American capitalism was far more useful to the Third Reich than to the Soviet Union
American capitalism was far more useful to the Third Reich than to the Soviet Union
Corroborating my bold conclusion that Imperial America could have been an Axis power with how much its capitalists were supplying the Third Reich is David Swanson’s Leaving World War II Behind, chapter 7:
The above is a small sample of the conduct of some 150 U.S. companies that did business with [the Third Reich], often right through the war, often in blatant violation of laws that were often not enforced. Other U.S. companies that worked with [the Third Reich] included Coca Cola, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, General Electric, Goodrich, Singer, Eastman Kodak, Texaco, Alcoa, and Chrysler. At the time that the United States entered the war, U.S. companies had some $475 million invested in [the] Third Reich.²¹²
I would like to pause here so that we can reflect on this investment. Quoting Charles Higham’s U.S. Policy and Private American Aid to Nazi Germany in The Opening of the Second World War, page 81:
American investments in [the Third Reich] amounted at the time to approximately $475 million (1990: $8,550 million), Standard Oil of New Jersey had $120 million invested there; General Motors had $35 million; ITT had $30 million; Ford had $17.5 million.⁸ In April 1940, Gerhardt Westrick, the Dulles brothers’ German partner, traveled to New York to link up the corporate strands that would continue to exist throughout World War II. He represented Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Texas Company, and Sterling Products. He helped to secure the German branches of these corporations in holding companies for the duration of the war.⁹
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Adjusting for inflation, that is $10,710,028,571.43. Yes, you read that correctly: whether it was legal or not, corporate America invested what is today equivalent to ten fucking billion dollars in a Fascist régime. That is more than seventeen times the amount of Fascist Italy’s debt that Imperial America (effectively) forgave in 1934.
Continuing now with Leaving World War II Behind:
The U.S. ambassador to [the Reich] from 1933 to 1937 was William Dodd, a man with many flaws, but generally too good for the job and far more decent and responsible than the norm. Among the many dangers he tried to alert the U.S. government to was that of U.S. corporations and plutocrats funding [Fascism] in Germany and [fascist] groups in [Imperial America]. In a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt on October 19, 1936, Dodd wrote that over 100 U.S. corporations had subsidiaries or cooperative understandings with [the Reich].
“The DuPonts have three allies in [the Reich] that are aiding in the armaments business. Their chief ally is the I. G. Farben Company, a part of the government which gives 200,000 marks a year to one propaganda organization operating on American opinion. Standard Oil Company (New York subcompany) sent $2,000,000 here in December 1933 and has made $500,000 a year helping [the Reich] make Ersatz gas for war purposes […] The International Harvester Company president told me [that] their business here rose 33% a year (arms manufacture, I believe).”²¹³
The U.S. government knew what was going on but did not make any all‐out effort to stop it. The same companies that were central to the workings of [European Fascism] were central to the workings of the United States, politically powerful, and too big to fail. These companies’ owners praised the low‐wage non‐union workers found in [the Third Reich] and [F]ascist Italy. They did their part to promote and to profit from those states. They met in Switzerland or Sweden while the war raged. They got rich and rooted for one side or the other or neither.
They were little disturbed, even tacitly supported, by the U.S. government,²¹⁴ even as President Franklin Roosevelt warned of a “European model” and “fascist” concentration of wealth and power in corporate monopolies and cartels, brought about by the Harding‐Coolidge‐Hoover era.²¹⁵ (That concentration was indeed extreme, but did not approach current levels as I write this in 2020.)²¹⁶
“The alliance between American capitalism and [the Third Reich],” says Nadan Feldman, “helped [the Fascist bourgeoisie] implement an armaments program that was unprecedented at the time, and to begin the world war [in Eastern Europe]. […] [W]ithout the mobilization of corporate America for [the Reich], it is very doubtful whether [the Fascist bourgeoisie] could have started the war, doubtful whether [it] would have succeeded in rehabilitating the German economy.”²¹⁷
Of course, [the bourgeoisie] could have rehabilitated the German economy without the war, even if neither the war nor the rehabilitation would have been possible without U.S. investment.
[…]
U.S. businesses, through the Lend Lease program and otherwise, invested even more heavily in Britain. [The Reich] eventually shut smaller, less‐connected foreign businesses out […] in favor of a [Reich]‐first approach. In addition, [the Fascist bourgeoisie] presented U.S. businesses with competition in Latin America. When the United States went to war with [the Reich], that wasn’t completely at odds with U.S. business interests. Many of them would get rich providing for the U.S. military. No war is ever at odds with the ([inconsiderate]) interests of war profiteers.
France and Britain also armed [the Reich].²¹⁹ The United States also armed [the Empire of] Japan.²²⁰ In Jason Weixelbaum’s account of Neil Forbes’ Doing Business With the Nazis, Forbes presents an openly pro‐business account, and blames “self‐interest and political naïveté, rather than capriciousness” for the collaboration of British corporations with the [Reich]. But Forbes does not dispute that they so collaborated — which action, rather than capriciousness, is the serious offense at issue here.²²¹
The Soviet Union’s crucial and overwhelming contribution to defeating most of the Western Axis is a sore point for antisocialists, so their strategy is to inflate the importance of Imperial America’s Lend‐Lease programme for the Soviets to comedically extreme proportions. (A few Soviet officials such as Zhukov have only encouraged this myth, possibly as polite attempts to improve foreign relations.) Its actual importance is far less significant. Quoting Jacques R. Pauwels’s The Myth of the Good War, pages 77–9:
Militarily and politically, things were going fine for the United States, and economically [Imperial] America’s corporations were profiting from the war on the Eastern Front and the market that had opened up with its new Lend‐Lease partner. The United States (together with Canada and Great Britain) would supply the USSR far less with weapons than with Studebakers and other trucks, jeeps, clothing, and canned food.
Lend‐Lease also opened up previously unthinkable prospects for bringing the gigantic Soviet Union into the American economic sphere of influence after the war, a theme that we will cover later.
It is sometimes alleged that the Soviet Union managed to survive the [Axis] attack only thanks to American Lend‐Lease aid, but for a number of reasons that is extremely doubtful. First, as we have seen, a Lend‐Lease agreement with the Soviet Union was concluded only at the end of 1941. For their first deliveries of American weapons and other supplies, the Soviets were required to pay in cash.
And these first supplies were very modest, if not insignificant. A German historian, Bernd Martin, actually claims that throughout 1941 American aid to the Soviet Union remained “fictitious.” American material assistance became meaningful only in 1942, that is, long after the Soviets had single‐handedly put an end to the progress made by the Wehrmacht and turned the tide of the war.
Second, American aid never represented more than 4 to 5 per cent of total Soviet wartime production, although it must be admitted that even such a slim margin may possibly prove crucial in a crisis situation. Third, the Soviets themselves cranked out all of the light and heavy high‐quality weapons — such as the T‐34 tank, probably the best tank of the Second World War — that made their success against the Wehrmacht possible.
Fourth, and probably most importantly, the much‐publicized Lend‐Lease aid to the USSR was to a large extent neutralized by the unofficial, discreet, but very important assistance provided by American corporate sources to the [Axis] enemies of the Soviets. In 1940 and 1941, American industry profited primarily from business with Great Britain, but this did not prevent American oil firms and trusts from concluding clandestine yet lucrative business deals with [the Third Reich] as well.
Huge amounts of oil were delivered to [the Third Reich] via [officially] neutral states such as Spain, something that was known in the White House. The American share of [the Reich’s] imports of vitally important oil products increased rapidly; in the case of motor oil, from 44 per cent in July 1941 to no less than 94 per cent in September 1941.
In view of the depletion of their stockpiles of petroleum products at that time, it is fair to say that the [Axis] panzers would probably never have made it all the way to the outskirts of Moscow without fuel supplied by American oil trusts.⁵ In fact, without U.S.‐supplied fuel, neither the [Axis] attack on the Soviet Union nor, for that matter, any of the other major [Reich] military operations of 1940 and 1941 would have been possible, according to the German historian Tobias Jersak, an authority in the field of American “fuel for the Führer.”⁶
Finally, it should also be taken into account that, via “reverse Lend‐Lease,” the Soviet Union also supplied the U.S. with important raw materials, including chrome and manganese ore as well as platinum; on account of this, the U.S. possibly even became a net beneficiary of wartime trade with the Soviets.⁷
(Emphasis added in all cases.)