into his Bilderberg group, the later Trilateral Group and the international advisory council of his Chase Manhattan Bank. In short, the politicians these businessmen funded were hanged, similar to some of the lower level administrators, but fellow business men whose activities similarly led to all of World War II's carnage, ended up being protected as much as possible.

Moving on from I.G. Farben, from late 1938, throughout World War II, the ICC's German National Committee chairman was Karl Lindemann 157, a banker and businessman who, as a U.S. Senate report put it, "apparently ingratiated himself with the [Nazi] party." The Senate report itself actually makes clear that there was no doubt about that. Apart from positions as an advisory board member of the German Reichsbank and a director of the Dresdner Bank, Lindemann also was a director of the Hamburg-America Line and the Standard Oil-owned German-American Petroleum Company / Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A. G. (DAPAG). 158 Similar to DAPAG director Emil Helfferich, Lindemann was a member of the Keppler Circle, a.k.a. Freundeskreis Himmler, that served as an unofficial economic advisory council to the Nazi Party from December 1931 on. In fact, Helfferich is the one who recruited Lindemann into the Circle in 1934, with the latter hinting that his appointment as chairman of the ICC's German National Committee in 1938 was due to his membership in what by then was known as the Himmler Circle. 159

Lindemann's Hamburg-America Line used to be headed by ICC German committee member Wilhelm Cuno, who died of a heart attack in January 1933 at age 56. In that period, when he was still involved in the ICC, Cuno reportedly was a co-founder of the Keppler Circle. 160 In any case, Cuno supported ultraright candidates as General Paul von Hindenburg and had invited Hitler to speak at the Hamburg National Club. A close business partner of the Jewish Warburg family in the Hamburg-America Line, the both of them asked Hitler to tone down his anti-Semitism. They were fine, however, though, with Hitler talking about invading Eastern Europe for "Lebensraum" that, obviously, would open "possibilities" for corporations friendly with the Nazi regime. 161

Maybe not by coincidence, in 1920 the Hamburg-America Line signed over its Hamburg and Bremen port facilities to W. A. Harriman & Co., which in return lobbied to reopen the company's old shipping lanes to and from the United States. 162 William Averell Harriman, of course, was the founding ICC U.S. committee member who in 1925 set up the Union Banking Corporation in New York as a front for Fritz Thyssen 163, the supervisory chairman of Vereinigte Stahlwerke and the most important Hitler financier.

At the same time, and in a vastly more low profile manner to this day, Harriman also was in business with Himmler friend and Keppler Circle insider Friedrich Flick through their Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation (CSSC). In 1929, through the CSSC, these men were able to take "control of the greatest vertical concern in Polish industry... which produced 50 percent of the iron and 20 percent of the coal in the nation". 164 That same year Harriman tried the Polish government to give him an "exclusive concession for electrification projects in almost the whole of Poland." 165 Polish authorities rejected this request, worried that Harriman not only was representing American big business, but also an increasingly imperialist German government, looking to take control of all of Poland's resources and government as a whole.

In this respect it is pertinent to mention Alfred Falter, by 1938 the only non-president, full national committee member for Poland in the ICC. Falter not only was was deeply involved in steel and coal oversight committees in the Silesia, he also served on the council of Poland's largest private bank, Bank Handlowy SA, from 1932 to 1939, overlapping with Harriman's 1927-1934 term here. 166 Whatever influence Harriman may have had post-1934 on Polish affairs is not clear to this author, nor whether he disappeared from Bank Handlowy due to the close ties of his business partners to Germany's new leader: Adolf Hitler. What we do know is that in 1942 it was reported that the mining interests of the CSSC "have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to Germany's war effort." 167 Whatever exactly happened at this level, in this region, and in this time period, certainly the ICC is a factor in understanding that.

Back in the late 20s and early 30s when Wilhelm Cuno was a German committee member of the ICC, other names included banker Louis Hagen and steel baron Paul Reusch. Hagen was a Jewish banker partnered up with the banking house Sal Oppenheim & Cie in financing the steel industry. Some readers may recognize the Oppenheim name, as a member of this banking family was invited to the 1001 Club post-World War II, alongside the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Bechtels and various royals houses of Europe. In the 1920s, important, conspiratorial, anti-union industrialists as Robert Pferdmenges and the Jewish Paul Silverberg were part of the "Louis Hagen Bank". 168 From 1918 to 1923 Hagen, Otto Wolff and Fritz Thyssen held the majority share in Deutsche Bank. 169 Hagen eventually sold his share off to Otto Wolff, a major Nazi financier who controlled Vereignigte Stahlwerke with Thyssen and whose son, Otto Wolff von Amerongen, eventually became one of David Rockefeller's longest-term allies in Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and even in the ICC by the 1960s - alongside generations of Deutsche Bank directors. Considered a "king of supervisory boards", Hagen held 93 such positions in 1930. He died two years later, while his bank was about to be liquidated. Not because the the Nazis were around the corner, but because Hagen turned out to be an unscrupulous speculator who was hit particularly hard by the emerging Great Depression.

The other ICC name just mentioned, Paul Reusch, was involved in all kinds of interesting "NGOs". For example, in 1927 he and Max Warburg were key founders of the Bund zur Erneuerung des Reiches (BER) / Federation for the Renewal of the Reich, which, among other things, "pressed for the dismantling of parliamentary democracy." 170 Countless business leaders were part of the group: Fritz Thyssen, Gustav Krupp, Albert Vogler, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, Robert Bosch, the ICC's Wilhelm Cuno, Louis Hagen and Abraham Frowein; as well as various other known Nazi financiers.

At the same time Reusch was a member of the Industrie Club Dusseldorf, once again with Fritz Thyssen, August Thyssen, Gustav Krupp, etc. At the invitation of Thyssen, Hitler actually made a rather notable speech to this club on January 26, 1932:

"It was one of those rare cases in which Hitler spoke the truth because he believed it would be of use to him. Restlessly he shot his eyes to the bearers of the most famous names, to [Gustav] Krupp, [Fritz] Thyssen and [Emil] Kirdorf, to [Hermann] Abs and [Robert] Pferdmenges, to [Hermann] Rochling and [Paul] Reusch, to [Ernst von] Borsig and [the sons of Hugo] Stinnes. Hitler [explained:]:

""Don't bother with the name of my party, with that ringing term Socialist German Workers' Party. The name was chosen to attract the workers. In truth, the NSDAP stands on the ground of free entrepreneurship. ... If we are accused of our intolerance, we proudly acknowledge it! We have made the relentless decision to root out Marxism in Germany to the very last!""

"When Hitler sat down, the audience, which had long since given up any distance, stood up and cheered him."171

Just as important, is that Reusch was the primary founder of the secretive and powerful Ruhrlade steel lobby in 1927, as well its precursor in 1919, the Essener Montagsgesellschaft / Essen Monday Club, in both cases primarily with Fritz Thyssen and Gustav Krupp. ICC's Ernst Poensgen, the board chairman of Fritz Thyssen's Vereinigte Stahlwerke, was another member of this insider club. 172

Reusch was not necessarily in the Hitler camp. He also supported other ultraright, union-busting candidates, but in November 1932 he certainly did sign the Industrielleneingabe Letter / The Industrial Input Letter asking General Paul von Hindenburg to transfer "responsible leadership" to Adolf Hitler. He did so alongside the ICC's Baron Kurt von Schroder, the ICC-tied Hjalmar Schacht, Emil Helfferich, discussed earlier as the sponsor at the Keppler circle of ICC German committee chairman Karl Lindemann 173, with both directors of the Rockefeller-owned Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A. G. (DAPAG) 174; and Fritz Thyssen and Albert Vogler of Vereinigte Stahlwerke. 175

Yet another member of the Ruhrlade to be found in the ICC was Herman Buecher 176, the board chairman of AEG/German General Electric with an early history at I.G. Farben and Krupp. Buecher also held positions as director of the Deutsche Reichsbank and Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke A. G. and was "a member of Goring's 12-man Armaments Council." As a result, he too was considered a person of interest to post-war denazification investigators. 177

Besides the individuals on the German Committee, maybe also very tellingly, in 1937 the International Chamber of Commerce organized its biennial world congress in Berlin. Adolf Hitler, Herman Goering and top Nazi finance minister and banker Hjalmar Schacht all attended the conference 178, with both the outgoing and incoming international president of the ICC - respectively Frederick Fentener van Vlissingen and Thomas Watson - proudly receiving their Order of the German Eagle decorations from Hitler. 179

THE ICC AND "GERMAN WORLD ECONOMIC SOCIETY"

The U.S. Senate biography of World War II German ICC head Karl Lindemann actually reads that this person also was chairman of a group called the "Gesellschaft zur Forderung des Institute fur Weltwirtschaft, Kiel (Institution for the Advancement of World Economy)." 180 Considering ISGP gathers information on elite clubs and NGOs from the Nazi Germany era, some of them already mentioned in relation to Paul Reusch in particular, this group needed to be looked into.

For some time the author did not know what to make of this NGO, except that it still exists to this day. A few weeks later, by coincidence, it was learned that in English circles this NGO went under the name "German World Economic Society" and already was controversial no later than March 1944, not just over the involvement of leading Nazi businessmen in the group as Baron Kurt von Schroeder and Hermann Schmitz of I.G. Farben, but also for being "the German equivalent of the National Association of Manufacturers ... working closely with the International Chamber of Commerce..." 181 To which was added that "German members of the ICC and the society were the main fifth column in France making the secret agreements with the French financiers and businessmen who betrayed the [French] Republic." 182 That sounds a lot like the theories surrounding the Mouvement Synarchique de Empire, which we, again, coincidentally, still need to address in relation to the ICC.

The author quickly tried to confirm some of the mentioned names of the "German World Economic Society", but was only partially able to do so. Universities and archives in the neighborhood only have a booklet of the Society dating to 1964, predictably stripped of the more controversial names that were active during World War II. Almost no trace was there to be found of old directors and members as Baron Kurt von Schroeder, or bankers as "[Frank] Tiarks [who] was until 1939, at least, one of about 200 honorary no-German members ... and contributed articles..." 183 I.G. Farben's Hermann Schmitz was listed as having contributed a 1940 paper though. 184 Emil Helfferich, the earlier mentioned director the Rockefeller-owned DAPAG oil firm who was part of the Himmler Circle, was listed as a contributor all the way back in 1914, when the Society was founded. 185

Equally interesting is that the German-language booklet also did mention that the Rockefeller Foundation was an important financier of projects at the German World Economic Society pre-, during and after the Nazi era. 186 In that sense the German World Economic Society, similar to Helfferich's 1900-founded Ostasian Verein (East Asian Association), definitely was part of an early international network of financiers, and definitely closely tied to the ICC, as already observed during World War II.

DUTCH ICC TIED TO NAZI COLLABORATION

The ICC's president from 1934 to 1937, Frederick Fentener van Vlissingen, a major Dutch industrialist, was considered an "arch-collaborationist" by a post-World War II Senate investigation. Overseeing a rayon cartel with German corporations, he married into the German Henkel family, similar to Germany's foreign affairs minister Joachim von Ribbentrop 187, hanged after World War II. In the 1970s Fentener van Vlissingen became a member of Prince Bernhard's 1001 Club, alongside the British and French Rothschilds, David and Laurance Rockefeller, the Bechtels, various other royal houses of Europe and a variety of curious intelligence-tied individuals. In the latter category we would find 1001 Club member Willem "Bib" van Lanschot, part of Prince Bernhard's secret and extra-judicial intelligence and special operations clique 188, whose sister Fentener van Vlissingen was married to. 189

By 1938 the president of the Dutch Committee was Rudolf Mees, a member of the banking family behind Bank Mees & Sons, founded in 1720. While little is known about this particular Rudolf Mees, Philip Mees, another partner in Bank Mees & Sons in the same period, was under investigation after World War II for sitting on the board of the Hollandsche Koopmansbank alongside German agents of I.G. Farben. 190

FRENCH ICC TIED VICHY FASCISM

Anno 1936 the banker Edmond Giscard d'Estaing, the father of France's future president Valery, was the ICC's vice president for France and also head of the French National Committee. By 1938 these positions were taken over by Rene P. Duchemin, an industrialist engaged in a dye cartel with I.G. Farben since 1927. During World War II, both men became allies of the collaborationist Vichy regime of General Marshal Petain, a person surprisingly popular by transatlantic elites in France and the United States from at least 1935 on. 191 While Giscard d'Estaing even was awarded by Petain 192, there's no information as to whether he was investigated for his fascist overtures. Duchemin, however, did end up with an arrest warrant after the allies took over France. 193

For sources on other names, look at ISGP's list of names and bios for the ICC.

Henri de Peyerimhoff is another interesting name from France, appearing as a member of the French National Committee by 1938. A banker and industrialist in pre-World War II France, a the spokesman of the coal mining industry he was vocally crusading against the 40-hour workweek limit and other measures implemented by the socialist governments. 194 He, Rene Duchemin and Francois de Wendel, the head of the fascist-sponsoring Comite des Forges, were accused in 1931 of having paid in 1929 four times the market value for Les Temps in an attempt to control the narrative of this newspaper. 195 From at least 1930 on, De Peyerimhoff was supervisory board chairman of the shipbuilding company Societe Algerienne de Navigation pour l'Afrique du Nord, owned by the Worms bank under Hypolite Worms. 196

These connections are interesting, because Edmond Giscard d'Estaing, Henri de Peyerimhoff and Hypolite Worms all were named as members of the Mouvement Synarchique d'Empire / Synarchist Movement of Empire 197, a controversial group of bankers and industrialists said to have steered France towards fascism and to have prepared it for an invasion of Nazi Germany. While at least at a high level, this does not seem to have been an accurate notion and more of an issue of the population trying to find someone to blame for France's rapid collapse during the Nazi invasion. Despite being the talk of the day, there are also serious doubts if the Synarchy ever really existed. However, there is no doubt that leading French industrialists, some of them to be found in the ICC, were all too keen to use fascism to quash the labor movement, with many becoming supporters of the Vichy government. Looking at how French industrialists as Rene Duchemin opposed the business terms imposed on them by I. G. Farben after the conquest of France 198, it certainly looks as if these French elites at most wanted a fascist French state with equal diplomatic and economic ties to Nazi Germany, which is not what they received.

Considering theories of the Synarchy are so closely associated with industrialists and bankers supporting the suppression of labor unions, it might be interesting to note that both the Synarchy 199 and the funding of extreme right action groups as the Croix de Feu 200 and apparently too the Faisceau 201 were tied to the Comite des Forges, a lobby representing the steel industry headed from 1918 to 1940 by steel industrialist and Banque de France director Francois de Wendel. The Committee was dominated for almost a century by the Schneider family as well. It was founded in 1864 by Eugene Schneider 202, the dominant steel baron of the time of Le Creusot who was the grandfather of ICC co-founder 203 and long-time member 204 Eugene Schneider II. Eugene II's father, who died early, was a vice president of the Comite des Forges in 1886 until his death 1898.

Fascism and the Synarchy in France were also tied to the Comite Franco-Allemand d'Information et de Documentation (CFAID) / Franco-German Committee for Information and Documentation 205, founded in 1925 by Emile Mayrisch 206, a co-founder in 1920 of the ICC and Luxembourg's dominant steel baron at the time who had been a major supplier of steel to Germany during World War I. Mayrisch already died in 1928, apparently playing a role in the obscurity of CFAID - a precursor of the 1952-founded European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) - to this day.

CFAID continued to exist though and over 1936-1938 progressed into the Deutsch-Franzosisches Studienkomitee (DFS) / German-French Study Committee. 207 Quite a number of ICC members were involved in the CFAID/DFS over the years.

FRENCH SIDE
  • Eugene Schneider: Thought it "too delicate" with German Krupp interests involved. Refused to join after the French foreign ministry refused to give him a letter that he needed to join out of "patriotic duty".
  • Henri de Peyerimhoff: Founding member 1926-.
  • Rene Duchemin: Founding member 1926-.
  • Rene Fougere: Founding member 1926-.
  • Ernest Mercier: Member 1928-.
 GERMAN/LUXEMBOURG SIDE
  • Emile Mayrisch: Key founder in 1926. Top steel baron of Luxembourg.
  • Ernst Poensgen: Founding member 1926-. Executive chairman of Vereinigte Stahlwerke.
  • Franz von Mendelssohn: Founding member 1926-. Major banker.
  • Hermann Buecher: Founding member 1926-. A history at I.G. Farben, Krupp, and AEG.
  • Louis Hagen: Founding member 1926-. Major banker financing the steel industry.
  • Abraham Frowein: Member 1928-. German ICC head. 208

Fritz Thyssen, Hitler's main financial angel, briefly was a founding member of the "Mayrisch Committee", until he got involved in (yet another) political scandal later that year. 209 Furthermore, Deutsche Bank, I. G. Farben, Krupp and AEG were represented on the Mayrisch Committee, respectively by founding members Emil von Stauss, Ernst von Simson, Bruno Bruhn and Felix Deutsch. 210 Bruhn's position was later taken over by Baron Tilo von Wilmowsky, the supervisory chair of Krupp Steel and the brother-in-law of Gustav Krupp. 211 Max Warburg, a member of the famous Anglo-American-German banking family, would end up becoming a member. 212

On the French side, similar to Eugene Schneider, Francois de Wendel refused to be among the founders. 213 However, Theodore Laurent, the vice president of Comite des Forges under De Wendel did become a founding member of the Mayrisch Committee. 214

Whether or not the Synarchy existed is barely important, even a distraction, as more than a few of the known members of the French ICC supported fascism in the run up to World War II. With that, all we seem to have done is rediscover and demonstrate an old conclusion from 1944 of U.S. Congressmen Jerry Voorhis:

"German members of the ICC and the [German World Economic] Society were the main fifth column in France making the secret agreements with the French financiers and businessmen who betrayed the [French] Republic." 215

This author does not ascribe to any grand conspiracy of French financiers and industrialists willingly allowing themselves to be invaded and subverted by their German counterparts. All this author says is that they had certain anti-democratic and anti-labor union values in common and would have gladly set up an equality-based alliance with Nazi Germany had public opinion and a variety of political leaders allowed for it in the pre-World War II era.

1928: THE CONFERENCE BOARD INVITED OVERLAPPING FASCIST INDUSTRIALISTS

In the original version of ISGP's Bilderberg article, this author traced back the origins of modern globalism back to the Conference Board, which over the 1928-1930 period set up a Foreign Correspondents board with businessmen representing corporate interests that even a century later are involved in the funding a wide variety of globalist think tanks. Think of the Midland bank, Societe Generale, Nestle, Siemens, the remnants of Vereinigte Stahlwerke, the Wallenberg's Enskilda bank, Pirelli, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, etc.

Turns out, of course, that while the Conference Board was founded in the United States in 1918 before the International Chamber of Commerce in 1920, it did not have this international touch until a full decade later. In fact, it was founded under the name National Industrial Conference Board.

What is very interesting to see though is that the Conference Board's founding Foreign Correspondents board was stacked with individuals that were also to be found in the International Chamber of Commerce, in most case already at an earlier stage. So in that sense the international aspect of the Conference Board is a "fork", or split off, of the ICC. Examples of familiar Conference Board names also to be found in the ICC in the 1920s and 1930s:

  1. Wallenberg family
  2. Georges Theunis
  3. Henri Peyerimhoff
  4. Franz von Mendelssohn
  5. Sir Arthur Balfour (1873-1957, not to be confused with the famous statesman).
  6. Antonio Stefano Benni
  7. Alberto Pirelli
  8. Baron Takuma Dan
  9. Junnosuke Inouye

Japan still needs to be discussed and is definitely a bit of a different story with regards to fascism than Germany or Mussolini. What we do see with the Conference Board too, of course, is that the strong representation of German and Italian fascism, even from pre-Nazi Germany. Pirelli and Benni have already been mentioned as important supporters of Mussolini, Henri de Peyerimhoff of French fascism and certainly labor union busting. From Germany we see Albert Vogler, the chairman of Fritz Thyssen's Vereinigte Stahlwerke, who in 1932-1933 joined Hitler's secretive, unofficial economic advisory council, the Keppler Circle. The supervisory chairman of Vereinigte Stahlwerke was Fritz Thyssen, Hitler's most important and earliest financier.

The two other "foreign correspondents" from Germany were Carl Friedrich von Siemens and the Jewish Franz von Mendelssohn. While maybe fas less associated with Nazism, these men were not necessarily innocent as to what happened in Germany. While Carl Friedrich von Siemens is generally absolved from charges that he supported Hitler, in 1918-1919 he had been a financier of the union-busting Anti-Bolshevik League, a precursor to Hitler's national socialist party that used the ultraright Freikorps militia to quash a communist insurrection and kill its leaders. Wealthy Jews similarly funded the Anti-Bolshevik League. During the rise of Hitler Siemens was backing other ultra-right candidates, including General Paul von Hindenburg, who appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933.

Fascinating is that it has been completely overlooked in the official historical narrative that Germany's big business clique was supporting a wide variety of ultraright, imperialist-minded, Jew-hating, labor-busting candidates. Money flowed from Hitler's NSDAP, to generals Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg, the DVNP of Wolfgang Kapp and Alfred Hugenberg; and the Anti-Bolshevik League. Hitler may have been the most radical and determined from the start, but the affiliations and agendas of these men, groups and financial backers all overlapped. And both the ICC and the Conference Board give as invaluable insights as to who "the establishment" was at the time, making it much easier to understand the union-busting and outright fascism-supporting supranational politics from this era.

JAPANESE ICC ASSASSINATED BY JAPANESE FASCISTS

In the previous section, the reader could spot the names Baron Takuma Dan and Junnosuke Inouye as both pre-World War II members of the Conference Board and the International Chamber of Commerce. It might be interesting to know that this author did not learn these names from from Conference Board or International Chamber of Commerce membership lists in his possession.

The author had managed to find a handful of Japanese national committee members from the 1920s and 1930s. However, it felt like a couple of important names must still be missing, because the top two zaibatsu/multinationals of the time, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, were not yet represented directly. So in order to get a little bit of a sense again as to what happened in Japan and to find additional names for the ICC, the author went back to what he had written years ago about the Black Dragon Society, a key underground fascist group that helped turn Japan into a fascist-militarist nation, reportedly in opposition to the biggest zaibatsu, Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

Nothing was found, initially. But quickly information popped up about a group allied with the Black Dragon Society, the Sakurakai (Cherry Blossom Society), which in 1932 was involved in an assassination known as the League of Blood Incident, something which Black Dragon was thought to have a hand in as well by post-World War II Allied authorities. 216 That actually turns out to be true, as Sakurakai leader Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto also was a Black Dragon. Why this is not emphasized in all kinds of official histories should be considered a mystery. Sticking to the Sakurakai for the moment, the coup had plotted to assassinate no less than twenty "liberal"-oriented businessmen and politicians. The term "liberal" needs to be highlighted here, as this was a major buzzword at the time for a clique of politicians and businessmen not interested in the (full) conquest of Asia and war with the United States.

In any case, the Sakurakai only managed to kill the first three targets on their list, the most eye-catching being a certain Baron Takuma Dan, described in 1927 as:

"Dr. [Takuma] Dan [is] chairman of the board of directors of the vast Mitsui system, which, relatively speaking, is John D. Rockefeller, Guggenheim and J. P. Morgan combined." 217

Seeing how Baron Takuma Dan was the chairman of Mitsui at the time, knowing Mitsui was the top zaibatsu for a good half century at that point, and already being aware that Baron Seinosuke Goh, the head of Mitsui-controlled Tokyo Electric, was an ICC board member for Japan by 1938, the author did a "hail Mary" search involving '"International Chamber of Commerce" and "Takuma Dan"'. There it was: Takuma Dan was on the Japan national committee of the ICC anno 1929. That sure is a fascinating coincidence.

The ICC of the 1920s and 1930s: Junnosuke Inouye, the Iwasaki/Mitsubishi inlaw; Mitsui chairman Baron Takuma Dan and Mitsui employee Baron Seinosuke Goh. These men, and the others, also represented the America-Japan Society (Japan branch of the Japan Society), the Institute of Pacific Relations, the 1920 "Welcome Association", etc. They also were the precise targets of the "militarists".

That's not all. A month before the assassination of Takuma Dan, on February 9, 1932, there had been a first "League of Blood" incident in which a certain former finance minister of Japan named Junnosuke Inouye was murdered. Inouye was the campaign manager for the Mitsubishi-controlled Minseito political party 218 and son-in-law of one of the Iwasaki barons 219, the family that founded the Mitsubishi zaibatsu in 1870. A brief biography of Inouye at the time read:

"Mr. Inouye was at all times eager to promote good-will between Japan and the United States and was a pioneer in urging Japanese-American cooperation not alone in financial affairs, but in the solution of problems concerning the Orient. [He was] twice Governor of the Bank of Japan, President of the Yokohama Specie Bank during the European War period, serving from 1913 to 1919, and three times Minister of Finance, first in 1923 [and later] in 1929, serving under two Premiers." 220

For the heck of it, this author ran a new search: '"International Chamber of Commerce" and "Junnosuke Inouye"'. There it was again: Inouye turned out to be listed as ICC vice president for Japan in the same 1929 ICC brochure that had Baron Takuma Dan on the Japanese national committee. On top of that, from 1920 on, both Inouye and Dan, as well as Mitsubishi's Awasaki family, turned out to be close international collaborators of Morgan banker and ICC founder Thomas W Lamont. 221

What are the odds of this? Did the fascist Sakurakai purposely target board members of the International Chamber of Commerce in their fascist coup attempt?

Well, make that three, because Baron Seinosuke Goh, whom we just mentioned, also was among the twenty liberal politicians and businessmen to be targeted for assassination by the Sakurakai. So was Mitsubishi's Baron Koyata Iwasaki 222, earlier mentioned as Inouye's inlaw.

In general, looking at the names on the list, the Seiyukai (formerly Jiyuto) and Minseito (formerly Kaishinto) political parties were targeted, including their respective controllers: Mitsui and Mitsubishi. 223 These zaibatsu and the politicians they fronted had always been unpopular among the masses, either for exploitation and corruption or, among ultraright militants, for a lack of "patriotism" and sailing too much of a western course.

To illustrate this division between the "liberals" and the "militarists" (the latter actually consisting of at least two factions: the Kodoha ("The Imperial Way") and slightly less extreme Toseiha ("Control")), and the misgivings of the Japanese public, a brief list of scandals, assassinations and coup plots might be in place.

One thing the reader should keep in mind is that the ministers of war and navy in pre-World War II Japan were picked by the emperor - and partial to influence of militarist advisors. 224 Prime ministers and other cabinet officials had no control over them. This explains why Japan's military build up and conquests so often contradicted promises made to other countries by Japan's often more moderate "liberal" prime minister and foreign ministers. 225 This latter group generally was tied in with the Mitsui and Mitsubishi zaibatsus, so not particularly "liberal" in what that word should imply.

  1. 1889: Foreign minister Marquess Okuma Shigenobu, who heavily fronted for the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, has one of his legs blown off in a bomb attack after accusations of negotiating a treaty too conciliatory to western powers. This is the same Okuma who allied himself as a "peace activist" with globalist U.S.-based "robber baron" Andrew Carnegie 226 of the Union League Club of New York City and eventually the Pilgrims Society, membership which Carnegie shared with the Morgans and Rockefellers. The bombing is the work of the ultraright group Genyosha, the precursor to the 1901-founded Kokuryukai / Black Dragon Society. The treaty negotiations are canceled after the attack. 227

    From about this point, Genyosha, founded in 1881, would come to play a very important role in Japanese politics. Despite having liaisons with leading zaibatsu, it has its own big business-derived income and is focused on driving western influence out of Japan, crushing communism and promoting colonial expansion. Being self-sufficient and fronting for the military, over the next few decades it intimidates a number of "liberal", "dovish" prime ministers while cooperating in electoral propaganda efforts with others. It is deeply involved in spying and propaganda operations for the military, as well as, apparently, coups and assassinations. 228

  2. 1914: The cabinet of Yamamoto Gonnohyoe falls after the Siemens Scandal generates huge protests. The scandal entails the Yamamoto government spending almost all its money on naval procurements, with the Japanese navy having accepted a 15% kickback from Siemens for years, taken over by a 20% kickback, through Mitsui, from Vickers. A disgruntled Siemens employee,conveniently or not, ends up forcing the scandal out into the open. 229

  3. Nov. 4, 1921: Sitting prime minister Hara Takashi, of the Mitsui-controlled Seiyukai party, is assassinated by 19-year-old ultranationalist Nakaoka Konichi, who claimed Hara was corrupt, in the employ of the zaibatsu, and an enemy of the military. 230 Ties to any established ultraright group of the assassin or his boss are unknown.

  4. 1925-1926: Virtually unknown alleged assassination plots are thwarted against liberal prime minister Takaaki Kato, a son-in-law of Mitsubishi founder Yataro Iwasaki 231; and Emperor Taisho. 232 Arrested for the plot against Kato in 1925 is Ryohei Uchida, the founder of the ultraright Kokuryukai / Black Dragon Society. Eventually Uchida is let go, without charges. 233 On March 5, 1926, Kato has his home broken into by an armed band who, in line with Uchida's campaign, oppose Kato's universal male voting rights policy. 234

    Both Takaaki Kato and Emperor Taisho would die in 1926, both from pneumonia and related complications, ending the "liberal" "Taisho democracy" in which parliament and the political parties were relatively strong compared to the (sickly) emperor and his clique.

  5. Nov. 14, 1930: Sitting prime minister Hamaguchi Osachi, representing the Mitsubishi-controlled Minseito party, survives an assassination attempt by the Aikokusha (Patriot Society) ultranationalist secret society, but still dies 9 months later from complications. In terms of ideology, the Aikokusha was considered identical to the Kokuryukai / Black Dragon Society. 235

  6. Mar. 1931: The "March Incident", an aborted coup plot in which prime minister Osachi Hamaguchi, of the Mitsubishi-controlled Minseito party, and other government officials are targeted for assassination (Osachi already was a dead man due to the earlier attempt, but nobody knew that at this point).

    Officially behind the plot to this day is the Sakurakai ultranationalist society, consisting of Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto and his coterie of "Young Military Officers" of the army and navy; with the aid of civilian ultranationalist leaders Shumei Okawa and Mitsugu Nishida. The latter two are supposed to incite large-scale riots in Tokyo, leading to the government calling in the military and declaring martial law, after which war minister General Kazushige Ugaki will take over the civilian government. The coup collapses though when Ugaki refuses to participate. 236 Allegedly a major financier of the plot is a member of the Tokugawa clan 237, the last shogunate to rule Japan. The protests fail to attract enough popular support, leading to the coup being aborted.

    The plot is kept secret from the public.

    The reason the author wrote that "officially" the Sakurakai is behind the assassination, is because the group's leader Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto also is an identified member of the much more important-yet-lowkey Black Dragon Society. 238 In other words, there's a direct line between the assassination attempt on Foreign minister Marquess Okuma Shigenobu in 1889 and the coup plots and assassinations of the 1930s.

  7. Oct. 1931: The "October Incident" or "Imperial Colors incident", a month after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. This is another aborted coup plot by the same elements: the Sakurakai, the Black Dragon Society, and Shumei Okawa.

    Apart from plotting to assassinate prime minister Wakatsuki Reijiro, of the Mitsubishi-controlled Minseito party; the pro-West foreign minister Kijuro Shidehara; and other officials, this time the coup plotters are looking to install General Sadao Araki as head of state. 239

    General Araki, a veteran of the Kwantung Army and leader of the radical Kodoha ("The Imperial Way") faction, is the 1924 founder of the Kokuhonsha secret society and looking to integrate it with other secret societies, such as Sakurakai and Black Dragon. He is a major pusher for the conquest of Manchuria and war with the Soviet Union. Already at this point he is one of the promoters and supporters of Shiro Ishii, the soon-to-be founder of the notorious Unit 731 human experimentation center on the Chinese mainland.

    Plot details would leak out and General Sadao Araki is politely asked to put a stop to it. Punishments are very mild and also this aborted coup is kept secret from the public.

  8. Feb. 9, 1932: Banker, Minseito campaign chief and finance minister Junnosuke Inouye, who is married into the Mitsubishi clan, is assassinated by the Sakurakai ultranationalist society, and thus also the Black Dragon Society.

  9. Mar. 5, 1932: Mitsui chairman Baron Takuma Dan is assassinated by the Sakurakai ultranationalist society amidst accusations and widespread protests that Mitsui, and to a lesser extent Mitsubishi, hoarded American dollars before Japan was taken off the gold standard in the wake of the Great Depression, devaluing the Japanese yen.

    A total of twenty businessmen and politicians are on the hit list of the Sakurakai (and thus also the Black Dragon Society), including Mitsubishi owner Baron Koyata Iwasaki and Tokyo Electric head Baron Seinosuke Goh, whose company is part of the Mitsui empire. 240

  10. May 15, 1932: The "May 15 Incident". Sitting prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, of the Mitsui-controlled Seiyukai party, is assassinated by the Sakurakai (and thus the Black Dragon Society). The killers also toss hand grenades into Mitsubishi Bank headquarters in Tokyo and try to assassinate visiting film star Charlie Chaplin in an effort to try and provoke war with the United States, or at the very least undo the 1930 disarmament treaty.

    General Sadao Araki, implicated in the "October (1931) Incident" as a key coup plotter, has been serving as Tsuyoshi's war minister since December 1931. Congratulating the assassins as "irrepressible patriots", he will continue in this post until January 1934. The assassination is the effective end of civilian control over the government until the post-World War II era.

    Popular support for the assassination leads to very mild sentencing of the (lower level) perpetrators.

  11. June-July 1933: "Just prior" to the "Shinpeitai Incident", Seihin Ikeda, the successor to Baron Dan Takama as chairman of Mitsui, is informed by a member of the kempeitai (military police) that he has been targeted for assassination, alongside his brother-in-law, Mitsubishi head Baron Koyata Iwasaki. 241 The plot is stopped before it takes place. 242

    Seihin already met with Sakurakai and Black Dragon Society leader Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto and similarly ultraright Kokuhoncha leader Kiichiro Hiranuma in June 1931, 8 to 9 months before the assassinations of Junnosuke Inouye and Takuma Dan. During the meeting he was able to get a good sense of how much of a threat these men constituted to zaibatsu leaders of Mitsui and Mitsubishi and their allied political leaders, and apparently himself was subtly threatened with death as well. 243 He never funded Hashimoto, despite being asked to do so. After the subsequent assassinations of Inouye and Dan, Ikeda ended up paying off some of these ultraright interests, most notably Ikki Kita, and also apparently worked on developing other sources of information to ensure his safety. 244

  12. July 1933: The "Shinpeitai Incident", an apparent coup attempt staged by ultraright civilians, with funding coming from the still extant Matsuya department store. 245

  13. April 1934: The "Teijin Incident" or "Teikoku Rayon Scandal", which really amounts to yet another ultraright coup by the same clique. Officials in the Ministry of Justice order the arrest of the director of the Bank of Taiwan, the president of the Teijin / Teikoku Rayon company, and the vice minister of finance, claiming these individuals allowed members of the Bancho-kai, a group of about a dozen investors, to buy shares of Teijin at an artificially low price. In July 1934 the "liberal" prime minister Saito Makoto dissolves the government, followed by the arrest of more officials.

    A certain (ultraright) Kiichiro Hiranuma, who had "served successively in the posts of Public Prosecutor General, Supreme Court President, and Justice Minister," 246 had been able to convince his former colleagues at the prosecutor's office of setting up what in 1937 by the court would be deemed an unsound investigation into the above group of people. 247

    At the same time it appears this Hiranuma had something to do with this investigation being reported on in the prominent newspaper, Jiji Shimpo, who first published on the brewing affair in a January 17, 1934 article entitled, 'Exposing the problem of Banchokai'. On March 10, 1934, the newspaper president responsible for this publication, Sanji Muto, dies in a shooting. While apparently the result of a dispute with a depressed, out-of-work salesperson (who committed suicide after) over the "appropriation" of an idea of his, widespread suspicions are cast at the Bancho-kai and other business groups criticized by Muto in the months before. 248 A few weeks later, in April, the first arrests are made in the Teijin case, followed by the fall of the Saito Makoto government.

    Most importantly, behind-the-scenes "puppet master" Kiichiro Hiranuma is a long-time member of the ultranationalist Kokuhonsha (National Foundation Society), along with Kodoha / Imperial Way leaders Sadao Araki and Jinzaburo Masaki, the former also the sitting war minister until January 1934. In total the Kokuhonsha has about 100,000 members, with Hiranuma and Araki being among its 1919 co-founders. In fact, Hiranuma has been pushed by the group as its preferred candidate for a fascist prime ministership. 249

    The Kokuhonsha's purpose is similar to the Sakurakai, the Black Dragon Society and related groups: get rid of the pro-West "liberal" element that rules Japan. In fact, Hiranuma is known to be an associate of Sakurakai leader Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto from the time the latter was involved in the coup plots and assassinations of 1931-1932. 250 Hence, the idea of a personal vendetta against the Saito Makoto government. for having been passed over for promotion due to his fascist proclivities quickly took a backseat to the idea of yet another attempted ultraright coup. 251

    In contrast, apart from the "liberal" Saito government, the Bancho-kai is presided over by the earlier-mentioned Baron Seinosuke Goh, head of the Mitsui-controlled Tokyo Electric firm and a national committee member of the ICC. Goh is seen as the undisputed head of the Bancho-kai, which is said to be operating as a kind of "Japanese Tammany Hall" 252, i.e., a local big business political lobby.

    Also "associated" with the Bancho-kai at one point or another was the earlier-mentioned Seihin Ikeda 253, the Iwasaki/Mitsubishi inlaw and chairman of Mitsui after the assassination of Baron Takuma Dan in March 1932 who himself was targeted for assassination a year before this "Teijin Incident". And already in June 1931 had a threatening meeting with Kiichiro Hiranuma and Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, the Sakurakai and Black Dragon Society leader.

    Politicians and businessmen start getting arrested in April 1934. The Bancho-kai is dissolved in May 1934. 254 The Saito cabinet resigns in July 1934. It isn't until 1937 that all those arrested and accused over the years are acquitted again, with the prosecutor's office being criticized by the court for having ran an unsound investigation. 255 Despite that, the affair once again leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the public and weakens "liberal" politicians and their Mitsui and Mitsubishi-backers. Fascinatingly though, prime minister Saito, a former admiral, already had to resign as secretary of the navy in 1914 due to involvement in the Mitsui-tied Siemens scandal.

  14. Feb. 26, 1936: The biggest coup attempt of pre-World War II Japan involving about 1,400 "Young Military Officers". The prime minister and other moderate military and civilian leaders are targeted for assassination, including those who supported the London Naval Treaty of 1930 that restricted an international arms build up.

    Three of six assassination attempts are successful, including on former prime minister Saito Makoto and finance minister Korekiyo Takahashi, who both had been forced to resign in the wake of the ultraright-instigated "Teijin Incident" 1.5 years before. Takahashi also is a former prime minister of the Mitsui-controlled Seiyukai party, whose president he was, and the four-time finance minister accused of taking Japan off the gold standard in December 1931 in collusion with Mitsui. Time magazine actually wrote quite prophetically on the (looming) death of Takahashi in a December 1934 article, just over a year before the assassinations:

    "Every Japanese knows that the House of Mitsui ("Morgans of Japan") made millions out of devaluation by selling yen short. It was the Daruma [Korekiyo Takahashi]'s own luck that patriots assassinated not him but the Mitsui Manager Baron [Takuma] Dan who had filled the campaign coffers of Mr. Takahashi's party. Last week the Seiyukai, still financed by Mitsui, were incensed when their Daruma joined the militarist Cabinet of mild Premier Admiral Okada and dictatorial War Minister General Hayashi." 256

    Predictably, Okada became another target of the assassins, while the militarist Hayashi was left alone.

    Despite several successful assassinations, the plot eventually is thwarted. In a change of course, the (visible, low-level) leaders of the Kodoha plot are executed, leading to the (somewhat) less extreme Toseiha ("Control") faction solidifying their dominance in the military.

    Foreign minister Koki Hirota, "a super-patriot of the Black Dragon Society" 257 and one of Society's "most famous pupils" 258, is selected as prime minister in a "compromise" between warring factions. One wonders how much of a compromise this was, also seeing how Hirota was involved in drafting the 1915 'Twenty-One Demands' of Japan upon China, that were "so flagrantly outrageous that their very existence was denied to President Woodrow Wilson repeatedly, officially and as long as possible by the Japanese Embassy." 259 In line with the Toseiha faction, Hirota may not want go after the zaibatsu 260, but his appointment nevertheless constitutes a successful coup in which "liberal" elements are replaced by hardliners. As late as 1942, Koki Hirota is identified as the "general manager" of the Black Dragon Society. 261

    Soon after his appointment, Hirota signs the Anti-Com-intern Pact with Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy and starts supporting invasions into the Asian mainland under the guise of anti-communism. After World War II he is sentenced to death.

    As for high level support of the coup, a portion of the funds used in the coup came from Fusanosuke Kuhara 262, head of the Kuhara zaibatsu, and the Hitachi company that fell under it, until 1928, when the whole conglomerate was incorporated into the new Nissan zaibatsu, founded by Kuhara's brother-in-law, Yushisuke Aikawa. 263 Nissan is best known as the main contractor of the Kwantung army in Manchuria, from late 1936 on in an official capacity. 264

    An April 1936 police report makes clear that Kuhara provided money for the coup to a liaison of the "Young Military Officers" named Tetsuya Kamekawa, whom, according to Kuhara, maintained a "close relationship" with the earlier-mentioned General Sadao Araki, the head of the Kodoha faction; and General Heisuke Yanagawa, implicated in the Nanking Massacre, "who are of "The Imperial Course Society."" 265 (i.e., the Kodoha Society, or "Imperial Way") Among Kuhara's listed acquaintances were:

    1. General Araki himself;
    2. Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, a Sakurakai leader involved in the aborted coups of 1931 and at least to a degree the 1932 assassinations;
    3. General Kuniaki Koiso, a leader of the Sakurakai, a member of the the "moderate "Toseiha faction", a governor general of Korea, and prime minister of Japan from 1944 to 1945 eventually sentenced to life imprisonment;
    4. governor-general of Korea General Kazushige Ugaki, a head of the "Toseiha faction" who refused to back the March 1931 coup of the rival Kodaha faction despite having their support for becoming prime minister; and together with Koiso targeted for arrest in the February 1936 coup;
    5. war minister General Hisaichi Terauchi, also of the Toseiha faction;
    6. General Sosaku Suzuki, a recent head of military police in Manchuria;
    7. the "non-militarist", pro-U.S. admiral Yamamoto who nevertheless ended up commanding the assault on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. 266

    In addition, a coterie of (emerging) generals and admirals as Iwane Matsui, Seiichi Kita, Heitaro Kimura, Shintaro Hashimoto - who generally all perished prematurely related to World War II - is listed as, "Ronin (Henchmen) [who are] given about 100,000 Yen annually" 267, possibly indicating that they were on the payroll of Kuhara and his brother-in-law.

    Kuhara's brother-in-law, Aikawa, didn't build his Nissan zaibatsu from scratch. He was a relative of his early mentor Kaoru Inoue / Inouye (1836-1915). 268 Inoue, and "elder statesmen" of the Genro part of the "Meiji oligarchy", was "a political enemy of [Mitsubishi politician Marquess] Okuma and close friend of Mitsui's Takashi Masuda." 269 In fact, Inoue was Mitsui's top financial advisor from 1891 on, despite continuing to serve in government as home and finance minister until 1898. Inoue rationalized this conflict of interest by explaining that, while "burdensome", he didn't see "any alternative" to accept the Mitsui post, because Mitsui is so big that it is inherently intertwined with the Japanese economy. 270 When operating the Nissan group in Manchuria, Aikawa was close to its economics minister, Nobusuke Kishi 271, whose five-year plan implemented in 1936 created a slave labor state for the benefit of corporate heads and other elitists.

As the reader can see, never popular, Mitsui and Mitsubishi and their respective political power bases, the Seiyukai and Minseito political parties, were continually targeted for assassination from at least 1930 on by the Kodoha / The Imperialist Way "militarist" clique in particular. Although, realistically, we would have to say that this clique had been targeted by the overarching Genyosha / Black Dragon Society network since the 1889 assassination attempt on foreign minister Marquess Okuma Shigenobu. In any case, this "militarist" clique involved:

  1. top generals of the Kwantung army that controlled Korea and Manchuria, in particular those belonging to the Kodoha / Imperial Way militarist faction;
  2. various military and civilian secret societies as Sakurakai, Aikokusha, Kodoha, with Black Dragon Society at the top - all mixed in with the "Young Military Officers" of the army and navy;
  3. the war and naval ministers, unaccountable-to-the-prime minister, and sometimes certain similarly unaccountable "genro", those of the heritage of Prince Yamagata Aritomo (d. 1922);
  4. the new Nissan-Hitachi zaibatsu under the control of Yoshisuke Aikawa and his brother-in-law Fusanosuke Kuhara;
  5. members of the Tokugawa family, the last shogunate to rule Japan.

Some of these same elements also were looking to build a covert action group in the United States. In 1929 a certain Tekichi Nakamura moved to the United States, where he founded the Butoku-kai movement that would eventually have 50 chapters in California and 10 more in the rest of the United States, with a total of 10,000 "Nisei" followers. On 1931 and 1933 trips back to Japan with a number of Nisei he received official endorsement from the earlier-mentioned ultraright, coup-plotting General Sadao Araki, allied military officers and Prince Nashimoto Morimasa, the uncle-in-law of Emperor Hirohito. Mitsuru Toyama, head of the Black Dragon Society, became an advisor to Butoku-kai and one of its financiers.

Most tellingly, in July 1938 Nakamura, with the support of this entire clique, opened the North American College of the Imperial Way in Tokyo, a.k.a. "Kodo College", as in "Imperial Way" College. This clearly was named after the "Kodoha Faction" within the military that was headed by General Araki. Supposedly this faction was purged after the February 1936 assassinations and coup, but it's nationalist-imperialist thinking clearly remained strong.

Screenshots from a 1942 House Committee on Un-American Activities report.

Fact is, the "militarist" Kodoha ("The Imperial Way") and Toseiha ("Control") factions have never been analyzed in the detail that really is required for full understanding. There are still way too many gaps in available information. For one, full historical membership of Genyosha and the Black Dragon Society would come in very handy. The same goes for Sakurakai. Another important question is how *exactly* these groups were tied in with different zaibatsu, other major business interests, and a wide group of other terrorist-inclined military and civilian secret societies. One has to conclude that a lot of details are lacking, at least in English-language sources.

What we do know in general terms is that certainly after the February 1936 coup and increased "militarist" control over the economy in 1937, that Mitsui and Mitsubishi decided to get in line with the "militarists" 272, with the now-dominant Toseiha militarist clique not seeking to assassinate these zaibatsu interests anymore. There was no point in resisting really for the former group, because "liberal" politicians were mostly out of power from the 1936 assassinations and coup on. It should be clear that the mantra "If you can't beat them, join them" increasingly became applicable.

Subsequently, Mitsui and Mitsubishi became the biggest military producers in the run up, and during, World War II, always remaining bigger than competing zaibatsu, including the newer "shinko" zaibatsu, the biggest of which was Nissan. All three - Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Nissan - were top players in mining, chemicals, and the production of jet fighters and warships for the navy (Kawasaki was another upcoming major producer of warships). 273 Occasionally they seem to have had their hands in the pot in some other way. In something that may or may not remind us of the Siemens Affair, Mitsui Trading was the go-between for Nakajima Aircraft with all sales to the army and navy, respectively until 1937 and 1940. 274 The Mitsubishi Shipyard build many warships for many decades, including the 'Musashi', the largest and also among the last battleships ever produced.

Overall, between 1941 and 1945, the Big Four zaibatsu increased their share in the economy from 12 percent to 24 percent 275, with Mitsui and Mitsubishi also vastly increasing their share of foreign investment. This was all due to receiving large overseas industries after conquests by the Japanese military.

Certainly the treatment of both domestic and especially foreign workers by Japanese zaibatsu left a lot to be desired. It wasn't until the late 1990s, with China becoming more powerful and U.S. government controls against suing Japan relaxed a bit, that various lawsuits along these lines came off the ground. Some of the newly uncovered documents revealed that corporations as Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki specifically requested the government for white slave labor, considering this type of labor the most skilled. Over the years these lawsuits were followed by a number of apologies and some minor reparations payments. It remains a tense issue, however. 276

One element that Mitsui has never been able to account for is the drugging of China. The ruling Toseiha clique of Manchuria in the 1930s was the "Reliable Eleven", who had the "Three Crows", a general's clique, above them; and all fell under the authority of Field Marshal Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, an uncle and advisor to the Emperor Hirohito. The "Reliable Eleven" included future prime minister Hideki Tojo, as well as a military intelligence named Gen. Kenji Doihara, a Black Dragon Society operative 277 responsible for well-known events as the assassination of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 and the 1931 false flag Mukden Incident that preceded the initial Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

Doihara also was responsible for the lacing of Mitsui's Golden Bat cigarette for the Chinese market with opium, with the intent of undermining Chinese resistance and destroying its culture. 278 By 1939 the Golden Bat was the most often used method of taking opium among the Chinese, with Chinese workers often being paid in opium. 279 Almost nothing has been written about this episode, but while Mitsui, through its subsidiary, apparently reaped enormous profits from the opium trade, it was never called to answer for these like these, while Doihara and Tojo were executed after World War I.

Looking at Takamine Mitsui, the head of the Mitsui family from 1894 until his death in 1948, he was described as being very pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish and anti-communist both before 280 and after World War II. 281 Some of his key personnel, most notably Shiro, Sasaki, who handled all political liaisons of the company, was an ardent collaborator with Europe's fascist regimes, where at least the French Vichy regime credited Mitsui with providing them with more useful intelligence than the Japanese embassy. 282

Along these lines, it is also fascinating, and maybe even telling, to see how J. P. Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont spoke about the Japan-China conflict in a November 1931 letter to fellow J. P. Morgan partner Nelson Dean Jay:

"We think that in the Manchurian situation the Chinese have been really the aggressors in that they have apparently had no interest in observing existing treaties and have not hesitated to encourage roving bands to beat up Japanese nationals...

"No one can say that either side is without fault. But in our judgment, the Japanese have no imperialistic designs in Manchuria... Four years ago when I was last in Japan the Japanese Authorities were earnestly begging the Chinese to sit own with them in a friendly way to thrash out all questions in reference to Manchuria. ...

"From the press reports it would seem that the League Authorities gave rather complete credence to the Chinese view. If the League should insist that the Chinese should sit down and negotiate with the Japanese or else give the Japanese such assurances as could be relied upon, that Japanese nationals in the railway zone would not have their throats cut, the difficulties would be much lessened. Love from us all." 283

Japan had "no imperialistic designs in Manchuria"? That is a pretty strange position to take looking at the list above of all the conquests Japan had been involved in for decades at that point. It should be clear that Lamont was trying to remain one of Japan's primary foreign banks.

If Lamont had that opinion, it indeed makes sense that the heads of Mitsui and Mitsubishi - the partners of Lamont and Jay in the ICC at that point - also had little to no desire to give up the Japanese colonies. Why would they? It appears they were looking to hold on to existing colonies, and at most expanding through economic means. Any military action would likely be reserved to counter (Russian) communist forces, at the right time, in line with western policy.

After World War II quite a few of these elite elements were punished rather softly or not at all 284, similar how the names of major zaibatsu as Mitsui, Mitsubishi and even Nissan were removed from prosecution lists. In no time both elements were used by the military administration of General Douglas MacArthur in stabilizing Japan and fighting communism. The Yakuza and its control over politics was derived from this network, an element that his touched upon in ISGP's American Security Council article.

Very reminiscent of what happened in Germany and Italy, while these more permanent elite elements were protected for the most part, politicians and generals were prosecuted and often sentenced to death. Hideki Tojo, the prime minister of Japan during most of World War II, for example, was scapegoated and fast-tracked to the gallows by the MacArthur administration in order to protect the image of the emperor. 285

Leaving the "militarist" clique be, it is clear that the "liberal" clique surrounding Mitsui, Mitsubishi and its respective political parties, the Seiyukai and Minseito, were exactly what was targeted by the "militarists" surrounding Genyosha, the Black Dragon Society and Kodoha faction in the military. Mitsubishi's Iwasaki clan-inlaw Junnosuke Inouye, Mitsui chair Baron Takuma Dan, and the Mitsui-tied Bancho-kai president Baron Seinosuke Goh all were targeted, and all belonged to the International Chamber of Commerce.

Digging deeper, though, we find that Inouye was a founding Japan council member of the Institute of Pacific Relations in 1925, serving as the Japan council's chairman by 1927. 286 His ICC partner, Baron Takuma Dan, representing Mitsui, was named as an important supporter of the IPR in this early period, holding IPR-related receptions. 287 Another ICC council member for Japan anno 1929, Akira Ishii, also was a founding council member of the IPR. 288 So was Shibusawa Eiichi 289, the major economic reformer of his era whom we still need to discuss.

The IPR was annually supported by the Rockefeller Foundation from 1926 on 290, with early western names including RIIA / Chatham House co-founders Lionel Curtis and James T. Shotwell, the latter also of the Carnegie Endowment and the ICC. Arnold Toynbee, director of studies of RIIA, was another early important participant. 291

Inouye, Dan and the similarly assassinated finance minister Korekiyo Takahashi, all were on the founding board of the 1917-established America-Japan Society, the Japanese counterpart to the older, Manhattan-based Japan Society. Two names these two societies had in common were the (prominent) membership of Baron Shibusawa Eiichi and Pilgrims Society founder Lindsay Russell. 292

Lindsay Russell was a founding member of the Japan Society in 1907, president by 1910 and chair anno 1920. Famous Pilgrims Society financier Jacob Schiff, was director of the Japan Society by 1910, alongside his son Mortimer Schiff (Pilgrims) and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. partner Otto Kahn (Pilgrims). 293 Frank Vanderlip (Pilgrims), the president of the Rockefeller/Standard Oil-fueled National City Bank, became president of the Japan Society in 1920. 294

The role of these Kuhn, Loeb & Co. financiers on the founding board of the Japan Society makes sense, because immediately before they had become "Japan's bank" in the United States. 295

There is a ton of history here. To understand how this came about, we need to look little further than Baron Takuma Dan's brother-in-law, Viscount Kaneko Kentaro. Already in 1900, Kentaro founded the American Friendship Society, known in Japan as Beiyu Kyoka. Kentaro was Harvard-educated, co-wrote the 1890 Meiji Constitution of Japan, was a member of the Institute of International Law from 1891 on, lobbied U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt to end the 1904-1905 Russo-Japan War with the Treaty of Portsmouth, and as late as 1941 was one of the few politicians to speak out against war with Japan.

In 1905, Viscount Kaneko Kentaro -- again, the brother-in-law of Mitsui chieftain Baron Takuma Dan, also later on of the ICC, the Institute for Pacific Relations, and the America-Japan Society, as well as assassinated in 1932 by the "militarists" -- was in New York City with Baron Korekiyo Takahashi (1854-1936; also already discussed as an America-Japan Society co-founder who was assassinated by the "militarists" in 1936), the vice governor of the Bank of Japan and later the Japanese minister of finance and prime minister, where these men tried to establish business relations with American banking elites. Their first choice was J. P. Morgan, Sr., who apparently had no interest in Japan and dismissed them. Subsequently the men established business ties with Jacob Schiff, the Kuhn, Loeb & Co. partner whose family members were generational members of the Pilgrims Society and the later-founded CFR. From 1906 until his death in 1920 Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was "Japan's bank" as a result of these ties. Takahashi's relationship with Schiff was so close that Takahashi's daughter lived with the Schiffs in New York City for three years, from 1906 to 1909. 296

As a result of these ties, in 1907, the Japan Society was set up in Manhattan, New York City, with Lindsey Russell and the Kuhn Loeb & Co. clique - all belonging to the freshly-founded Pilgrims Society - dominating it. The most important Japanese member of the Japan Society by 1910 was Baron Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931). 297 Known as "the father of Japanese capitalism", Eiichi was a key player in East-West business relations of his era. He started out his career as a financially savvy assistant to the half-brother of Prince Yoshinobu Tokugawa (remember how the Tokugawa funded a 1932 "militarist" plot), whose shogun Tokugawa clan ruled Japan from 1603 to 1867 and counted Mitsui as one of its largest merchant houses.

This Tokugawa Period for Japan ended with the 1868 Meiji Restoration, when the emperor became the main ruler of the state again, slowly followed by democratic and capitalist improvements. The year of the Meiji Restoration - 1868 - Eiichi was part of a Japanese delegation that visited Europe, during which he became convinced that western business practices needed to be introduced to Japan. Subsequently he:

  • introduced joint-stock corporations in Japan;
  • introduced the use use of double-entry accounting;
  • founded the Japanese Chamber of Commerce in 1872, serving as first president until 1902;
  • founded the joint-stock First National Bank / Dai Ichi Kokuritsu Ginko in 1873 and hundreds of joint-stock companies;
  • founded the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1878;
  • became a member of the Japan Society in Manhattan no later than 1910;
  • served as co-chairman alongside Frank Vanderlip in the "Welcome Association" (Viscount Kaneko Kentaro served as president) of 1920 that introduced elite American businessmen to their Japanese counterparts, such as Baron Mitsui, and the most important cabinet officials; 298
  • joined the board of the 1917-founded America-Japan Society, alongside Viscount Kaneko Kentaro, Baron Takuma Dan, Junnosuke Inoue and the American Lindsay Russell. 299;
  • was a founding member in 1925 of the Japan council of the Institute for Pacific Relations, alongside ICC council members Junnosuke Inouye, Akira Ishii and, official or unofficial, Baron Takuma Dan of Mitsui. 300

While Shibusawa Eiichi would have been a natural choice for invitation to the ICC had it been founded sometime prior to 1902, Shibusawa was too old by the time the Japanese attended their first ICC plenary conference in London in 1923. The representative for Japan at that point was Raita Fujiyama, a successor of Eiichi as Tokyo Chamber of Commerce president 301 and a member of Eiichi's 1920 "Welcome Association". 302 Shibusawa Eiichi would still come to play an important role in the ICC through his grandson, Viscount Keizo Shibusawa, who was chairman of the ICC's national committee for Japan, also hosting the 1955 international congress of the ICC in Tokyo 303 and heading the "sixty-member delegation" to the ICC's 1957 congress in Naples, Italy. 304 In that manner, Viscount Keizo served as an important link to western capitalists before Japan was invited to the Trilateral Commission in 1973 and subsequently Davos.

The name Frank Vanderlip above as co-chairman of the 1920 "Welcome Association" alongside Baron Shibusawa Eiichi maybe should be given a bit of additional attention. As partially mentioned, Vanderlip was a Pilgrim, president of the Rockefeller/Standard Oil-fueled National City Bank from 1909 to 1919, part of the Jekyll Island meeting in 1910 that established the Federal Reserve, a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation, and in 1920 became president of the Japan Society. This was the year that Jacob Schiff died and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. began to lose its preferential treatment as "Japan's bank". The Morgan bank would soon become the dominant bank in Japan 305, but the Rockefellers, Ford, General Motors and General Electric also became important investors in Japan. 306

So, clearly, Japanese fascist "militarists" of the 1930s most certainly targeted the liberal-globalist network surrounding not just the ICC, but also the Japan Society, the America-Japan Society, the "Welcome Association", the Institute of Pacific Relations and the Mitsui/Mitsubishi relationship with American banks as Kuhn, Loeb & Co., J. P. Morgan & Co. and the Rockefeller's National City Bank. This does set it apart from the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy.

This does not mean that this clique of zaibatsu-based "liberals" was particularly moderate. Mitsui and maybe even more Mitsubishi, for its domination of military and civilian shipping in the 19th century and technological improvements tied to that, were major early drivers of Japanese imperialism.

Another basic Japanese history might be needed at this point: From 1603 to 1868 Japan went through the Tokugawa Period, an isolationist, Confucian- and Bushido-inspired dictatorship based on master-servant relationships in which the merchant class were lowly servants of the Samurai families. The only ones allowed to do business in Japan was the Dutch East India Company. The reason for this isolationist system in no small part was due to the experience of colonial power Portugal - which arrived in Japan in 1543 - selling rifles to warring parties, converting the population to Catholicism and enslaving Japanese women to be sold in Europe. With aid from the Dutch, who opposed Catholicism, Japan was united under the Tokugawa shogunate and subsequently shut out all colonial influence between 1603 and 1868.

The Tokugawa's isolationist system increasingly came under threat from 1797 with western powers looking to trade with Japan. The 1853-1854 American Perry Expedition, supported by the British and French, forced Japan to start trading with the West, as it was absolutely incapable of stopping modern western military technology.

With the 1868 Meiji Restoration the rule of Tokugawa shogunate was ended and the emperor became the main ruler of the state again. This change was rapidly followed by the creation of a democracy- and capitalism-based system copied from the West. The Japanese Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1872, the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1878, etc. This was summarized earlier in relation to Baron Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931). From here the "Big Four" zaibatsu corporate conglomerates emerged that came to dominate society: Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Yasuda, where the first two by far came to be the most politically influential.

Meanwhile, countless future Japanese politicians, heads of corporations and military men started to receive their education in Europe and the United States, or were stationed here for periods of time, all bringing their experience into Japan. In 1884 Japan even adopted a British-style peerage system with terms as prince, marquis, count, viscount, and baron. In the same time British or European-style mustaches became very popular among Japan's elite.

Also copied from the West was the desire for overseas colonies. Due to Japan's rapid technological progress, it soon quickly looking at the Chinese and Koreans as primitive and easy prey. A policy of colonial conquest was the result, involving the following regions:

  1. The island of Hokkaido in 1869.
  2. The Kuril Islands in 1875.
  3. The "gunboat diplomacy" behind the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876.
  4. The conquest of Taiwan in 1895.
  5. The full annexation of Korea in 1910.
  6. Controlling Manchuria over 1924-1928 through the backing of Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin, who conquered and held Beijing in 1926-1928.
  7. The September 1931 invasion of Manchukuo / Manchuria, after a major economic downturn due to the Great Depression with exports to the United States greatly lowered.
  8. The 1933 invasion of China's Jehol province.
  9. The full-scale invasion of China in 1937.
  10. The September 1940 conquest of French Indochina to prevent China from bringing in arms and fuel through this region.
  11. The December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, drawing the U.S. into war.
  12. The December 8, 1941 invasion of the Philippines.

Until getting involved in skirmishes with Chiang Kai-Shek in China's Shandong province in 1928, Japan's overseas conquests enjoyed popular support, if only through the use of propaganda. Nationalist extremism and criticism of the zaibatsu was always there. Both were exacerbated by the economic problems Japan started suffering from the early 1920s and the "liberal" clique signing the 1930 London Naval Treaty, known under its full name as the Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament.

It's at this point that the Kodoha militarist clique - really a branch of the older Black Dragon Society - became a powerful influence and started to assassinate top members of the "liberal" zaibatsu-allied clique. The Kodoha "militarist" clique simply was very extreme, self-serving and ultimately suicidal. To illustrate, when in 1932 (ICC national committee member) Baron Takuma Dan heard a rumor that the Netherlands was looking to sell its New Guinea and-or Sulawesi colonies, he suggested that his Mitsui conglomerate could buy these Indonesian islands from the Netherlands. The "militarists" objected, suggesting that Mitsui pour this money into the military, so that it could capture the islands by force. 307

Japanese militarism can be hard to understand due to it's innate ego- and group-think-based radicalism, so typical in varying ways with other non-western societies. It simply was a remnant of Japan's Samurai system, both in terms of keeping its own heritage intact, as well as its imaginary "honor" system that led to so many unnecessary "harakiris" and "banzai attacks" during World War II.

In fact, it was basically suicide for Japan to attack the United States at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Even if Japan would have managed to destroy the carriers here, they knew that in the long run there would be problems, because the industrial capacity of the United States was much greater than Japan's. Calmer minds would have resorted to diplomacy and alternative solutions to FDR cutting off (extremely crucial) oil supplies to Japan on August 1, 1941.

Similarly, during the key 1942 Battle of Midway, Japan's "Banzai" approach resulted in the loss of its four most elite carriers to just one, an old one, for the United States. Even with three carriers destroyed, the fourth just "banzai-ed" into the (lesser) striking range of the American fleet and was lost as a result as well. Rather than abandoning ship, Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi and the captain decided to go down with it many hours after its full crew had been evacuated.


FUNDING COMMUNISM

Building up Stalin's Russia

This section has moved to its own article.


PART III

Globalism rebooted: from the ICC to Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and Davos

We definitely don't have a full picture yet of the pre-World War II International Chamber of Commerce: of all its members, all its conference participants, or even all its international committee members. Still, we can relatively easily draw a line between the ICC and post-World War II globalism that really took off with the founding of Bilderberg in 1954. Pre-World War II ICC members who ended up visiting Bilderberg included:

  1. Alberto Pirelli: Important financier of the rise of dictator Mussolini from about 1915, seven years before Mussolini came to power. Founding member in 1920 and long-time Italian committee member of the ICC. Close ally of J. P. Morgan & Co. bank in the 1920s and 1930s with regard to World War I reparations negotiations and general economic ties. Co-founder in 1934 and president from 1935 on of the (Italian) Institute for International Political Studies / Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI), the Italian branch of the CFR and RIIA which also was Mussolini supported. A founding member of Bilderberg in 1954, also visiting in October 1957, 1958, 1960, 1963. His son visited in 1965, 1967 and 1968 and grandson-in-law, eventually as chairman and CEO of Pirelli S.p.A., in 1993 and 2004.

  2. The Wallenberg family: The family was involved in the ICC from the start through Knut Agathon Wallenberg and by the 1930s was represented by Marcus Wallenberg, Jr. The latter visited Bilderberg between October 1957 and 1981, becoming a steering committee member; with a total of five family members visiting Bilderberg over three-quarters of a century.

  3. Andre Francois-Poncet: French co-founder of the ICC and delegate to the League of Nations in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Went into the history books in particular as the French ambassador to Berlin in 1931-1938, observing the rise of Hitler. After making his farewell visit to Hitler at the Eagle's Nest in October 1938, Francois-Poncet became ambassador to Mussolini's Italy in 1938-1940.

    Andre actually never visited Bilderberg, but his son, Jean A. Francois-Poncet, did in 1982, 1985 and 1988. Jean rose in the foreign ministry starting in 1975 under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing to become foreign minister in 1978-1981. He intermarried with the Wendels, a influential French financial family with one or more additional ties to Bilderberg, and served as a French senator from 1983 to 2010.

    Another (apparent) relative, Michel Francois-Poncet, visited Bilderberg in 1985. Michel served as a director of Canada's Power Corporation and Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) from the 1970s to the 1990s, as well as of Schneider Electric from 1993 (a heritage of Schneider Creusot with whom Andre Francois-Poncet founded the ICC). Michel was vice chair and treasurer of the French Institute for International Relations under Thierry de Montbrial from 1997, and still occupied this position in 2002-2003.

    4. Screenshots from a founding 1954 Bilderberg list.
  4. Nelson Dean Jay: Head of the J. P. Morgan & Co. office in Paris 1920-1941, 1945-1955. Involved in the ICC from the beginning in 1920. Joined the CFR in 1942. Founding member of Bilderberg in 1954, representing the Morgan interests alongside David Rockefeller. Visited Bilderberg a second and last time in May 1956.

A list of American committee trustees of the ICC for mid 1953 included founding Bilderberg visitors Gardner Cowles Jr., H.J. "Jack" Heinz II, C. D. Jackson, John S. Coleman (a non-attending organizer), George Nebolsine and James Zellerbach, very solidly tying the founding of Bilderberg to the ICC. The CFR still takes the number one spot here though, because 14 of the 15 initial American Bilderberg visitors already were members of the CFR at that point, with the 15th, John S. Coleman, who had been assigned by C. D. Jackson to put the American Bilderberg delegation together, becoming a CFR member a few months later. Of these individuals, C. D. Jackson and Jack Heinz stand out the most, but it would be better to leave it to the Bilderberg article to explain who they were.

Similarly interesting with the 1953 list is that Thomas Watson of IBM was featured on it as an executive member, as he did not just help Hitler execute the Holocaust. Leo D. Welch, the treasurer of Standard Oil, so intimately tied to the Mussolini and Hitler regimes, was an executive. Thomas McKittrick, the controversial World War II head of the Bank for International Settlements, served as vice chairman of the ICC. Juan Trippe was a Yale classmate and business partner of an American director of Fritz Thyssen's controversial Union Banking Corporation. Clearly, business continued as usual at the ICC.

From a single photo taken on March 25, 1966 we get another glimpse of the ties between the ICC and Bilderberg. Taken at an ICC meeting in Essen, Germany, it shows Bilderberg- and soon-to-be Trilateral Commission-founder David Rockefeller talking to Otto Wolff von Amerongen, a lifelong Bilderberg visitor soon on the international advisory council of David's Chase Manhattan Bank; and Deutsche Bank chairman Hermann Abs, another Bilderberg veteran who was invited in 1972 to become chairman of the second Davos conference (he was forced to withdraw at the last moment due to unforeseen circumstances). Although he has been cut out here, Franz Heinrich Ulrich, the upcoming successor of Abs at Deutsche Bank, is present in the full photo as well. It almost goes without saying that Otto Wolff's father and Herman Abs both were notorious, high-level Nazis respectively involved in Vereinigte Stahlwerke and I.G. Farben.

When exactly David Rockefeller first became involved in the ICC - whether it was pre- or post- his founding of Bilderberg - is unknown. Similarly we don't know how intensely over the years David Rockefeller was involved. What we do know his his family company, Standard Oil, was a key founder of the ICC, and that his family was directly represented through their inlaw Winthrop Aldrich in the years before World War II.

Without a doubt it's possible to find latter-day ties between the ICC and groups as Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission. This has not been the focus of this article though. An off-the-shelf example would be founding Trilateral Commission member and close David Rockefeller ally Peter Peterson, who was the ICC's U.S. council chairman in 1978-1979, the same period that Henry Kissinger gave a speech to the ICC. This term of Peterson was between his (founding) Trilateral Commission membership and him co-founding his Blackstone Group in 1985, as well as him chairing the CFR from 1985 to 2007 in succession to David Rockefeller.

We also know that a variety of other top superclass members have played key roles in the ICC over the years, such Harold McGraw III, the ICC's chairman anno 2013; or Unilever's Paul Polman and Ajay Banga after him.

The ICC certainly is not as prestigious as Bilderberg or the Trilateral Commission, and, except for its chairmanship, doesn't have as exalted a membership roster. But is it really less important than these two groups? Hard to say. We can only say with certainty that it is very important in understanding pre-World War II globalism and behind-the-scenes big business politics.


Source documents

  1. 1920, Advocate of Peace (international relations journal founded in 1837), p. 278, 'The International Chamber of Commerce' (screenshot).
  2. 1921, ICC document, 'Members of the Council [and] Members of the National Committees' (PDF).
  3. July 1, 1921, ICC document, Countries invited at the general meeting and topics discussed (PDF).
  4. June 1921, ICC document, U.S. Committee report on raw materials at the ICC's general meeting (PDF).
  5. May 1922, International Conciliation (publication of the 1899-founded American Association for International Conciliation (AAIC), with Pilgrim Nicholas Murray Butler as chair in 1922, and Morgan partner Dwight Morrow a regular board member), article on the ICC, including all U.S. committee members (PDF).
  6. May 25, 1925, ICC document, 'Fifth Annual Dinner: American Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce', cover (photocopy).
  7. 1936, ICC document, international board with vice presidents representing their countries (PDF).
  8. June 29, 1937, New York Daily News, p. 22, 'U.S. Trade Chief Salutes Hitler in Nazi Fashion' (photocopy).
  9. July 2, 1937, New York Times, 'Thomas J. Watson is Decorated by Hitler for Work in Bettering Economic Relations' (photocopy).
  10. 1938, ICC document, international and national committee members (PDF).
  11. 1938, George L. Ridgeway (associate professor of history, Wells College), 'Merchants of Peace' (the 1959 version contained the foreword of ICC member and Carnegie Endowment president James T. Shotwell)', list of past presidents and US chairmen (photocopy).
  12. 1953, Congressional document, full list of ICC U.S. executives and national committee members (PDF).
  13. 1956, ICC document, full list of ICC U.S. executives and national committee members (PDF).
  14. Oct. 6, 1978, Henry Kissinger speech to the ICC, introduced by Peter Peterson (photocopy).

Notes

  1. 1938, Angelo Tasca ("A. Rossi" was his pseudonym for the book), 'The Rise of Italian Fascism: 1918-1922' (English translation), p. 298.
  2. *) 1959 (2nd version of 1938 original), George L. Ridgeway (associate professor of history, Wells College), 'Merchants of Peace' (the 1959 version contained the foreword of Carnegie Endowment president and ICC participant James T. Shotwell)', pp. 111-114: "Twelve hundred business leaders from thirty-seven countries met at the sixth biennial congress of the ICC at Washington [in 1931]... [The ICC] has also called the attention of the whole world to this great problem in the resolutions passed at its biennial conferences, more particularly at Rome in 1923 and at Amsterdam in 1929."
    *) A list of pre-World War II ICC conferences: London (1921), Rome (1923), Brussels (1925), Stockholm (1927), Amsterdam (1929), Washington D.C. (1931), Vienna (1933), Paris (1935), Berlin (1937), Copenhagen (1939).
  3. *) 1920, Advocate of Peace (international relations journal founded in 1837), p. 278, 'The International Chamber of Commerce' (screenshot): "It is a confederation of the many economic forces of the countries to be included in its membership, united in each country by a national organsation [committee]."
    *) May 19, 1925, 'Fifth Annual Dinner, American Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce' (screenshot of booklet).
  4. 1959 (2nd version of 1938 original), George L. Ridgeway (associate professor of history, Wells College), 'Merchants of Peace' (the 1959 version contained the foreword of Carnegie Endowment president and ICC participant James T. Shotwell)', p. 137: "Firm plans for its Committee on International Economic Recovery were drafted at the first wartime meeting of the Chamber’s governing council on November 10, 1939, in neutral Amsterdam." The biennial meeting in 1939 took place in Copenhagen, so this is one example of additional meetings, in this case of the governing council, similar to the later steering committee meetings of Bilderberg.
  5. May 1922, International Conciliation (publication of the 1899-founded American Association for International Conciliation (AAIC), 'The International Chamber of Commerce', pp. 3-4 (PDF).
  6. Ibid., p. 4.
  7. 1959 (2nd version of 1938 original), George L. Ridgeway (associate professor of history, Wells College), 'Merchants of Peace' (the 1959 version contained the foreword of Carnegie Endowment president and ICC participant James T. Shotwell)'.
  8. *) Ibid., p. 132: "The regular biennial congress of the ICC, meeting in Berlin in June 1937... The keynote of the conference, to quote the words of the newly elected American president, Thomas J. Watson, was "world peace through world trade"."
    *) An ICC history was based on this slogan: 1979, Nigel Blackburn for the ICC, 'World Peace Through World Trade: ICC 1919-1979'.
  9. Ibid., p. 134.
  10. May 1922, International Conciliation (publication of the 1899-founded American Association for International Conciliation (AAIC), 'The International Chamber of Commerce', p. 6.
  11. *) October 12, 1931, Time, 'The Congress: Death of Morrow': "[Morrow was] a classmate of quiet Calvin Coolidge in the [Amherst] Class of 1895. ... In 1914, J. P. Morgan & Co. ... Partners Henry P. Davison and Thomas W. Lamont [came] with the suggestion that Lawyer Morrow, Partner Lamont's Englewood neighbor, be taken into the business. ... [Morrow] is also credited with ... allying General Motors with the du Pont interests."
    *) 1998, John Earl Haynes (Library of Congress publication), 'Calvin Coolidge and the Coolidge Era: Essays on the History of the 1920s', p. 146: "When Coolidge became prominent on the national scene while still governor of Massachusetts [lt. governor 1916-1919, governor 1919-1921; became a hero of conservatives by crushing the Boston Police Strike, calling in the National Guard and firing the 75% of officers that protested], his Amherst friend, Dwight Morrow, sought to give advice, perhaps with the thought that Coolidge as a national man might get Morrow out of J. P. Morgan and Company, where he was bored [or *perhaps* to swing Coolidge into the presidency on behalf of the Morgan bank]."
    *) Feb. 23, 2011, Salon, 'What the right forgets about labor history: Busting unions gave Calvin Coolidge the White House, but it gave America the Great Depression'.
  12. 1959 (2nd version of 1938 original), George L. Ridgeway (associate professor of history, Wells College), 'Merchants of Peace' (the 1959 version contained the foreword of Carnegie Endowment president and ICC participant James T. Shotwell)': "The plans for launching [the ICC] were germinated in a meeting of the permanent organization committee of the prewar International Congress of Chambers of Commerce held in Pans in the spring of 1919. A group of American businessmen, including ... T. W. Lamont, A. C. Bedford, and E. H. Goodwin, laid the plan before leaders and organizations in Belgium, France, Great Bntain, and Italy.
    It was accordingly determined that the United States Chamber of Commerce should invite representatives from each of these countries to come to the United States to discuss these problems with American businessmen Filene, Lamont, and Bedford [as part of the] first organization conference of the International Chamber...
    The Atlantic City conference [involved]: ... The Belgian mission ... included Albert E. Janssen, another director of the National Bank of Belgium... The French delegation was led by Eugene Schneider, head of the Creusot Steel Works... Andre Francois-Poncet, delegate of the Steel Committee in France...
    The originators [had] the International Chamber in mind as a not far distant outcome of this collaboration. It figured as an important item on the agenda of both the International Trade Conference of 1919 at Atlantic City and the organization conference which followed in Paris in the spring of 1920."
  13. Oct. 1, 1920, New York Times, 'A.C. Bedford Goes to Paris; To Attend Organization Meeting of International Chamber of Commerce'.
  14. 1920, Advocate of Peace (international relations journal founded in 1837), p. 278, 'The International Chamber of Commerce' (screenshot).
  15. *) Ibid.
    *) 1959, George L. Ridgeway, 'Merchants of Peace', p. 17: "The high standard of its leadership was set by its first president and founder, Etienne Clementel, the distinguished French Minister [who] belonged to the finest tradition of French liberalism." Clementel's key aide, Jean Monnet, is not mentioned in the entire book.
  16. *) 1998, Manfred Boemeke and Gerald D. Feldman, 'The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years', p. 373: "As early as the spring of 1916, Secretary of Commerce Etienne Clementel had proposed the establishment of a postwar economic bloc to England. Yet the powers that participated in the resulting inter-Allied Paris Economic Conference from June 13-17, 1916, refrained from antagonizing the United States..."
    *) 1996, Oxford University Press, William R. Keylor (professor of international relations and history at Boston University), 'The Twentieth-century World: An International History', p. 79: "The French minister of commerce, Etienne Clémentel, assisted by his enterprising young representative in London, Jean Monnet, mounted a vigorous campaign during the winter of 1918–19 to persuade American and British officials to extend this system of wartime economic cooperation to the postwar period [This was rejected by the U.S. and U.K.]."
  17. It can only be learned from multiple sources that Monnet was Clementel's aide at Versailles.
  18. *) history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1919Parisv11/d79 (accessed: Nov. 30, 2022).
    *) Allen Dulles is missing in the source above, but can be found through other sources, such as: Apr. 27, 1959, Time, 'The Administration: The New Secretary'.
    *) March 2006 document, European University Institute: Historical Archives of the European Union, 'JMAS: Jean Monnet American Sources', p. 6, 'JMAS.A-01 Dwight Morrow Papers: 1919-1926'.
    *) Autumn 1980, no. 4, M. L. Dockrill for RIIA's International Affairs magazine, pp. 665-672, 'Historical Note: The Foreign Office and the 'Proposed Institute of International Affairs 1919'.
  19. *) Ibid. Thomas W. Lamont, John W. Davis and Dwight Morrow were Morgan partners attending Versailles.
    *) 1997, Charles R. Geisst, 'Wall Street: A History', p. 148: "Thomas Lamont ... became Wilson's most trusted adviser during the Versailles peace conference that began in 1919. ... Wilson valued his counsel more than that of the other Morgan men who were plentiful at the conference. Bernard Baruch jealously remarked that there were so many Morgan men at the conference that it was apparent they were indeed running the show."
  20. Autumn 1980, no. 4, M. L. Dockrill for RIIA's International Affairs magazine, pp. 665-672, 'Historical Note: The Foreign Office and the 'Proposed Institute of International Affairs 1919': "Lord Robert Cecil .... Lionel Curtis ... Philip Kerr [11th Marquess of Lothian]... [20+ additional names]..."
    *) 1983, Gertrude Caton-Thompson (personal assistent at Versailles, apparently to Salter), 'Mixed Memoirs', p. 78: "Arthur Salter's position in the British Delegation was Secretary of the Supreme Economic Council [of Versailles], with Lord Robert Cecil as Chairman."
  21. *) 1969, Merry Bromberger, 'Jean Monnet and the United States of Europe', p. 16: "We'll have to requisition French ships that are making a fortune in the Far East while our cargo boats carrying gasoline and vital supplies in the North Sea and in the Atlantic are being sunk by the German submarines," Monnet explained in 1915 to Etienne Clementel, the Minister of Commerce. Clementel accepted Monnet's idea and made him a member of his staff."
    *) No. 1, 1977, UNESCO, International Social Science Journal (published quarterly), Pierre Gerbet, 'Approaches to the Study of International Organizations', pp. 18-19, 82: "On the proposal of the French Minister of Trade, Etienne Clementel, his representative in London, Jean Monnet, and a British senior official, Arthur Salter, 'Executive Commissions' were set up... An Allied Maritime Transport Council was established, with an Executive Commission the members of which included Salter, Monnet, an Italian, Attolico, and, subsequently, an American. ... From the spring of 1918 they thus controlled the movements and food cargoes of all Allied and neutral ships..."
    *) 1996, Oxford University Press, William R. Keylor (professor of international relations and history at Boston University), 'The Twentieth-century World: An International History', p. 79: "Clementel, assisted by ... Jean Monnet, mounted a vigorous campaign during the winter of 1918–19 to persuade American and British officials to extend this system of wartime economic cooperation to the postwar period."
  22. *) 1959 version (1938 original), George L. Ridgeway (associate professor of history, Wells College), 'Merchants of Peace', p. 30: "A group of American businessmen, including E. A. Filene, E. G. Miner, T. W. Lamont, A. C. Bedford, and E. H Goodwin, laid the plan before leaders and organizations in Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy [at the Versailles Peace Conference as it turns out]. It was accordingly determined that the United States Chamber of Commerce should invite representatives from each of these countries to come to the United States..."
  23. 2016, Andrew Smith (University of Liverpool Management School) a.o., 'The Impact of the First World War on International Business', Chapter 5, writting by Clotilde Druelle-Korn (University of Limoges): "In April 1919, Jean Monnet [at] the Allied bodies, informed his superior [Clementel] that Edward A. Filene and Edward G. Miner were in France. He had been introduced to them by Thomas [W.] Lamont, the J.P. Morgan banker ... at the Peace Conference. Joined in their mission by Alfred C. Bedford ... they were pursuing several goals: promoting the idea of an International Chamber of Commerce... To achieve these goals, they suggested [everyone] set sail without delay for North America, at the expense of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce..."
  24. Ibid.
  25. Autumn 1980, no. 4, M. L. Dockrill for RIIA's International Affairs magazine, pp. 665-672, 'Historical Note: The Foreign Office and the 'Proposed Institute of International Affairs 1919': "The establishment of an Institute for International Affairs was initiated by members of the British and American delegations at the Paris Peace Conference in May 1919. ... May 30, 1919."
  26. 2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', p. 149: "John Foster Dulles, the eminent international lawyer, was chairman... I had known him and his family since my college years. ... His daughter Lillias had been part of a small group of friends during my college years and one of Peggy's closest friends. In fact, when I was courting Peggy in the 1930s, she always stayed with the Dulleses at their New York town house."
  27. 1999, James Srodes, 'Allen Dulles: Master of Spies', p. 87: "The eight months that encompassed the arrival of the first delegations in late November 1918 until the [Versailles] treaty was formally signed on June 28, 1919 gave both Allen and Foster Dulles credentials and acquaintances of the first rank in American foreign affairs. ... Foster would celebrate his thirtieth birthday in Paris."
  28. No. 1, 1977, UNESCO, International Social Science Journal (published quarterly), Pierre Gerbet, 'Approaches to the Study of International Organizations', pp. 18-19, 82: "On the proposal of the French Minister of Trade, Etienne Clementel, his representative in London, Jean Monnet, and a British senior official, Arthur Salter, 'Executive Commissions' were set up... An Allied Maritime Transport Council was established, with an Executive Commission the members of which included Salter, Monnet, an Italian, Attolico, and, subsequently, an American. ... From the spring of 1918 they thus controlled the movements and food cargoes of all Allied and neutral ships..."
  29. Autumn 1980, no. 4, M. L. Dockrill for RIIA's International Affairs magazine, pp. 665-672, 'Historical Note: The Foreign Office and the 'Proposed Institute of International Affairs 1919'.
  30. Ibid. Also by looking at the biographies of the nine American delegation members, which included two Rhodes scholars and a years-long The Round Table contributor on Anglo-American colonial history.
  31. Sep. 19, 1934, history.state.gov, 'Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Hornbeck) of a Conversation With Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan & Co.': "II. Mr. Lamont then proceeded to give an account of the activities of Mr. Jean Monnet. He said that Monnet had been in 1919 “first choice” for the position of secretary general of the League of Nations, but that Monnet had declined—after which Sir Eric Drummond had been chosen and appointed."
  32. 1959 (1938 original), George L. Ridgeway, 'Merchants of Peace', pp. 63-65: "The Rome congress assembled on March 18, 1923 ... with Mussolini in the chair... Sir Arthur Salter represented the League of Nations."
  33. Autumn 1980, no. 4, M. L. Dockrill for RIIA's International Affairs magazine, pp. 665-672, 'Historical Note: The Foreign Office and the 'Proposed Institute of International Affairs 1919'.
  34. 1959 (1938 original), George L. Ridgeway (foreword by James T. Shotwell), 'Merchants of Peace', pp. 132-133: "On November 16, 1935, the joint committee of the ICC and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace... [Members were] Thomas J. Watson ... James T. Shotwell, representing the Carnegie Endowment ... Per Jacobsson of the [BIS] ... Rene P. Duchemin of France...
    The regular biennial congress of the ICC, meeting in Berlin in June 1937, carried this movement to the capital of economic nationalism... The congress, in the presence of Reich Chancellor Hitler, heard Goering extol the four-year plan and Schacht excoriate the circumstances which had produced economic nationalism. .., In the discussion on economic nationalism, James T. Shotwell, representing the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggested that the ICC make a new approach to the problem of trade harriers and also to labor."
  35. See note 21.
  36. 1995, American Council for Jean Monnet Studies, Clifford P. Hackett, 'Monnet and the Americans: The Father of a United Europe and His U.S. Supporters', p. 2: "... Monnet's long and close relations with John Foster Dulles which began the Versailles Peace Conference. Later, sealing the friendship, Dulles loaned Monnet and a partner [George Murnane] money in 1935 to go into investment banking themselves instead of working for others."
  37. Ibid.
  38. *) oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ ark:/13030/kt7779r94m/ entire_text/ (2009, 2015 additions, Online Archive of Califormia: Hoover Institution Archives; 'Register of the American Committee on United Europe records'; accessed: Aug. 28, 2022): "ACUE was organized as a non-governmental agency by Allen Welsh Dulles, then head of a committee reviewing the organization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of the National Security Council (NSC), and William J. Donovan, former head of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The ACUE worked closely with US government officials, particularly the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) and the National Committee for a Free Europe, which was being funded by the Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller foundations. One of the aims of ACUE was to covertly finance the European Movement, Le Mouvement Européen (ME), an influential federalist organization in the post-war years."
    *) March 1997, Richard J. Aldrich (Fulbright Fellow at Georgetown University; University of Nottingham; Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick) for the Diplomacy & Statecraft journal, pp. 187-224, 'OSS, CIA and European unity: The American Committee on United Europe, 1948-60' "The conduit for American assistance was the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), directed by senior figures from the American intelligence community. This body was organized in the early Summer of 1948 by [CIA founder, upcoming CIA head, past CFR president and Pilgrims executive] Allen Welsh Dulles [and WWII OSS head] William J. Donovan... the ACUE Board of Directors was drawn from four main groups: senior figures from government, such as [General Lucius] Clay, [CIA director Walter] Bedell Smith [Pilgrims executive] ... Paul Hoffman [Ford Foundation; Pilgrims] ... Herbert H. Lehman ..."
    *) June 19, 1956, American Committee on United Europe letter (PDF): "- William J. Donovan, Chairman. - Paul G. Hoffman, Vice-Chairman [and Ford Foundation chair and Pilgrim]... - George S. Franklin, Jr., Secretary [and David Rockefeller roommate and Trilateral Commission co-founder]... Directors: ... - [Gen.] Lucius D. Clay [senior partner Lehman Brothers 1962-1973] ... - [David Rockefeller mentor at the CFR and Chase Manhattan] John J. McCloy. - Frederick Osborn [Pilgrims family; close to Rockefellers] ... Dear Senator [Herbert] Lehman [director as well at some point] ... You have stood with our Committee for a long time. ..."
  39. June 19, 1956, American Committee on United Europe letter (PDF).
  40. These certainly include Guy Mollet, Francois Duchene and Max Kohnstamm.
  41. 1965 annual report, Ford Foundation, pp. 47-48: "A further grant was made to the Center of Documentation of Jean Monnet's Action Committee for the United States of Europe for its studies of problems of European integration and their Atlantic-wide implications."
  42. 2014, Strobe Talbott, 'Monnet's Brandy and Europe's Fate'.
  43. July 8, 1928, New York Times, 'Lamont Makes Plea to Business Men ... He Accepts a New Post: Heads American Committee of International Commerce Chamber'.
  44. August 17, 1918, Organized Labor, 'Labor Board Jerks Up the Bethlehem Steel Co.'
  45. 1936-1941, U.S. Senate, La Follette Civil Liberties Committee, 'Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor', key paragraphs and graphs from a 1939 report (PDF).
  46. See note 11.
  47. Oct. 14, 2019, The American Prospect, 'The Rise and Fall of Andrew Mellon'.
  48. 1932, Mary Agnes Hamilton, 'In America To-day', p. 172: "Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary to the Treasury - Address before the Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce June 15, 1931."
  49. April 1930, U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue, Treasury Department, Internal Revenue News bulletin, p. 3, 'Double Taxation': "Statement of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon at the hearing on the bill to reduce international double taxation before the Ways and Means Committee, Friday, February 28, 1930. ... "The outcome of these efforts was the adoption, by the Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce at Amsterdam, Jyly, 1929, of a uniform code of principles for eliminating double taxation.""
  50. *) Nov. 8, 2002, Federal Reserve Board, 'Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke At the Conference to Honor Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. November 8, 2002, On Milton Friedman's Ninetieth Birthday'.
    federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/ speeches/2002/20021108/ (accessed: Oct. 25, 2022).
    *) federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-depression (accessed: Oct. 25, 2022.
  51. All this is related to "Pecora Commission" investigation into National City Bank president Charles E. Mitchell, in which it is generally overlooked that National City Bank was the bank in which Standard Oil placed its oil revenues since 1891, and also that Mitchell was a director of the Federal Reserve himself, as well as a CFR member, along with Federal Reserve chairman George L. Harrison. Good article on the subject:
    *) Spring 1986, Business History Review (Cambridge University Press for Harvard Business School), Thomas Huertas and Joan L. Silverman, 'Charles E. Mitchell: Scapegoat of the Crash?'.
  52. Oct. 14, 2019, The American Prospect, 'The Rise and Fall of Andrew Mellon': "Hoover established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a government bank that could lend to failing railroads and banks. The public interpreted this as a corporate bailout. Comedian Will Rogers mocked Hoover... The bankers, it seemed to Rogers, had "the honor of being the first group to go on the 'dole' in America.""
  53. federalreservehistory.org/essays/reconstruction-finance-corporation (accessed: Oct. 20, 2022): ""Almost from the time he became Governor of the Federal Reserve Board in September 1930, Eugene Meyer had urged President Hoover to establish" a Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)..."
  54. Nov. 8, 2002, Federal Reserve Board, 'Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke At the Conference to Honor Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. November 8, 2002, On Milton Friedman's Ninetieth Birthday'.
    federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/ speeches/2002/20021108/ (accessed: Oct. 25, 2022).
  55. *) 1935, George Seldes, 'World Panorama, 1918-1933', p. 398: "... the American Liberty League. Among the 156 founders are Grayson M. P. Murphy, Elihu Root, John J. Raskob, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., "Al" Smith, James W. Wadsworth, John W. Davis, Irenee du Pont, Jouett Shouse."
    *) 1959, David Krikun (University of Washington), 'The American Liberty League: A History', pp. 24-26: "In late June or early July 1934, Raskob called a meeting of some old AAPA members - Davis, Irenee du Pont, Smith and Wadsworth - to discuss what they considered the dangerous tendencies exhibited by the [FDR] Administration and to establish an organization [called the ALL]... On August 23 [was] the formation of the American Liberty League. Its founders included [the Democrat] Al Smith, John J. Raskob, Jouett Shouse, John W. Davis, Irenee du Pont, Nathan Miller, and [Skull & Bones, Republican] James W. Wadsworth [Jr.]. When Raskob wrote Herbert Hoover to ask if he would join the League, the former President answered with indignation, "This is the group that financed the Democratic smearing campaign, both directly through the Democratic National ... They are , therefore , hardly the type of men...
    [Financiers include] industrialists and businessmen as the du Pont family, Aldred P. Sloan and William S. Knudsen of General Motors, Ernest T. Weir of Weirton Steel, Edward F. Hutton and Colby Chester of General Foods, J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil, Sewell Avery of Montgomery Ward, and others."
    *) Aug. 25, 1934, New York Times, 'Roosevelt Twits Liberty League as Lover of Property': "He indicated his belief that it laid too much stress on protection of property and too little on protection of the average citizen."
    *) Aug. 28, 1934, New York Times, 'A PARTISAN ORGANIZATION; American Liberty League Viewed as Anti-Roosevelt': "I see that the American Liberty League has been organized to scan the New Deal..."
    *) 1953, U.S. Senate, 'Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments', p. 1616: "'McCartyism - The Real Danger: ... This is the same section of American big business which 18 years ago fought President Roosevelt tooth and nail through the American Liberty League. They bitterly opposed New Deal social legislation and any concessions to organized labor."
  56. 1951, Herbert Hoover, 'The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, 1929-1941', Chapter 41.
  57. Ibid.
  58. May 2015, Patrick C. Patton, Ph. D. dissertation, 'Standing at Thermopylae: A History of the American Liberty League', p. 8.
  59. 1982, Josephine Case and Everett Case, 'Owen D. Young and American Enterprise: A Biography', p. 280: "Of the European delegates, the key members were readily identifiable: ... Alberto Pirelli, leading Italian industrialist whom Young had encountered at meetings of the International Chamber of Commerce; ... Sir Robert Kinderley, chairman of Lazard Brothers and director of the Bank of England; and ... Sir Josiah Stamp, also a director of the bank..."
  60. nobelprize.org/prizes/ peace/1925/dawes/acceptance-speech/ (accessed: Oct. 27, 2022): "[Telegram of Charges G. Dawes:] This award, which is in recognition of the work of the First Committee of Experts, Reparation Commission, of which I was chairman, is gratefully acknowledged. The committee was composed of Owen D. Young, Sir Josiah C. Stamp, Sir Robert M. Kindersley, Jean Parmentier, Edgard Allix, Alberto Pirelli, Frederico Flora, Emile Francqui, Baron Maurice Houtart, and myself."
  61. Feb. 18, 1929, Time, 'International: Grand Spectacle': "The second Dawes Committee (TIME, Jan. 14 et seq.), which will revise the Dawes Plan. ... Enter Governor Emile Moreau of the Bank of France and the principal delegates: Owen D. Young and J. P. Morgan of the U. S., Sir Josiah Stamp of Britain, Governor of the German Reichsbank, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Industrialist Alberto Pirelli of Italy, Banker Emile Francqui of Belgium, one-time financial attache at London, Kengo Mori of Japan, etc., not forgetting Mr. Morgan's alternate, Thomas W. Lamont. Sir Josiah Stamp (espying Mr. Young) : "Hello, Owen! My, you look splendid!"
  62. 1942, Henry Junior Taylor, 'Time Runs Out', pp. 10, 67: "If [Germany] pushed her currency over the brink, she would not have to pay at all. She just had to say, "Take my paper." She could capture the world markets with cheap goods instead. Stinnes saw this way out for Germany in 1923, feathered his nest at the same time [by bringing money back into the country, but only to buy assets at a fraction of the prize]. So did Fritz Thyssen. So did Felix Deutsch, chairman of the great A. E. G. ... the worldwide electrical trust. So did the most successful fifth columnist of them all, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. ...
    Even though it was obvious that Germany was leaking capital, the Americans refused to co-operate in stemming the flow. In January 1924, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported: "American members of the commission investigating the flight of capital from Germany have met with President Coolidge and Secretary of State Hughes. The result of this meeting was that it was considered impossible to seize the foreign assets of German capitalists and that an investigation of American banks would be illegal." Instead, the Dawes Plan was accepted..."
  63. Ibid., p. 16 "The Germans were scuttling the Dawes Plan, as they had intended to from the first. And who should be in the forefront of the operation, ensconced at the Hotel Crillon but Fritz Thyssen... gentle wizard of the Nazi money bags. I did not find Thyssen so gentle in Paris that spring [of 1928]."
  64. May 13, 1997, New York Times, 'Global Central Bank Says It Held Gold Looted by Nazis': "The report suggests that while fighting a war and carrying out the Holocaust, Germany also kept up interest payments on investments related to reparations from World War I and transactions due under the world postal system. ... The statement recorded that the last German attempt to ship gold to Switzerland -- ostensibly as interest payments on Bank for International Settlements prewar investments -- was made on April 12, 1945, when Swiss authorities blocked a shipment of 1.5 tons of gold ingots and coins. The statement did not explain why, on the brink of military collapse, Germany should have been concerned about such debts."
  65. 1982, Josephine Case and Everett Case, 'Owen D. Young and American Enterprise: A Biography', p. 436: "According to Schacht, Young's response was ... immediate [with regard to his idea of the BIS]: "Dr. Schacht , you gave me a wonderful idea and I am going to sell it to the world."
  66. July 31, 2013, The Telegraph, 'Was Montagu Norman a Nazi sympathiser?'.
  67. Dec. 16, 2014, knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu, 'History's Biggest Robbery: How the Nazis Stole Europe’s Gold'.
  68. July 31, 2013, The Guardian, 'How Bank of England 'helped Nazis sell gold stolen from Czechs''.
  69. *) May 13, 1997, New York Times, 'Global Central Bank Says It Held Gold Looted by Nazis'.
    *) Aug. 30, 2013, Adam LeBor for TabletMag.com (Jewish), 'Meet the American Banker Who Helped Hitler Loot Jewish Gold--While Spying for the OSS': "The BIS accepted Nazi gold looted from occupied countries such as Belgium until the final days of the war, when even neutral countries refused the plunder. The BIS recognized the forcible incorporation of 10 countries, including France, Belgium, Greece, and the Netherlands, into the Third Reich. The BIS allowed the Nazi occupation regimes to take ownership of those nations’ BIS shares, so that the Axis bloc held 64.7 percent of the bank’s voting stock. Board meetings were suspended, but Annual General Meetings continued, with member banks voting by proxy."
  70. Ibid.
  71. *) Ibid.
    *) March 3, 1944, U.S. Congressional Record, appendix, p. A1067, words of Congressman Jerry Voorhis of California, 'Bank of International Settlements'.
  72. May 13, 1997, New York Times, 'Global Central Bank Says It Held Gold Looted by Nazis': "The bank suspended meetings of its governors at the outbreak of the war in September 1939..."
  73. Aug. 30, 2013, Adam LeBor for TabletMag.com (Jewish), 'Meet the American Banker Who Helped Hitler Loot Jewish Gold--While Spying for the OSS'.
  74. May 13, 1997, New York Times, 'Global Central Bank Says It Held Gold Looted by Nazis'.
  75. May 15, 1997, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 'Swiss Banks and Attempts to Recover Assets Belonging to the Victims of the Holocaust'. pp. 314-315: "The language of the resolution permitted the Bank [for International Sttlements] to continue during the war, as desired by Assistant Secretary Acheson, supported by Lord Keynes and the British delegation. Treasury Secretary Morgenthau had wanted to liquidate the Bank at once. [11] ... Morgenthau refused to respond to McKittrick's letter.[13]"
  77. May 13, 1997, New York Times, 'Global Central Bank Says It Held Gold Looted by Nazis': "Thomas McKittrick, who the Treasury Department suspected was helping the Axis powers escape efforts by Washington to freeze funds that were helping Germany conduct the war. ... Mr. McKittrick's role and which side he supported is one of the side mysteries that has emerged from the investigation of the gold issue. ... Mr. McKittrick [falsely] specifically denied that looted gold was in the bank's vaults."
  78. 2013, Adam LeBor, 'Tower of Basel'.
  79. 1959 (1938 original), George L. Ridgeway, 'Merchants of Peace', pp. 63-65: "The Rome congress assembled on March 18, 1923 ... with Mussolini in the chair..."
  80. *) 1997 (1959 original, 1969 revised edition), Denis Mack Smith (senior research fellow at Oxford's All Souls College 1962-1987), 'Modern Italy: A Political History' (University of Michigan Press), pp. 284, 313: "In return for this change [from socialism to fascism], the armaments firm of Ansaldo and the sugar and electrical industries helped [Mussolini] to publish a paper of his own, Il Popola d'Italia... The fascist gangs must have cost a good deal, and so must their paper, Il Popolo d'Italia. Some contributions came from Ansaldo and the shipowners of Genoa; others from Milan ... where many big concerns were pledged to the fight against strikes, bolshevism, and nationalizations."
    *) 2007, Professor George Talbot (University of Hull), 'Censorship in Fascist Italy, 1922-43', pp. 39-40: "On the basis of the Banca Commerciale [Italiana] archives [it] made generous payments to Morgagni in 1918 and again in 1921 for advertizing space in Il Popolo d'Italia. Indeed in 1918 the Banca Commerciale had twice as much advertizing space in the pages of Il Popolo d'Italia as did Ansaldo, the steel company. Extensive advertising in a radical newspaper with a low circulation was hardly a strategic necessity for an issuing bank. Just before the 1921 election, Toeplitz [of Banca Commerciale] made a further payment to Morgagni of 200,000 lire. ...
    Donato Barbone, writing in a later issue of the journal which published Fabre's article, argues... that Toeplitz's payments to Mussolini's newspaper need to be seen in the context of the UTPN manifesto [in favor of corporatism, that involved] Pirelli, Marelli, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, Credito Italiana, and the Banca Italiana di Sconto."
    *) 2002, Gerhard Feldbauer (communism-inclined former GDR journalist stationed in Hanoi 1967-1973, Rome 1973-1983; counselor in Algeria 1981-1983, ambassador to Zaire 1983-), 'Marsch auf Rom: Faschismus und Antifaschismus in Italien, von Mussolini bis Berlusconi und Fini', p. 13 (translated from German): "Before the parliamentary vote on entering the war, the Fasci newspaper "Il Popolo d'Italia" founded by Mussolini incited that MPs who had not yet decided to enter the war (mainly the Socialists) "should be court-martialled". For "the salvation of Italy", if necessary, "several dozen members of parliament should be shot," and others "put in prison." [2]
    The "Popolo d'Italia" was a war-focused newspaper that was financed in particular by leading circles in the armaments industry (Dino Ansaldo, shipyards; Ettore Conti, electrical industry; Emilio Benedetti, mechanical engineering; Guido Donegani, chemistry; Giovanni Agnelli, vehicles; Alberto Pirelli, tires and rubber) and represented their war interests in open chauvinism. After the war, the same corporations were among the promoters of the fascist movement that also financed the March on Rome."
    *) 1989, Dr. Frank Snowden (Lecturer in history, University of London), published by Cambridge University Press, 'The Fascist Revolution in Tuscany, 1919-22', pp. 128-134: "Large sections of the archives of the questori and prefects of the principal industrial centres, Livorno and Florence, were destroyed in the Second World War, while certain important press sources, including the fascist weekly A Noi of Livorno have been lost.
    None the less... We know that heavy industry in Tuscany, and particularly the armaments sector, provided massive financial aid to the Florence fascio and to the Popolo d'Italia. Secondly, there is direct proof of collusion with the fascists and the 'economic unions' by a number of leading Tuscan companies, including Ilva, Montecatini, the Mineraria, the Officine Galileo, and the Orlando shipyards, and such leading representatives of Tuscan capital as Max Bondi, Eduardo Rotigliano, Guido Donegani, Count Costanzo Ciano, Giuseppe and Luigi Orlando, Count Rosolino Orlando, and Luigi Pasqualini. The politics of Serragli, a leading member of the Boracifera, need little further elaboration."
  81. 1989, Dr. Frank Snowden (Lecturer in history, University of London), published by Cambridge University Press, 'The Fascist Revolution in Tuscany, 1919-22', p. 132: "The Tuscan industrialists, that is, were particularly attracted by the assistance of the fasci because they were 'outsiders' in the industrial association. Confindustria remained firmly in the control of the Italian industrial elite represented by Agnelli [Mussolini financier], Alberto Pirelli [ICC, Mussolini financier], and Ettore Conti [ICC, Mussolini financier, by Fiat and the Banca Commerciale. [34]"
  82. April 6, 2015, Tiziana Foresti, Nadia Garbellini and Ariel Luis Wirkierman (for the INET VI Annual Conference, April, 8-11, 2015, Paris), 'The Value of Political Connections in Fascist Italy - Stock Market Returns and Corporate Networks', p. 5: "In 1915 Confindustria officially took an interventionist position with regard to the war. ... In 1919 Confindustria had two presidents, first Dante Ferraris ...and then Giovanni Battista Pirelli [father of ICC co-founder Alberto Pirelli], who headed the most important Italian tyre factory. Giovanni Silvestri [in] 1919-1920 [and] was followed by Ettore Conti (1920-1921; ICC). ... From 1922 to 1923 the president was Raimondo Targetti [ICC], who operated in the wool industry. Targetti was succeeded by Antonio Stefano Benni [ICC], who stayed on until 1934."
  83. Oct. 13, 2009, The Guardian, 'Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini: Documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5'.
  84. See note 80 and on.
  85. 1983, Denis Mack Smith (senior research fellow at All Souls, Oxford 1962-1987), 'Mussolini: A Biography', p. 35: "The meeting of 23 March took place in a hall provided by Milanese businessmen in the Piazzi San Sepolcro... According to Mussolini only about fifty people were there..." Other sources talk about 120 attendants.
  86. Original
    *) March 24, 1919, Mussolini's newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia.
    Modern example sources for full speech:
    *) 2004, Stanislao G. Pugliese, 'Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present', pp. 43-46.
    *) arplan.org/2018/10/24/fascism-of-the-first-hour/
  87. 1960, DDR journalist Jesco von Walden, 'Und morgen die ganze Welt?: Die Verschwörung der braunen paladine', p. 25 (translated from German). Cited later in this article, except that "pay no mind" is translated as "don't bother". The latter is slightly more acurate, but has the same meaning. Hitler's literal words: "Stossen Sie sich nicht..."
  88. 1999, Frank N. Magill, 'Dictionary of World Biography: Volume IX: The 20th Century O-Z', p. 3021: "The younger Pirelli brother [Piero] was a member of the Supreme Economic Committee of Versailles ... and a member of the League of Nations Economic Committee."
  89. 1994, Edwin P. Hoyt (son of an editor and publisher of the Oregonian), 'Mussolini's Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Fascist Vision', p. 51.
  90. 1983, Denis Mack Smith (senior research fellow at All Souls, Oxford 1962-1987), 'Mussolini: A Biography', p. 51: "Giolitti, like the others, therefore used his influence to try to bring the fascists into a coalition, encouraged by leading industrialists in Milan, including [Alberto] Pirelli and [Gino] Olivetti, two of the most familar names in Italian economic life."
  91. 2017, Professor Harold James (Princeton University professor) a. o., 'Enterprise in the Period of Fascism in Europe', p. 66: "Since the beginning of the century Agnelli had been a follower of Giovanni Giolitti, the man who tried to turn the elitist Italian state into an industrial democracy; the founder of Fiat never denied his ties with this political leader who, it is important to underline, sponsored the 1921 alliance between Liberals and Fascists. Immediately after the Fascist coup d'etat of October 1922 (the so-called 'March on Rome') Agnelli publicly agreed with the Turin branch of the Liberal Party's declaration which went on to recognize the merits of Fascist action [but] while also criticizing the violence of Fascist squads..."
  92. *) Ibid.
    *) See note 80.
    *) See "Agnelli, Gianni"'s biography in ISGP's Bilderberg membership list.
  93. 1938, Angelo Tasca ("A. Rossi" was his pseudonym for the book; old colleague of Mussolini at the socialist Avanti! newspaper), 'The Rise of Italian Fascism: 1918-1922' (English translation), pp. VI-VII (preface by Herman Finer), 298.
  94. Oct. 14, 2019, The American Prospect, 'The Rise and Fall of Andrew Mellon': "In the Soviet Union, the standard of living had collapsed, and “large corporations” had “ceased to operate.” By contrast, [Mellon] said, in Italy “the Bolshevik menace was met and vanquished.” Mussolini had not only rescued “Italy from any possible danger of economic and social collapse,” but had “improved the well-being of the people of the country.” The Italian government, unlike the Soviet one, “operated in accordance with established economic laws.”"
  95. 1990, Ron Chernow, 'The House of Morgan', pp. 279-281. Full citation to be found in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article.
  96. 1999, Frank N. Magill, 'Dictionary of World Biography: Volume IX: The 20th Century O-Z', p. 3021: "Alberto was chosen by Benito Mussolini to represent Italy at the most important post-World War I conferences. The younger Pirelli brother was a member of the Supreme Economic Committee of Versailles, Italian delegate to the first International Labor Office of Geneva, and a member of the League of Nations Economic Committee. Between 1928 and 1932, Alberto served as president of the International Chamber of Commerce. Alberto became Mussolini's trusted financial and economic advisor. He was a member of the National Council of Corporations and a commissioner of the General Fascist Confederation of Industries, two syndicates through which the Italian government controlled industry. ... By the mid-1960s ... was also the second-largest stockholder in Italy's Fiat..."
  97. Feb. 18, 1929, Time, 'International: Grand Spectacle': "The second Dawes Committee (TIME, Jan. 14 et seq.), which will revise the Dawes Plan. ... Enter Governor Emile Moreau of the Bank of France and the principal delegates: Owen D. Young and J. P. Morgan of the U. S., Sir Josiah Stamp of Britain, Governor of the German Reichsbank, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Industrialist Alberto Pirelli of Italy, Banker Emile Francqui of Belgium, one-time financial attache at London, Kengo Mori of Japan, etc., not forgetting Mr. Morgan's alternate, Thomas W. Lamont. Sir Josiah Stamp (espying Mr. Young) : "Hello, Owen! My, you look splendid!"
  98. *) 1930, Associazione fra le societa italiane per azioni, Business and financial report: a monthly survey of Italian trade and industry: "'Dr. Pirelli on Economic Reconstruction': The Association of Italian Corporations (Joint Stock Companies) held its annual meeting on 28th November, honored by the presensence of ... Mussolini. The President of the Association, Dr. Alberto Pirelli, opened the annual address..."
    *) Jan. 1934, Pathfinder - Digest Of World Affairs: "Premier Mussolini's "guild" system for ruling the state was unanimously approved by the Italian Senate. Immediately thereafter Il Duce named 13 men, among them Italy's richest industrialist, Albert Pirelli, to organize the 13 corporations of this new scheme."
    *) 2014, Lucy M. Maulsby, 'Fascism, Architecture, and the Claiming of Modern Milan, 1922 1943', p. 202: "Pirelli gave a sum of one million lire to Mussolini in honour of Italy's "victory" in the Ethiopian campaign in June 1936."
  99. ispionline.it/en/ institute/history (accessed: Sep. 25, 2022): "ISPI's [was] launched on 27th March 1934 by a group of young scholars from the Universities of Milan and Pavia ... inspired by the examples of London's Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs [RIIA] and New York's Foreign Policy Association. [A] meeting in February 1935 with Alberto Pirelli ... did not only guarantee the funding ... but it also provided strong links with the business community [whioch was supporting fascism...], while ensuring some autonomy from the fascist regime. ... Thanks to Alberto Pirelli's efforts, Mussolini allowed ISPI to move its headquarters to Palazzo Clerici, a more prestigious venue than the first one in Via Borghetto. [From] the 25th of July 1940, granting ISPI the use of the Palazzo for 29 years on payment of a rent of ten lire, along with the obligation to deal with the restoration. In December 1940 the renovation work was approved directly by Mussolini..."
  100. 1990, Ron Chernow, 'The House of Morgan', pp. 279-281. Full citation to be found in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article.
  101. 2006, B&C Publishing and Printing, 'Esso Italiana: Esso 115 anni 1891-2006 - 115 anni di storia della Esso Italiana'('Esso Italiana, Esso 115 years 1891-2006 - 115 years of history of Esso Italiana') (preserved at the Fisogni Museum).
  102. 1971, H. M. Larson a. o., 'New Horizons, 1927-1950: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)', p. 336.
  103. Ibid.
  104. 1937 annual complation of issues, The Journal of Negro History, p. 168.
  105. 1939, Anton Zischka, 'Italien in der Welt', pp. 150-162 (depending on 1939 or 1941 version).
  106. presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/excerpts-from-the-press-conference-141 (accessed: Jan. 8, 2023).
  107. 2018 (English translation; 2015 original), Matthieu Auzanneau (foreword by Richard Heinberg), 'Oil, Power, and War: A Dark History', p. 142. Gives a source that can't be seen in Google Books.
  108. Oct. 7, 1935, Time, 'Italy: Rickett Lashed': "... a most unusual dispatch from London by the New York Times's leading correspondent, Frederick T. Birchall. Cabled he: "Coming out of Ethiopia with his concession more or less in the discard, Mr. Rickett stopped twelve days ago in Rome...""
  109. 1939, Anton Zischka, 'Italien in der Welt', pp. 161-162 (translated from German).
  110. 1953, Bruce Hutchison, 'Mackenzie King: The Incredible Canadian', p. 204: ""[Mussolini:] If the League of Nations ... had extended the economic sanctions to oil, I would have had to withdraw from Abyssinia in a week.""
  111. Dec. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', part 7 on I. G. Farben, p. 989.
  112. 1971, H. M. Larson a. o., 'New Horizons, 1927-1950: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)', p. 336.
  113. 2018 (English translation; 2015 original), Matthieu Auzanneau (foreword by Richard Heinberg), 'Oil, Power, and War: A Dark History', p. 143.
  114. 1971, H. M. Larson a. o., 'New Horizons, 1927-1950: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)', p. 336.
  115. *) Oct. 7, 1935, Time, 'Italy: Rickett Lashed'.
    *) 1939, Anton Zischka, 'Italien in der Welt', pp. 161-162 (translated from German).
  116. *) 1939, Anton Zischka, 'Italien in der Welt', pp. 161-162 (translated from German).
    *) Dec. 29-30, 1938, Handbook of the Association of American Law Schools, p. 121. Also mentions the Romanian route for oil.
  117. 1939, Anton Zischka, 'Italien in der Welt', pp. 161-162 (translated from German).
  118. Ibid.
  119. *) Ibid.
    *) 2018 (English translation; 2015 original), Matthieu Auzanneau (foreword by Richard Heinberg), 'Oil, Power, and War: A Dark History', p. 144.
  120. 2018 (English translation; 2015 original), Matthieu Auzanneau (foreword by Richard Heinberg), 'Oil, Power, and War: A Dark History', p. 143. Gives the New York Times as source.
  121. May 27, 1976, The Oakland Tribune, 'The Oil Giants'.
  122. May 1, 1941, A2054, Congressman Bernard J. Gehrmann of Wisconsin, 'Rockefeller's Anguish' (words reprinted in: May 3, 1941, Sheboygan Press).
  123. 2006, B&C Publishing and Printing, 'Esso italiana: Esso 115 anni 1891-2006 - 115 anni di storia della Esso Italiana'('Esso Italiana, Esso 115 years 1891-2006 - 115 years of history of Esso Italiana') (preserved at the Fisogni Museum).
  124. An example list of sources:
    *) 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War'. This source mentions many elite names and corporations on both sides of the Atlantic.
    *) 1976, Antony Sutton, 'Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler'. Often considered conspiracy, but seems accurate, is prominent and deserves credit.
    *) May 12, 1947, Time, 'Government: Criminals All? About the Standard Oil - I.G. Farben connection.
    *) Aug. 6, 1978, New York Times, 'With a Branch at Auschwitz'. Article on Standard Oil and I.G. Farben together aiding Hitler's Luftwaffe.
    *) December 14, 2006, Edwin Black for Canadian Jewish News, 'As the Nazis amassed power, what did General Motors know, and when?'.
    *) Jan. 7, 2007, Edwin Black for San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com), 'Nazis rode to war on GM wheels'.
    *) February 27, 2012, Huffington Post, 'IBM's Role in the Holocaust — What the New Documents Reveal'.
    *) Etc., etc.
  125. *) August 1941, Jewish Frontier newsletter, p. 12 of a compilation of newsletters for 1941: "Kurt von Schroeder, the famous banker in whose house Hitler and von Papen had the historic meeting which paved the way to the Fuehrer's rise to power."
    *) 1958, Charles William Coleman, 'Why Adolf Hitler? A Political Study of the Weimar Republic, 1928-1933', p. 152: "And in his study, 'The Industrialists Behind Hitler in Pre-Nazi Germany' [1954], Henry E. Armstrong [of the University of Florida] came to the following conclusion: "The reconciliation with Papen saved the Nazis from economic bankruptcy. Through the efforts of Papen and Schroeder a group of industrialists from the Ruhr and the Rhineland agreed to straighten out the finances of the Nazi Party. The most important industrialists supporting the alliance were Thyssen, Flick, Voegler, Roechling, Springorum, and Poensgen, and Otto Wolff. They agreed to give Hitler a total of four million Reichsmarks (empasis mine) which was enough to cover the party's most pressing debts. ..."
  126. *) Dec. 6, 2006, Edwin Black for the Jerusalem Post, 'Hitler's carmaker'.
    *) Jan. 7, 2007, Edwin Black for the San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com), 'Nazis rode to war on GM wheels'. For some reason the Jewish Edwin Black was appointed a designated authority on the issue of big business financing Hitler.
  127. *) Nov. 10, 1945, Nuremberg affidavit of Von Schnitzler: "At the end of February 1933, four members of the Vorstand of I. G. Farben, including Dr. Bosch, the head of the Vorstand, and myself were asked by the office of the President of the Reichstag to attend a meeting in his house... I had expected the appearance of Goering [but] Hitler entered the room... After Hitler had left the room, Dr. Schacht proposed to the meeting the raising of an election fund..."
    *) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Secret_Meeting_of_20_February_1933 (accessed: Dec. 15, 2022). Gives a basic history of the meeting in question.
  128. Dec. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', part 7 on I. G. Farben, pp. 954, 978, 983, etc.
  129. 2009, Diarmuid Jeffreys, 'Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine', pp. 205-206.
  130. 2000, Adam LeBor, 'Surviving Hitler', p. 135.
  131. Dec. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', part 7 on I. G. Farben, p. 992.
  132. *) 2011, Kevin Jon Heller (associate professor of public international law, University of Amsterdam), 'The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law', pp. 320-321, 323-324.
    *) August 22, 1950, Congressional Record, Congressman Adolph J. Sabath, p. A5983: "Mr. McCloy has used these very same powers when he granted a parole to George Von Schnitzler--a major war criminal. ... How long must justice wait [for various death sentences to be carried out]? ... How long will Mr. McCloy continue toi flaunt the will of the American people and the United States?"
  133. 1984, Deutsch-Ibero-Amerikanische Gesellschaft, p. 9: "In the first difficult years of development, Presidents Leonhard Frhr. by Richter, Dr. George Vond Schnitzler..."
  134. 1953, U.S. Government Printing Office, 'Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals', Vol. 10: October 1946 - April 1949', pp. 64-65: "Von Knieriem — The defendant Johann August von Knieriem [of I.G.] Farben. ... Member ... Internationale Handelskammer (International Chamber of Commerce); Member, Ausschuss fuer Fragen internationaler Kartelle (Committee for Questions of International Cartels), Internationale Handelskammer..."
  135. 1965, Nationale Front des Demokratischen Deutschland, 'Braunbuch: Kriegs- und Naziverbrecher in der Bundesrepublik', p. 55 (translated from German): "Knieriem, August von: Dr. Before 1945: Member of the Board of Directors of IG Farben Industrie AG, Frankfurt a. M; Head of the IG Legal Committee (General Counsel); member of the Central and Working Committee of IG Farben; Member of the Supervisory Board of Anorgana GmbH, Frankfurt a. M. (poison gas plant of the IG colors). After 1945: accused in the Nuremberg IG Farben trial; long-standing chairman of the supervisory board of IG Farben Industrie AG i. L., Frankfurt a. M."
    braunbuch.de/1-04.shtml (accessed: Dec. 17, 2022).
  136. wollheim-memorial.de/en/august_von_knieriem_18871978 (accessed: Dec. 17, 2022): "...in 1950 he worked as a consultant on the reconstruction of BASF. In 1955, he became chairman of the supervisory board of I.G. Farbenindustrie i.L."
  137. open-data.bundesarchiv.de/ ddb-bestand/DE-1958_N_1814.xml (accessed: Dec. 17, 2022; translated from German): "Knieriem, August von [files]... Family matters, e.g. police registrations, house lists, register of the marriage requirements for the son Jurgen von Knieriem, among them the birth certificate (copy)"
  138. *) 1966 annual report, BASF, p. 8:"Direktoren: ... Dr. jur. Jurgen von Knieriem."
    *) 1972 annual report, BASF, p. 6: "Direktoren: ... Dr. jur. Jurgen von Knieriem, Recht."
  139. *) 1952, NMT report, 'Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal', pp. 1195-1196: "We cannot hold that they are responsible criminally for the occasional acts of mistreatment of labor employed in the various Farben plants nor do we consider these defendants to be responsible for the occurrences at the Auschwitz construction site." Longer citation in the ICC membership list under "Knieriem, August von".
    *) Dec. 9, 1979, New York Times, 'Working for Farben; Slaves'.
  140. *) Lost the source mentioning the exact number of I. G. Farben salve labor facilities It likely came from an old senate report.
    *) Explains I. G. Farbe's extensive international network: Dec. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', part 7 on I. G. Farben, pp. 943-944.
  141. 1952, NMT report, 'Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal', pp. 1309-1310.
  142. Dec. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', part 7 on I. G. Farben, p. 946: "I. G. manufactured all of the synthetic rubber produced in Germany, all of the methanol, the serums, and lubricating oils. I. G. provided 95 percent of the poisonous gases and well over 90 percent of the nickel and plastics. Eighty-eight percent of the magnesium used by the Luftwaffe in its aircraft and incendiary bombs came from Farben, as did most of the nitrogen and explosives for the buzz bombs and V-2's."
  143. Ibid., pp. 944-945.
  144. Ibid., pp. 954.
  145. *) Dec. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', part 7 on I. G. Farben, pp. 943-944.
    *) Aug. 6, 1978, New York Times, 'With a Branch at Auschwitz'. Article on Standard Oil and I.G. Farben together aiding Hitler's Luftwaffe.
  146. Jan. 1947, United States Bombing Survey, 'Oil Division Final Report', p. 2, 'General Summary'.
  147. Dec. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', part 7 on I. G. Farben, p. 955.
  148. Ibid., pp. 956, 1000: "I. G., too, had dreams of world empire [by mid 1940], dreams which it translated with painstaking clarity into a document appropriately entitled “Neuordnung” (New Order). The document was submitted to the Ministry of Economics. The letter of transmittal which accompanied the document stated that I. G. anticipated the German conquest of Europe, felt that a “new order" for the chemical industry of the world was required to supplement Hitler's new order, and further stated that it was fitting its plans within that framework. The immediate objective of the document was to insure the full cooperation of the chemical companies of the conquered countries in producing for the Wehrmacht.
    This [I. G.] policy was formulated as follows at a meeting of the [Von Knieriem-headed] commercial committee held on September 10, 1937: It is hereby understood that in no case will men be sent to our foreign companies who do not belong to the German Labor Front [Nazi] and who do not possess a positive attitude toward the New Order."
  149. Ibid., pp. 948, 950.
  150. Ibid., pp. 943-944, 950.
  151. Dec. 24, 1994, The Economist, 'The art of the obituary'.
  152. 1952, U.S. Government Printing Office, 'Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals', Vol. VI: Oct. 1946 - April 1949, pp. 297-298, 28 January 1947 affidavit of Otto Ohlendorf: "9. ... Flick was more reserved [within the Keppler Circle], as he was in direct contact with Himmler."
  153. 2011, Kevin Jon Heller (associate professor of public international law, University of Amsterdam), 'The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law', pp. 320-321, 323-324: "On 2 September 1949, McCloy became the High Commissioner for Germany. ... He had turned down the position of High Commissioner in 1945 [and] had recommended that FDR appoint General Clay instead. ... By the time McCloy assumed office, commuting the Dachau and NMT death sentences and freeing all of the remaining war criminals had become the official policy of the German government. ... Adenauer personally appealed to McCloy, citing the length of time the [Oswald] Pohl [SS officer and head of the concentration camp system; still hanged in 1951] case and Einsatzgruppen defendants had been awaiting execution—which was, of course, due largely to German lobbying – and the fact that Germany‘s new Basic Law, adopted on May 8, prohibited the death penalty.[65] Adenauer‘s appeals were echoed by his coalition partners, the Free Democrats and the German Party, and by Cardinal Joseph Frings, the head of the Fulda Bishops Conference, who insisted that the actions of the condemned prisoners did ―not stem from a criminal disposition. [66] ...
    On 20 December 1949, McCloy and Handy created a good-conduct program for the Dachau and NMT [Nuremberg Military Tribunal] prisoners that reduced sentences five days per month.[83] McCloy insisted that the program was "in no sense an indication of any attitude of unwarrented leniency on my part towards war criminals," but it meant that 60 prisoners would be released before Christmas, including at least five NMT defendants: ... Georg von Schnitzler from Farben ... and Emil Puhl...[84] McCloy would later increase the reduction to ten days per month, leading to the release of nearly all of the remaining Flick and Farben defendants by September 1950[85] -- an act that caused such controversy that even the State Department, which had enthusiastically supported EUCOM and HICOG's clemency programs, told McCloy to warn it before releasing any additional NMT prisoners.[86] Once the good-conduct program was in place, McCloy began to push for a full-fledged NMT clemency program."
  154. collections.ushmm.org/ search/catalog/irn1002303 (accessed: Dec. 18, 2022; 'Former Reichsbank director on stand at Nuremberg Trial'): "[Emil] Puhl testifies and admits that gold teeth collected from victims of concentration camps were left on deposit at the Reichsbank by members of the Nazi party."
  155. bis.org/publ/arpdf/archive/ar1939_en.pdf to ar1944_en.pdf (accessed: Oct. 13, 2022; last page contains officers' lists). Emil Puhl (alternate 1939-, still anno Dec. 1944; responsible for processing dental gold looted from concentration camp victims).
  156. See note 153.
  157. iccgermany.de/ueber-icc-germany/geschichte/ (accessed: Sep. 27, 2022): "Frowein was forced by the National Socialists to resign as President of the German Group. The appointment of a new president by the state was averted by the election of the entrepreneur and member of the presidium of the German group, Karl Lindemann..."
  158. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', pp. 819-820: "His reaction to the Nazis when they came into power seemed to have been lukewarm, but when they manifested strength and staying power, he apparently ingratiated himself with the party. By 1938 Lindemann was elected president of the German division of the International Chamber of Commerce. ...
    [Positions:] - Deutsche Reichsbank: Member of the advisory board. - Dresdner Bank: Berlin—Director. ... - Hamburg-Amerika Linie, Hamburg—Director. ... - Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A. G., Hamburg (oil products; majority owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey)—Director."
  159. 1952, U.S. Government Printing Office, 'Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals', Vol. VI: Oct. 1946 - April 1949, pp. 301-317, testimony of Karl Lindemann. See transcription of this section in the ICC members list under "Lindemann, Karl".
  160. 2007, Christof Brauers, 'Die FDP in Hamburg 1945 bis 1953. Start als bürgerliche Linkspartei.' ('The FDP in Hamburg from 1945 to 1953. Started as a bourgeois left-wing party'), p. 85: Source that Keppler was a founding member of the Keppler Circle in the Dec. 1932 - Jan. 1933 period - when he died. Cuno's name was not mentioned in relation to te Keppler Circle at Nurenberg in the late 1940s.
  161. 1993, Ron Chernow, 'The Warburgs', p. 325.
  162. *) 1920, Schiffbau und Schiffart, Kleinshiffbau und Binnenschiffahrt, p. 864 (translated from German): "In the administration of the Hamburg-America Line, according to "I. u. HZtg" June 9th [1920] the following telegram from the directors arrived from New York: "We have entered into an agreement for 20 years, subject to further details, with the Harriman concern, represented by the firm W. A. ​​Harriman & Co."
    *) 1952, Karl Obermann, 'Die Beziehungen des amerikanischen Imperialismus zum deutschen Imperialismus in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik, 1918-1925', p. 66: "In June 1920 a direct link was established between the Harriman shipping group of the Rockefeller group and the leading German shipping companies, "Hamburg-America-Line" and "Norddeutscher Lloyd". ... Due to the Versailles Peace Treaty, the German shipping companies had lost a large part of their merchant fleet. Director General Dr. Wilhelm Cuno, Ballin's successor in the "Hamburg-America Line", wrote in 1926 about the situation: "We had two options, either to rebuild slowly and step by step on our own, or to get a share of the transatlantic voyage in cooperation with foreign companies. So they preferred to associate with American companies in order to achieve high profits. In June 1920, the “Hamburg-America- Line" signed an agreement with Standard Harriman Corporation's United American Lines. The facilities of the "Hamburg-America Line" were made available to the "United American Lines" and the "Hamburg-America Line" handed over their orders to the American company. The German shipowners received 50% of the profits, i.e. they secured high profits with the help of American capital and in return they handed over their port facilities in Hamburg and Bremen to the Standard Harriman group. The "Norddeutsche Lloyd" formed a similar "interest group" with the "U.S. Mail Steamship Co."""
  163. August 18, 1941 report of Treasury Attache Ervin G. May on the UBC (PDF, including screenshots of UBC board members for 1928 and 1942): "Averell Harriman was in Europe sometime prior to 1924 and at that time became acquainted with Fritz Thyssen... Thyssen told Harriman that he was forming a bank in New York to look after his interests in the United States and asked Harriman to serve on the board. Harriman agreed that certain of his associates would serve as directors... of the Union Bank Corporation..."
  164. 1974, vol. 31, unknown issue, Polish American Studies: The Journal of Polish American History, p. 44. See elevant citation in ISGP's Pilgrims Society membership list under "Harriman, William Averell."
  165. Ibid.
  166. Ibid.
  167. 1942 Office of Alien Property Custodian report: "Since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties [tied to UBC] have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort."
  168. 1934, Ernst Henri, 'Hitler Over Europe', pp. 7-8.
  169. 2000, University of Cologne associate professor Alfred Reckendrees, 'Das "Stahl-Trust" Projekt: Die Grundung der Vereinigten Stahlwerke', p. 115.
  170. 2005, Walther Killy and Rudolf Vierhaus, 'Dictionary of German Biography: Volume 8', p. 272: "Reusch, Paul ... R. was involved in the foundation of the Bundes zur Erneuerung des Reiches / League for the Revival of the Empire (1928), which pressed for the dismantling of parliamentary democracy."
  171. 1960, DDR journalist Jesco von Walden, 'Und morgen die ganze Welt?: Die Verschwörung der braunen paladine', pp. 24-25 (translated from German).
  172. Sep. 1970, Henry A. Turner Jr. for the Cambridge University Press-published Central European History journal, 'The Ruhrlade, Secret Cabinet of Heavy Industry in the Weimar Republic', pp. 195.
  173. 1952, U.S. Government Printing Office, 'Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals', Vol. VI: Oct. 1946 - April 1949, pp. 301-317, testimony of Karl Lindemann: "I had close personal contact with the chairman of the Aufsichtsrat of the Hamburg-America Line [HAPAG], Emil Helfferich... As a result of [our] common sojourns in Berlin, Helfferich, about August of 1933, asked me to meet Wilhelm Keppler, the Fuehrer's adviser on economic questions..."
  174. *) 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', pp. 819-820: "Karl Lindemann [positions:] - Deutsche-Amerikanische Petroleum A. G., Hamburg (oil products; majority owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey)—Director."
    *) 1976, Antony Sutton, 'Wall Street and the Rise if Hitler': "Emil Helffrich, the board chairman of DAPAG, 94-percent owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey. ... Standard Oil of New Jersey also made a significant contribution to Himmler's Special Account through its wholly owned (94 percent) German subsidiary, Deutsche-Amerikanische Gesellschaft (DAG). In 1943 and 1944 DAG contributed as follows: "Staatsrat Helfferich of Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G. 10,000 RM. Staatsrat Lindemann of Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum A.G. 10,000 RM and personally: 4,000 RM."" No primary or mainstream source available.
  175. glasnost.de/hist/ns/eingabe.html (accessed: May 29, 2021; letter located here in full).
  176. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', p. 839: "Hermann Buecher: ... International Chamber of Commerce - Member.".
  177. Ibid.
  178. 1959 version (1938 original), George L. Ridgeway (associate professor of history, Wells College), 'Merchants of Peace' (1959 version contained the foreword of ICC participant and Carnegie Endowment president James T. Shotwell), pp. 132-133: "The [1937 Berlin ICC] congress, in the presence of Reich Chancellor Hitler, heard Goering extol the four-year plan and Schacht excoriate the circumstances which had produced economic nationalism."
  179. *) Dec. 6, 2019, The Guardian, 'This article is more than 2 years old; Google's anti-worker actions evoke IBM’s racist past'.
    *) gettyimages.de/detail/ nachrichtenfoto/schacht-hjalmar-financier-politician-nsdap-germany22-nachrichtenfoto/541785919 (accessed: Nov. 5, 2022): "Schacht, Hjalmar - Financier, Politician, NSDAP [at the] Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce in Berlin ... decorating the present and former presidents of the ICC, Thomas I. Watson and Fentener von Vlissingen..."
  180. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', pp. 819-820
  181. March 3, 1944, U.S. Congressional Record, appendix, p. A1068, words of Congressman Jerry Voorhis of California, 'Bank of International Settlements'.
  182. Ibid.
  183. Ibid.
  184. 1964, Anton Zottmann and Frieda Otto, 'Institut fur Weltwirtschaft an der Universitat Kiel, 1914-1964'. The author did not write down the page number upon observing Hermann Schmidt's name.
  185. Ibid., p. 123.
  186. Ibid., p. 52 (translated from German): "The Rockefeller Foundation had already funded individual research projects at the institute in the time of Bernhard Harms. It continued to support the institute and kept in touch even after the war. With the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, primarily a large experiment was carried out on the agricultural markets, which was headed by Gerhard Mackenroth and Karl Schiller..."
  187. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', pp. 697-699.
  188. See ISGP's article on Joris Demmink for details and sources on Bib van Lanschot's intelligence ties.
  189. *) myheritage.nl/names/ monique_fentener van vlissingen (accessed: Dec. 21, 2022): "Monique had a brother: Willem Charles Jean Marie van Lanschot. Monique married Frederik Hendrik Fentener van Vlissingen [in] 1964..."
    *) tracesofwar.com/persons /370/Lanschot-van-Willem-Charles-Jean-Marie-Bib.htm (accessed: Dec. 21, 2022): "Lanschot, van, Willem Charles Jean Marie "Bib""
  190. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', pp. 713, 711-712.
  191. See the Association pour la Constitution aux Etats-Unis in ISGP's NGO index. Source(s): 1998, Robert Boyce and ‎Robert W. D. Boyce, 'French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918-1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power', p. 206: "The association was registered in Paris in January 1935... [Lists all the names here.]"
  192. Dec. 3, 2020, The Guardian, 'Valery Giscard d'Estaing obituary': "Although Giscard’s father was a strong supporter of the Nazi collaborationist Vichy government and was decorated by its leader, Marshal Philippe Petain, Giscard declared his support of the exiled De Gaulle..."
  193. September 18, 1944, Time, 'Foreign News: Tally Ho!': "Among industrialists arrested or marked for arrest: René Duchemin (French Employers Federation [and IGF Francolor / IG Farben Francolor])..."
  194. 2013, Kevin Passmore, 'The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy', p. 324.
  195. 2011, Matt Perry, 'Memory of War in France, 1914-45: Cesar Fauxbras, the Voice of the Lowly', p. 101.
  196. 2022, Worms et Cie, '50 Years of Shipbuilding on the Banks of the Seine: ACSM and its Garden City (1917-1972)', pp. 131-132, 'Launch of the steam cargo ship "Charles Schiaffino" - 16 March 1930; Speech by Hipolyte Worms; The ills befalling shipbuilding'. For exact citations with the past three sources, see the ICC members list under "Peyerimhoff, Henri de".
  197. *) 1992, Allen Douglas, 'From Fascism to Libertarian Communism: George Valois Against the Third Republic', p. 242. Mentions Henri de Peyerimhoff as a name that was floated in the 1940s.
    *) 2006, Annie Lacroix-Riz, 'The Choice of Defeat, the French Elites in the 1930s': "The following lists broadens the scope beyond the Worms, Lehideux, Indochina Banks and the "Nervo Group" which, according to a "serious" source [back in the 1940s], had dominated the "Synararchic Empire Movement" founded in 1922. He counted, with Hypolite Worms and Jacques Bernaud, at least "four twelve" founders...: ... Hypolite Worms; Henri de Peyerimhoff... Among these constantly updated censuses appear, grouped in a "Synarchy file, study 1948", 1 a "list of members" from or after August 1943...: - Edmond Giscard d'Estaing... - Ernest Mercier..."
  198. 1978, Joseph Borkin, 'The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben', pp. 84, 86.
  199. July 28, 2006, Nouvelle Solidarite, Interview with Annie Lacroix-Riz, 'Fascisme financier hier et aujourd'hui; le choix de la defaite': "We don't know who is the twelfth founding member of Synarchy, but considering what happens in 1934, the Comite des Forges is involved in all aspects."
  200. 1991, Colin Holmes, 'Routledge Library Editions: Racism and Fascism', p. 205: "According to the police, important sums of money were also given to the Croix de Feu by Francois Wendel (an industralist and President of the Comite de Forges) [and other elites] [32 - "AN, F7 13241, 29 June 1935."]..."
  201. 1997, Robert Soucy, 'French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933-1939', p. 224. Unable to double-check.
  202. 1913 issues compilation (this for Feb. 21-28), Revue Scientifique, p. 340, "Le Comité des Forges de France: Fonde en 1864 par M. Eugene Schneider , le createur du Creusot..."
  203. 1959 (2nd version of 1938 original), George L. Ridgeway (associate professor of history, Wells College), 'Merchants of Peace' (the 1959 version contained the foreword of Carnegie Endowment president and ICC participant James T. Shotwell)', p. 31: "The Atlantic City conference [to set up the ICC]: ... The French delegation was led by Eugene Schneider, head of the Creusot Steel Works... Andre Francois-Poncet, delegate of the Steel Committee in France..."
  204. See the 1921 and 1938 lists for Eugene Schneider's name.
  205. July 28, 2006, Nouvelle Solidarite, Interview with Annie Lacroix-Riz, 'Fascisme financier hier et aujourd'hui; le choix de la defaite'.
  206. 1987, Robert W. D. Boyce (Cambridge University Press), 'British Capitalism at the Crossroads, 1919-1932', p. 108: "... the Comite Franco-Allemand d'Information et de Documentation, known as the Mayrisch Committee after its moving spirit, the Luxembourg industrialist Emile Mayrisch, was established in 1925 with encouragement from the Quai d'Orsay."
  207. 2005, Gaby Sonnabend (Deutschen Historischen Institut Paris-publication), 'Pierre Vienot (1897-1944): Ein Intellektueller in der Politik', pp. 114, 122-128, 142 (translated from German). This is a uniquely, very detailed history on the CFAID/DFS. See the ICC membership list under "Mayrisch, Emile" for a translation of the relevant sections.
  208. Ibid.
  209. Ibid.
  210. Ibid.
  211. 2005, Guido Muller, 'Europaische Gesellschaftsbeziehungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, Das Deutsch-Franzosische Studienkomitee und der Europäische Kulturbund', p. 168.
  212. Ibid., pp. 168, 239, 247, 473.
  213. 2005, Gaby Sonnabend (Deutschen Historischen Institut Paris-publication), 'Pierre Vienot (1897-1944): Ein Intellektueller in der Politik', pp. 114, 122-128, 142 (translated from German). This is a uniquely, very detailed history on the CFAID/DFS. See the ICC membership list under "Mayrisch, Emile" for a translation of the relevant sections.
  214. Ibid.
  215. March 3, 1944, U.S. Congressional Record, appendix, p. A1068, words of Congressman Jerry Voorhis of California, 'Bank of International Settlements'.
  216. October 6, 1945, George H. Johnston for The Argus (Melbourne 1848-1956), 'Japanese Still Fear the Black Dragon: The Militarist Secret Society Which Helped Mould The Destiny of Japan Has Gone Underground': "Ambassador Grew and other Ministers of Foreign Powers had directly blamed Black Dragon for the long series of political murders—Premiers Hara, Inukai, Inouye, Hamaguchi, Viscount Saito, Takahashi, and Watanabe. … All the evidence indicated that these murders could be laid at the door of old Toyama, master mind of the society."
  217. 1927 issue compilation, Japan Today and Tomorrow, p. 167.
  218. 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', p. 26.
  219. *) 1934 annual issues compilation, China Monthly Review, p. 294: "The late Finance Minister Junnosuke Inouye, a protege of Mitsubishi..."
    *) 1932 annual issues compilation, The China Weekly Review, p. 131 : "Junnosuke Inouye ... was treated almost as a son by Baron Yataro Iwasaki [note: impossible, as Yataro had died in 1885 before the 1869-born Inouye could marry his daughter], one of the wealthiest men in Japan and connected with the Mitsubishi interests. Mr. Inouye maried a daughter of Baron Iwasaki."
  220. Feb. 1932, About Japan, p. 6, 'Junnosuke Inouye'.
  222. 2010, Ron Chernow, 'The House of Morgan': "[In 1920] Tom Lamont and his wife, Florence, were greeted by Japan's elite: .... Florence was taken on a private tour of the twenty-five-acre central Tokyo estate of Baron and Baroness Iwasaki [of] Mitsubishi. ... Lamont conferred about the China consortium with Junnosuke Inouye [who] remained a steadfast, courageous opponent of the militarists. Lamont established another fateful friendship, with ... Mitsui [head] Baron Takuma Dan... His nickname was the Morgan of Japan."
  223. *) 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', pp. 17, 20: "From the start, natural boundaries for alliances between businessmen and parties were present in that the Kaishinto, the forerunner of the Minseito, was led by Mitsubishi's ex-governmental patron, Okuma Shigenobu. Conversely, the Jiyuto and its successor, the Seiyukai, had contacts with Mitsui through connections to the Choshu [clan] genro... [examples follow]... By 1930, the perception that Mitsui had 'bought' the Seiyukai and that Mitsubishi had done the equivalent to the Minseito was widespread among all sectors of society.[22]"
    *) April 14, 1934, China Weekly Review: "[Companies] more inclined to the Seiyukai as a result of its financial bondage to Mitsui. ... It was solely on account of the huge electioneering fund received from Mitsui that the [Seiyukai] party won the election with an overwhelming majority."
    *) Dec. 10, 1934, Time, 'Japan: Soak the Rich': "Last week the Seiyukai, still financed by Mitsui..."
    *) 1958, Harrison M. Holland of George Washington University, 'The Rikken Minseito (Constitutional Democratic Party) of Japan (1927-1940): Its Antecedents, Structure and Operation': "Through these intimate connections with the Minseito, Mitsubishi was able to obtain favored treatment when the Minseito was in power."
  224. Nov. 1921 issue, The Atlantic, 'Are We Giving Japan a Square Deal? II'.
  225. Ibid.
  226. March 18, 1911, Literary Digest, 'A Carnegie Gift to Japan': "Count Okuma is well known to Mr. Carnegie as one of the chief peace-advocates in Japan, and Mr. Carnegie is well known to the Japanese through his books, which have been translated into their language and are read everywhere...
  227. ndl.go.jp/modern/e /cha2/description22.html (accessed: Jan. 17, 2023; Modern Japan Archives): "On 18 October 1889 (Meiji 22), when Foreign Minister, OKUMA Shigenobu, was engaged in treaty revision negotiations, KURUSHIMA Tsuneki, a member of the Fukuoka Gen'yosha, threw a bomb at an open horse-drawn carriage in which OKUMA was riding, causing him to lose a leg. [It] caused the treaty revision negotiations to collapse."
  228. Sep. 1944 (written in June 1944), E. Herbert Norman (University of British Columbia) for Pacific Affairs, 'The Genyosha: A Study in the Origins of Japanese Imperialism', pp. 261-284.
  229. *) March 22, 2017, Japan Times ('120th Anniversary Special'), 'Episodes of historical interest from JT’s pages': "A Reuters dispatch from Berlin via London that The Japan Times carried in its Jan. 22, 1914 issue marked the first report on the Siemens scandal involving high-ranking members of the Japanese navy, the British company Vickers and the German industrial conglomerate siemens AG, which eventually toppled the cabinet of Prime Minister Gonnohyoe Yamamoto in April that year. The paper achieved a big scoop by interviewing in Shanghai a man named Carl Richter, a former typist of the Tokyo agency for Siemens who stole important documents from the safe of the agency for blackmailing purposes. Fearing that reports on the scandal may affect Japan’s international position, authorities asked the paper not to play them up. But The Japan Times’ news editor Tsunego Baba flatly refused this request out of responsibility for the paper." Note: Tellingly, the paper doesn't mention Mitsui.
    *) 1984, Janet Hunter, 'Concise Dictionary of Modern Japanese History', p. 204: "Siemens Scandal: ... In January 1914 ... investigations revealed corruption in the navy and in Mitsui Bussan in dealings both with Siemens and with the British company, Vickers."
    *) 1992, Hidemasa Morikawa, 'Zaibatsu; The Rise and Fall of Family Enterprise Groups in Japan', p. 186: "Siemens Scandal of 1914: ... That led to the discovery that Mitsui Bussan, the Japanese agent for the British firm Vickers, had also bribed high Japanese naval officials to secure for its client the order..."
  230. May 15, 2021, Tokyo Weekender, 'List of 7: Notorious Assassination Plots in Japan': "Tokyo Station [is] where Takashi Hara was stabbed to death on November 4, 1921, by a right-wing railroad switchman named Konichi Nakaoka. He accused the first commoner to be appointed prime minister of being corrupt and involving the Zaibatsu in politics. He was also critical of Hara's handling of the Siberian intervention which led to growing animosity between the military and the government. Nakaoka was sentenced to life imprisonment but served just 13 years." Note: Notice how this Japanese publication too is steering away from "conspiracy" by writing "the first commoner".
  231. ndl.go.jp/portrait/e/datas/54/ (accessed: January 17, 2023): "Kato Takaaki: ... Entered Mitsubishi Corporation. In 1886 he married a daughter of Yataro Iwasaki. ... In 1900, he became the Minister of Foreign Affairs [for the first time]... [Afterwards:] president of the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun newspaper company... In 1924 he assumed the office of Prime Minister..."
  232. 1985, Franklin Lewis Ford, 'Political Murder', p. 256: "The rest of Asia witness the murders of two Japanese permiers, Takahashi Hara in 1920 and Yuko Hamaguchi in 1930 (both carried out by fanatical nationalists), as well as abortive attempts aimed at another prime minister, Admiral Takaaki Kato, in 1925 and at Crown Prince Hirohito the following year."
  233. 1983, Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, p. 124: "Uchida Ryohei: [He was] rousing public opinion in unsuccessful attempts to prevent passage of the Universal Manhood Suffrage Bill in 1925 and ratification of the London naval armanants limitation treaty in 1930. ... He was arrested in 1925 on suspicion of plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Kato Takaaki, but was found innocent." Details on the emperor's plot still needs sources.
  234. 2008, Facts on File, 'Day by Day: The Twenties: Volume I: 1925-1929, p. 612': "Mar. 5 [1926:] ... An armed group opposed to universal male suffrage breaks into the home of Japan's Premier Kato Takaaki to protest."
  235. 1969, Malcolm Duncan Kennedy, 'The Estrangement of Great Britain and Japan, 1917-35', p. 162: "Hamaguchi ... was shot in the stomach... Twenty-seven arrests were made; although all but four of those taken into custody had since been released [except] Aikokusha [leaders and members]... Aikokusha [and] Black Dragon Society... 1. The links between these bodies are well set out in Appendix III of Richard Storry, The Double Patriots, Chatto & Windus, 1957."
  236. February 1975, Asian Profile, p. 5: "In March 1931 , Okawa Shumei , a civilian [sic] and members of the of the Sakuraki [sic], a secret military society under the leadership of Hashimoto Kingoro, [2] formulated plans to terminate party government and begin national reconstruction. [3] Although the plan was abandoned when War Minister Ugaki Kazushige refused to participate..."
  237. No reliable source found yet for the Tokugawa name, but interesting and specific enough to mention.
  238. *) 1938-1940 (archived Jan. 21, 1941 at the University of Minnesota), U.S. Congress: House, Seventy-Sixth Congress, Third Session report, 'Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States', p. 204: "The Dai Nippon Rengo Seinendan (Japanese Young Men's Association) was established in 1924. ... It is part o the new Kodo or "Way of the Emperor" set-up in Japan, and functions inside of the the Imperial Rule Assistance Organization.... The real head of the Dai Nippon Rengo Seinendan ... is Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, a member of the Black Dragon Society and one of the Japanese Army clique responsible for the sinking of the U.S. S. Panay [in 1937]."
    *) Nov. 12,1945, Life, 'Jap War Criminals Await Trial': "A leader of the Black Dragon Society glares balefully at the camera. He is Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, who ordered the bombing of the U.S. gunboat Panay in 1937 and is celebrated as a hater of whites. ... The Black Dragon Society was the bloodthirstiest of all Japan's jingoistic secret societies. It instigated all Japan's modern aggressions as well as the assassinations of relatively liberal Japanese [businessmen]. Hashimoto was [a] chief of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, Japan's fascist superparty. ...
    Because they consider he failed in the war and shamefully bungled his suicide ... all but the most despicable of his fellow-prisoners ignore Tojo. ... Only companion to talk to Tojo is Black Dragon member Hashimoto, suggesting Tojo was secret leader of the Black Dragon. "
    *) trumanlibrary.gov/photograph-records/98-2457 (accessed: Jan. 21, 2023; 'Photo of Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto'): "Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto of the Black Dragon Society and Points Far East. ... Date(s) ca. 1946."
  239. 1961, Foreign Affairs Association of Japan, Contemporary Japan: "[Kingoro] Hashimoto, [Shumei] Okawa and Kamei in October, 1931, to establish a military junta under Gen. Araki Sadao..."
  240. 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', p. 28.
  241. 1966, vol 14, no. 4, Philippine Studies (Ateneo de Manila University), Gabino A. Mendoza, 'The Source of the Zaibatsu', p. 601: ""A good example (of these ties) is offered by Baron Iwasaki Hisaya, head of the Iwasaki family that controlled the Mitsubishi combine. His second son married the daughter of Ikeda Seihin, a leading Mitsui executive. Ikeda held such positions as chairman of the board of Mitsui Gomei (the holding company), managing director of the Mitsui Bank, Minister of Finance, governor of the Bank of Japan, and member of the Privy Council and the House of Peers." [25]"
  242. 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', p. 120.
  243. 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', pp. 118-119: "Even before he became [Mitsui] Gomei head, in June 1931, at a dinner with [Kokuhonsha leader] Hiranuma Kiichiro and [Sakurakai leader] Hashimoto Kingoro, who was the Russia Section Planning Chief at the time, Ikeda realized the threat posed by the younger officers such as Hashimoto. During the dinner, which was arranged by Hiranuma to hear Hashimoto's analysis of the Russian threat, the army man instead talked about attacking capitalists, not Russia. Hashimoto said, ... "When I shoot, it won't be at the people," and looked at Ikeda meaningfully."
  244. Ibid., p. 118.
  245. Ibid., p. 29.
  246. 1993, The Branch, 'Summaries of Selected Japanese Magazines, Issues 1-9', p. 32.
  247. *) Ibid.
    *) 1983, Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, p. 144.
  248. *) March 10, 1934, The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.: 1933-1954), 'Outrage in Japan; Several Shots Fired at Industrialist; Attendant Killed'.
    *) March 11, 1934, New York Times, Tokyo Publisher Dies of Wounds; Sanji Muto, President of the Newspaper Jiji, Was Shot by Unemployed Salesman'.
    *) March 17, 1934, China Weekly Review, 'Japanese Industrial Magnate is Is Assassinated': "It was also intimated that the assassin [of Sanji Muto] might have been instigated to the act by the Banchokai, a town council... the recent exposure by the murdered man of alleged scandals in connection with the merger of government and private steel and iron works. Mr. Muto had been critical of the merger because the assets of the private concerns absorbed were greatly over-valued."
  249. 1936, World Peace Foundation's World Affairs Books, 'Militarism in Japan', pp. 31-32: "His connection with the Kokuhonsha dates from its founding in 1919 ... General Araki (then a field officer) and Kiichiro Hiranuma (then a commoner), organized the Kokuhonsha in order to combat the democratic movement at the Imperial University of Tokyo. The membership of the society has reached one hundred thousand... A mysterious element is supplied by its intimate connection with the army and navy. While it has promoted the appointment of Baron Hiranuma as a Fascist premier, the figures of General Araki and Admiral Kato lurk in the background. General Araki has used the society to promote Kodo (the Imperial Way)..."
  250. See note 240.
  251. 1983, Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, p. 144.
  252. June 2, 1934, China Weekly Review, p. 15, 'Japan's "Tammany Hall" Is Dissolved': "The dissolution of the Bancho-kai was announced May 16 by its leader, Baron Seinosuke Go. Dubbed the "Tammany Hall of Japan", the organization was deemed a source of plots aimed at financial and industrial circles, extending its hidden influence even to political matters."
  253. 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', p. 116: "At one point, Ikeda's name was linked to the Banchokai... of which Go Seinosuke was the head."
  254. June 2, 1934, China Weekly Review, p. 15, 'Japan's "Tammany Hall" Is Dissolved'.
  255. 1993, The Branch, 'Summaries of Selected Japanese Magazines, Issues 1-9', p. 32.
  256. Dec. 10, 1934, Time, 'Japan: Soak the Rich'
  257. Dec. 4, 1934, Time, 'Japan: Forced to Fight?'.
  258. Sep. 20, 1945, Sydney Morning Herald, 'Black: Dragon Society; What It Stands For': "Mr. Koki Hirota ... was one of [Black Dragon's] most famous pupils
  259. Dec. 4, 1934, Time, 'Japan: Forced to Fight?'.
  260. Sep. 20, 1945, Sydney Morning Herald, 'Black: Dragon Society; What It Stands For': "Mr. Hirota stuck to the Genyo-sha's earlier teachings, and apparently did not follow Toyama's later abandonment of liberalism..."
  261. Dec. 21, 1942, Time, 'Letters, Dec. 21, 1942': "The Black Dragon organization flourishes. It is not defunct. It is no myth. ... A former prime minister, Koki Hirota ... is the general manager and monitor at Black Dragon meetings."
  262. April 23, 1938, China Forum (pp. 268-269 of the 1938 issues compilation): "Mr. Aikawa, being the brother-in-law of Fusanosuke Kuhara, one of the ring-leaders in the uprising of February..."
  263. *) Ibid.
    *) February 2021, Hitachi Review, pp. 120-125, 'The Men who Aided Manufacturing: The Words of Hitachi Founders': "Kuhara had married his younger sister, [so] by Japanese convention it was Aikawa who was considered the older brother-in-law."
  264. April 23, 1938, China Forum (pp. 268-269 of the 1938 issues compilation): "The Kwantung army picked Mr. Yushisuke Aikawa as the ideal person to head the movement for developing the heavy industries in Manchuria. That was in the winter of 1936-1937."
  265. April 26, 1936, Military Police (Kenpeitai), Tokyo Military Police Headquarters, Fusanosuke Kuhara interrogation summary, p. 2 (PDF).
  266. Ibid., p. 1.
  267. Ibid., p. 1.
  268. February 2021, Hitachi Review, pp. 120-125, 'The Men who Aided Manufacturing: The Words of Hitachi Founders': "Related to Kaoru Inoue [Aikawa] stayed at his relative’s residence while attending Tokyo Imperial University. ... When Aikawa informed Inoue of his return to Japan at the end of this two-year stint of practical experience, he also expressed his desire to start a business and asked for his assistance."
  269. encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/businesses-and-occupations/mitsubishi-corp (accessed: Dec. 28, 2022).
  270. 1970, Eleanor M. Hadley (economist with an OSS and State Department background who helped to (temporarily) dissolve the zaibatsu after WWII), 'Antitrust in Japan', pp. 36-37.
  271. 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', p. 89: "Ayukawa [Aikawa], for example, had a close relationship with Kishi Nobusuke, who in turn, had connections to the leading members of the Kwantung Army. [8] In 1936, Ayukawa toured Manchuria for one month on the invitation of the Kwantung Army. Ayukawa's links to Kishi and the Kanto-gun eventually resulted in Nissan providing most of the private capital of Manchukuo Heavy Industries Co. in 1937."
  272. Ibid., p. 8. And some page the author can't find back at the moment.
  273. 1970, Eleanor M. Hadley (economist with an OSS and State Department background who helped to (temporarily) dissolve the zaibatsu after WWII), 'Antitrust in Japan', p. 48 (see chart of Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Nissan).
  274. Ibid., p. 41.
  275. Ibid., p. 41.
  276. *) Sep. 15, 1999, Los Angeles Times, 'Ex-POWs Sue 5 Japanese Companies': "[It] targets five corporate giants: Mitsubishi ... Mitsui ... Nippon Steel, Kawasaki ... and Showa Denko. [It's] on behalf of more than 500 ex-POWs..."
    *) Sep. 16, 1999, New York Times, 'Group Alleges U.S. Hid Enemies' Use of Slave Labor : 55 Years On, POWs Sue Japan': "The newly declassified documents made clear that the companies had asked the Japanese government for laborers who were used as slaves. ... the companies had specifically asked for Caucasians, who were thought to be highly skilled... The U.S. government had discouraged the veterans from pursuing their claims since 1945, he said, forbidding them to discuss their captivity. [It involves] Kawasaki ... Mitsui ..., Mitsubishi ... Nippon Steel Corp."
    *) July 6, 2000, The Economist, 'Japan’s murky past catches up': "Mr Fagan's class-action lawsuit charges Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsui & Company and Nippon Steel with violations of human rights, the use of forced labour and unjust enrichment. In the past year, more than 30 similar lawsuits have been lodged in California..."
    *) Sep. 1, 2000, Pacific Citizen, 'Lawsuit Accuses Mitsui and Mitsubishi of Using Slave Latxirers During WWII': "Additional plaintiffs are expected to join the suit, including those living in Korea, Sakhalin Island, Burma, Vietna, the Philippines and elsewhere..."
    *) May 13, 2014, Reuters Japan, 'Hundreds of Chinese families seek wartime compensation from Japan': "The suit was filed against Mitsubishi..."
    *) June 6, 2016, The Diplomat, 'Mitsubishi Apologizes to Chinese WWII Forced Laborers'.
    *) Nov. 29, 2018, BBC, 'Mitsubishi Heavy ordered to compensate forced S Korean war workers'.
  277. *) Dec. 21, 1942, Time, 'Lively Black Dragon': "The Black Dragon Society has as its most active members today ... General Kenji Doihara, who participated in the underground operations which started the Manchurian campaign in 1931."
    *) Sep. 22, 1945, New York Times, 'Former Key Japanese Plotter In Manchuria to Be Seized; His Arrest Ordered': "Kenji Doihara, ... known as a master of murderers, a member of the Black Dragon Society and the reputed boss of the Kwantung Army..."
  278. 1973, John G. Roberts, 'Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business', pp. 312–313.
  279. Nov. 22 - Dec. 8, 1939, Institute of Pacific Relations Conference paper, Vol. 8, p. 15: "A letter from Dr. Bates, dated July 4, 1939, adds further information... Although still big business, heroin is becoming scarcer and more expensive. ... The most popular form of consumption is in cigarettes . A "Golden Bat" brand is supposedly of Japanese manifacture., Other reports state that opium is often distributed by Japanese civilians in lieu of wages to Chinese laborers, now active in the reconstruction of Nanking."
  280. 1943, George Seldes, 'Facts and Fascism', p. 58: ""Asia for Japan," found Baron Hachirumon Mitsui its chief exponent. ... Hachirumon's fascist imperialism burned even more ardently in his successor, Baron Takakimi Mitsui."
  281. 1970, Eleanor M. Hadley (economist with an OSS and State Department background who helped to (temporarily) dissolve the zaibatsu after WWII), 'Antitrust in Japan', p. 42: "Sasaki Shiro, a favorite of Takakimi [Mitsui]... Sasaki, who was an enthusiastic collaborator of Hitler ... managed all political arrangements of the entire Mitsui combine...
    When I interviewed Mitsui Takakimi in August 1947 [his] concerns were not with the [economic] problems but with Communism and international Jewry. He was fearful of domestic Communists spreading Communism in Japan. But it is not clear what he imagined about Jews. [of which there were basically none in Japan]..."
  282. Ibid., p. 42.
  283. 2022, Martin Horn, 'J.P. Morgan & Co. and the Crisis of Capitalism', pp. 290-301.
  284. Dec. 24, 1948, Earnest Hoberecht for United Press, '17 Japanese War Crimes Suspects Obtain Amnesty'.
  285. 1999, John W. Dower (Ph. D. in History from Harvard), 'Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II' (e Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction), pp. 323-325: "[The fascist-inclined General Bonners] Fellers, who often emerged as the deus ex machina in MacArthur's imperial intrigues, could be unusually blunt in telling his Japanese opposites that they could maintain the throne and shoud keep Hirohito on it ... to thwart Soviet-led "communization of the entire world," and told Yonai that "un-American thought" was on the rise even at high levels in the United States, where influential voices still called for arresting Hirohito as a war criminal. ...
    According to the Japanese record of the conversation, Fellers then urged Yonai to ensure Emperor Hirohito's survival by fixing by defendants in the impending war-crimes trials. "It would be most convenient," Fellers is recorded as having said, "if the Japanese side could prove to us that the Emperor is completely blameless. I think the forthcoming trials offer the best opportunity to do that. Tojo, in particular, should be made to bear all responsibility at this trial." ...
    The sustained intensity of this campaign to protect the Emperor was revealed when, in testifying before the tribunal on December 31, 1947, Tojo ... testified that he consulted Hirohito before any actions were taken. ... The American-led prosecution immediately ... arranged that Tojo be secretly coached to recant this testimony. [Tojo] came back to the witness stand and testified that he consulted with Hirohito after the actions were taken, not before."
  286. 1987, John W. Dower (Ph. D. in History from Harvard), 'Okubo Genji and the institute of Pacific Relations: The unfinished agenda': "Members of the Japan council included ... Inoue Junnosuke, Shibusawa Eiichi..."
    *) 1995, William Lancelot Holland, 'Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations: The Memoirs of William L. Holland', p. 443: "'First journey to China and Japan 1927.' ... I was met by the new assistant secretary of the IPR Japanese Council... The secretary of the Japanese IPR, Soichi Saito [also was] general secretary of the Tokyo YMCA, but with access to the merchant princes... Dr. Junnosuke Inouye, then ... Chairman of the Japanese IPR, came to it and was very friendly."
    *) Jan. 2019, Seiko Mimaki for the Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies (Waseda University), 'Non-Governmental Organizations and Origins of Asia-Pacific Regionalism: The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR: 1925‒1961)', p. 59: "The Japan Council [of the IPR] was established in 1925, and 55 members were named to it [including] Eiichi Shibusawa, Junnosuke Inoue..."
  287. 1995, William Lancelot Holland, 'Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations: The Memoirs of William L. Holland', p. 443: "I paid a round of calls, carefully arranged, to my academic acquaintances and to businessmen who supported the IPR. I remember particularly a reception at the home of Dr. Takuma Dan, then head of the Mitsui interests, and later a Noh play at the private theater of Baron Mitsui."
  288. *) Jun. 30-Jul. 14, 1925, Organizing Conference Record, Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), p. 17: "Members: Akira Ishii, former vice-president of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Steamship Company."
    *) 1927, The Mid-Pacific Magazine, p. 204: "The Japanese group at the Institute of Pacific Relations: ... Mr. Akira Ishii... Mr. Soichi Saito..."
  289. *) See note 285.
    *) 1995, William Lancelot Holland, 'Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations: The Memoirs of William L. Holland', p. 444: "While I was in Tokyo, Saito organized a most impressive luncheon presided over by Baron Eiichi Shibusawa, patron of the Japanese IPR, then in his 90th year. I say next to him..."
  290. July 25 - Aug. 7, 1951, U.S. Congress: House, Committee on the Judiciary, 'First Session on the Institute of Pacific Relations', p. 1236: "List of all appropriations made for the work of the Institute of Pacific Relations by the former Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial [$165,000 total over 1926-1928] and by the Rockfeller Foundation: ... Total: ... $1,721,859 [over 1926-1950]..."
  291. Ibid., pp. 1215-1216: "The international IPR. ... The following persons, as chairmen of the international research committee, have directed the international research program of the [IPR] institute from 1925 to present: Prof. James. Shotwell, Columbia Univesity. ...
    Other prominent persons who have taken an active leadership in the work of the IPR outside the United States include the following: ... Lionel Curtis, All Souls College, Oxford. .. Junnosuke Inoute ... Arnold J. Toynbee, director of studies, Royal Institute of International Affairs..."
  292. *) ajstokyo.org/en-about/en-history/ (accessed: Jan. 21, 2023): "In April 1917, AJS was born pledging... The first president of the Society was Kentaro Kaneko... Iyesato Tokugawa, Eiichi Shibusawa, Korekiyo Takahashi... were honorary vice presidents; ... Takuma Dan, Junnosuke Inoue were on the list of the Executive Committee."
    *) 1927, America-Japan Society, 'Special Bulletin (4)': "Honorary Presidents: ... Viscount Kentaro Kaneko [still anno 1932]. Honorary Vice Presidents: Viscount Eiichi Shibusawa. ... Mr. Korekiyo Takahashi [still anno 1932], Dr. Takuma Dan, Mr. Lindsay Russell, President [still anno 1932]; Prince Iyesato Tokugawa [still involved anno 1932]. ... The Executive Committee: ... Mr. J. Inouye..."
  293. 1910 booklet, 'The Japan Society of New York: To Promote Friendly Relations Between the United States and Japan', pp. 4, 13: "President: Lindsay Russell ... Vice-President: August Belmont. Honorary Vice-Presidents: Jacob H. Schiff ... Life Members: ... Kahn, Otto H. ... Schiff, Mortimer... Seligman, Isaac N. ... Shibusawa, Baron Eiichi..."
  294. 1920, Japan Society booklet, 'Our Relations with Japan - by Henry W. Taft', pp. 27, 3: "Japan Society. Officers: Frank A. Vanderlip, President. Lindsay Russell, Chairman, Board of Directors. August Belmont, Vice President... Eugene C. Worden, Secretary. Bankers Trust Company, Treasurer. Directors: Hamilton Holt ... Jacob H. Schiff..."
  295. 2013, Susie J. Pak, Harvard University Press, 'Gentlemen Bankers', p. 163.
  296. Ibid.
  297. See note 292.
  298. 1920, Japan Society booklet, 'Our Relations with Japan - by Henry W. Taft', pp. 3-4: "The Vanderlip party which recently visited Japan was organized by Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip on the invitation of the so-called Welcome Association... Baron Shibusawa and Mr. Vanderlip were the joint chairmen. Viscount Kaneko usually presided... Mr. [Raita] Fujiyama [was] present. ... Members of our party came in contact with the leading Japanese citizens [including] Baron Mitsui..."
  299. See note 291.
  300. See note 285.
  301. 1934, Foreign Affairs Association of Japan, 'The Japan Year Book', p. 340: "Eiichi Shibusawa was the first President of the [Tokyo] Chamber [until] 1902. Japan attended the plenary conference of the International Chamber in 1923 in London, when Mr. Raita Fujiyama, then president of the Tokyo Chamber and All-American Chamber was the representative."
  302. See note 297.
  303. 1955, ICC, 'Tokyo Congress 1955' booklet; 1955, Journal of Finance and Commerce, foreword by Keizo Shibusawa, p. 9.
  304. April 25, 1957, Vol. III, No. 6, Japan Report, p. 11.
  305. 2013, Susie J. Pak, Harvard University Press, 'Gentlemen Bankers', p. 163: "Kuhn, Loeb & Co.'s break with Japan over its alliance with Russia and Jacob Schiff's death in 1920 offered the Morgans the opportunity to begin anew with Japan, now the dominant power in East Asia. [18] By the early 1920s, the Morgans made critical steps toward replacing Kuhn, Loeb & Co. as Japan's leading foreign bank..."
  306. *) 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', p. 25: "Most newspapers and the public singled out Mitsui as the main villain of this "Dollar-Buying Scandal," in spite of the fact that, according to the Toyo Keizai Shimpo Sha's calculations (printed first in Jiii Shinpo) the National City Bank bought the largest amount of dollars. The estimates are shown below: 'Table I - Total Value of Dollars Bought (in Yen) by the Major Purchasers: [the Rockefeller's] National City Bank ... 35.9% [of total, much higher than even Mitsui]..."
    *) 1943, George Seldes, 'Facts and Fascism', pp. 49-50: "In addition according to the San Francisco journalist John Pittman, "among the owners of the Japanese business are International General Electric, which operates plants through its subsidiary, Tokyo Shibaura; ... Standard Oil, with a known direct investment of $5,000,000, exclusive of frozen credits and oil in storage; Ford, and General Motors, with approximately $10,000,000 sunk in Japan proper.""
    *) April 6, 1942, Capital Times, 'Standard Oil -- Axis Ally': "In September, 1939, Standard cabled to the Japanese monopoly, Mitsui, proposing that together they prepare the way at once for the re-establishment of commercial relations "after any interruptions in our trade," which Standard feared might come."
  307. 1987, Hyung Gu Lynn (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia), 'The Mitsui Zaibatsu Tenko, 1932-1936', p. 104.