Five Brothers and a War

Prins Bernhard

Far more troubling is the Prince's role in laundering Nazi money after the war. It has been stated that the prince worked to hide money that was deposited in Dutch banks on behalf of Germans, and German companies, such as Thyssen, one of the largest German companies–and a company that was instrumental in producing the steel and steel products central to the German war effort. They were also at the top of the list of German companies using slave labor during the war. The accusation, apparently with more than a passing measure of truth, is that these German companies, and those who owned them, used a very complex system to transfer and maintain their money before and after the war. At the center was the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart (”Bank for Trade and Shipping”). The lawyer for that bank was Allen Dulles, who would go on to be the Director of the CIA— following General Bedell Smith, who was instrumental in the negotiations to bring food relief to Holland in April 1945, as General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower's Chief-of-staff. Allen Dulles was one of the members of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Allen Dulles was the brother of John Dulles, who was the American Secretary of State, and for whom Washington D.C.'s international airport, Dulles International Airport, was named. Before all of that, and very critically, Allen Dulles was the chief of U.S. Intelligence in post-war Germany. Unbeknownst to wartime investigators, Allen Dulles was also the lawyer to Baron Kurt von Schroeder who was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen companies which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch. The Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart was at the heart of Dulles' cloaking scheme, and he guarded its secrets jealously. He was also the lawyer for that bank, making a nearly perfect scenario for conflict of interest. Fritz Thyssen, of the Thyssen company, (and indirectly, the Nazi Party) had obtained their early financing from Brown Brothers Harriman, and its affiliate, the Union Banking Corporation. Union Bank, in turn, was the Bush family's holding company for a number of other entities, including the "Holland American Trading Company." Prescott Bush (father of George Herbert Walker Bush and grandfather of George Walker Bush) was a vice president of A. Harriman & Co., a private investment bank, when his father-in-law, George Herbert Walker was president. In 1931, the Harriman company merged with the Brown Bros. Company, forming Brown Brothers Harriman. Prescott Bush was a partner of that firm. The founder of the Harriman company was Averell Harriman, who would go on to be the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1943 (for the balance of the war), then briefly the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, then the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, then later the Democratic governor of New York. His third marriage (his first ended in divorce, and his second ended with the death of his wife) was to the ex-wife of Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston S. Churchill. When at Yale, he was “tapped” to become a member of the “secret” Skull and Bones Society (15 students per year were invited to join). Other members of the society have include U.S. Presidents William Howard Taft, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, as well as other notables, like Prescott Bush, John Kerry, Percy

holland

Five Brothers and a War

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